My Kids Favorite Apps

I've been so caught up with work that I put my Pesach travels completely on the back burner. I literally didn't even go back to the flight reservation email to check what time of the day we're flying - until after I finished my last Babyccino class on Monday afternoon and fully finished the Babyccino "Spring!" curriculum (which is live and available for purchase if anyone new is interested). I can't really multi-task well these days, and I seem to function much much better when I only focus on one thing at a time. So! This morning I woke up completely psyched for our imminent trip to my family in Skokie! Aside from my parents and my brother Moshe (who has been my right hand man in the Babyccino office deptartment!!), my sister Shterni and her family are coming (cousins!), as well as my hipster brother and his awesomest preschool-teaching wife, plus my fabulous newest-married sister with her boy beau. I'm SO looking forward to getting away, checking out (work/life wise), and spending heaps of quality time with my family. This morning I started packing up the girls clothes, and organizing our in-flight entertainment plan. Aside from buying a couple novelty coloring books, a slew of stickers, and some small-fare games and gimmicks, I dug up my old iPhone and restored it to factory settings. I cleared it up of all the regular icons, loaded it with my girls favorite apps, plus a bunch of new ones to try, and left the camera on there for Freida to explore with photography over this trip. She's going to be so excited at the prospect of having her own "phone" (it's really no more than an iPod touch) for the trip that I think we should be pretty set for the 4 hour flight. Anyways, lots of you have been asking for good kids apps to download before hitting the road, and I figured I'd share our top 4 favorites here. The interesting thing about these 4 apps is that both my 2 year old and my 5 year old LOVE these. Enjoy! 1. Endless Alphabet $6.99

This letter recognition app is, by a long shot, THE best app out there for toddlers. The adorable graphics + the genius phonics-teaching method is preschool gold. Not to mention the animated short it shows for the definition of every word! The words are truly endless and I have even upped my vocab from eavesdropping on Freida's playtime (gargantuan, anyone?). Also, I find it completely mind blowing that Hudi has learned all her phonics from this app. She doesn't know the whole alphabet, but can point to any letter and make the correct sound!! This is totally worth the whole $7. Promise.

2. Toca House $3.99

Help the quirky Toca characters with chores around the house. Sort the family mail, mow the lawn, wash the windows... you get the idea. Awesome graphics and great sound effects make this app super-fun to play and non-obnoxious as backround noise. Your kids will love it.

3. Drawnimal $1.99

This interactive artist app has fast become a family favorite. And for a while when I was sleep training Hudi last year, this was the activity I would set Freida up with after bath each evening. We upped the ante and made it even more fun by implementing a little lap whiteboard (the kind for practicing letter, $1 aisle in Target) and a dry erase crayon + eraser. The concept of using the device as an art component is wild, and the animations are adorable, to boot!

4. The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Friends - Play & Explore $3.99

This 3-D popup storybook features the most beautiful and whimsical of illustrations. This app is so well done, and the story-telling narration helps walk the kids through how to play and what to do. And somehow that makes it just interactive enough for them to play with it longer than other apps. Plus, the activities are relatively educational.

P.S. Don't forget about Fiete for the toddlers!

Babyccino "Spring!" Curriculum

Hey Ladies!

Babyccino has some fresh new material! The Spring 2014 curriculum has just landed last week, and the theme is "Spring!" - featuring the elements of the nature around us via plants, bugs, water, and earth. This growth-themed series will encourage young children to explore our world with their senses, communicate with creative art, and express themselves through music and movement. Due to popular demand, this particular 8-class curriculum includes classes and activities for the holidays of Lag Baomer and Shavuos. Join the Babyccino team and watch your community of little sprouts blossom!!

Buy-in will include this complete package:

• The rights to use the name “Babyccino”
• The Babyccino promotional material – text altered to your needs
• The philosophy behind Babyccino
• The method to promote the classes
• The complete classroom layout (including links for furniture purchases)
• The Circle Time “how-to” (including song playlist and links for props)
• The fully descriptive Fall 2013 Curriculum (including links for supplies)

The Curriculum consists of a “theme”/unit, the music playlist for that theme, and 8 detailed classes. (We will be selling 3 different curriculums throughout the year –  8 fall classes, 8 winter classes, 8 spring classes.) It basically lays it all out for you – you can practically spend one Sunday getting things together off the list of items detailed here, set them aside all ready-to-go, and never have to plan another mommy & me again. Seriously.

You should hit up the Babyccino facebook page to get an idea of what I’m talking about. There you can view full photo-documentation of all our previous classes and you’ll see what it’s all about.

Click here for a more detailed blog post about Babyccino and here to see what buyers are saying about it.

Happy Spring and Chag Sameach to you all!!

Water Play

I've been on the fence about giving Freida swimming lessons this Summer or waiting until next year. I feel like kids in LA really need to be swim safe in general, and I also think she'd have a crazy fun Summer if she'd learn how to swim. But at the same time, I know she's fearful of water and is happy as a clam to hang out at the seas edge jumping waves, or in a pair of floaties at the pool. I hear so many moms talking about what a waste of time it is to start kids lessons when they just aren't ready, and I really don't think she is. I think if she were motivated a bit more by kids in her bunk knowing how to swim, or if she ever asked about learning how to swim - I'd sign her right up. In any case, while googling around a bit for some kids swim schools in LA, I happened upon there images by Alix Martinez, and they totally made me swoon (and want to give her lessons!). How awesome is this water photography?? If I had boys, I would want a huge print on that taxi photo in their playroom. Just sayin'. Check out the rest of them on his website. And I'm curious to hear, at what age did you start your kids in swimming lessons?

Maid Easier

I have a friend here in LA who actually went to college. And graduated. With a Masters. She speaks a really good Spanish, and many of us had been hitting her up endlessly as our English - Spanish translator. I for one have a really difficult time conversing with my cleaning help. It's a bit shameful, really. Not speaking Spanish in LA is really not cool, and I definitely want to make sure my kids grow up with enough of a Spanish grasp. It's just much simpler to live here and be able to communicate with everyone easily. Our automated phone services now say "for English press 1"!! Anyways, my friend was getting tired of answering the many texts (How do I say 'wash the windows'/'put in the casserole'/'throw out old food from fridge'?) and had an impromptu little epiphany to create Spanish/English magnets specifically geared toward house help!

Enter Maid Easier. The most helpful $10 you will spend this year. I used to wait for my cleaning girl to come in the morning just so that I could be there to explain to her what I needed done that day. These little magnets have completely saved my sanity! I put my every week basic tasks up on the fridge, and rummage through the little tin container to put up the other tasks I want her to do that day, before I hightail out the door Thursday morning. It's been insanely easy! And my home has never been cleaner. (I've definitely come a long way since my very first cleaning lady!) You can buy Maid Easier magnets on Amazon, and start stressing less about your cleaning lingo.

Side note: the tin itself is not a magnet. I just found the easiest place to keep it was right there on the fridge, so I slapped a little square of adhesive magnet paper to the back of it, and voila.

Goldieblox

Recently, I had a little triumph involving tools*, and it finally got me to sit down and post about Goldieblox. A draft of this post had been sitting in my outbox since Chanukah (when my wildly trendy sister Rivkee gifted 5-year-old Freida with Goldieblox and the Spinning Machine), and while we've been enjoying fiddling with the thing, mastering the many prototypes in the users manual, and even coming up with some of our own creations, I haven't yet spread the good word about this goody for girls here.

Goldieblox - dubbed 'toys for future innovators'- has been blowing my mind. We all know the ins and outs and young women in the business world in general (and as #banbossy goes to show, it's still a serious issue), but this toy just took things to a whole new level. Forget pushing education and college courses, and try cultivating the innate love for puzzles that is in every child. Toys like these not only encourage children to think outside the box (much like legos do), but they inspire young minds to problem solve and work through things on their own - resulting not only in their own solutions, but in their own creations.

Freida found it a bit difficult at first, but once she got the hang of the concept she fully took off, and has been happily messing around with it since. Once they understand the basic concept and know the logistics of the different pieces, it's a refreshingly fantastic toy for kids to play with on their own. On the weeks that I have the girls with me for Shabbos, I break this out when I want to keep Freida occupied while I put Hudi down for a nap and even sneak in some "me" time with an iced Irish coffee and some pages of the latest Vogue. The fun with this toy is never fleeting, and it's a great gift to consider for girls ages 4-8.

Here is their original commercial (feat. the Beastie Boy music they were allegedly sued for, but it's still so stinkin' cute!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvEsVFbyoL8

And here's their latest commercial from this years Super Bowl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVCC83cDch0

How cute, right? This totally makes me nostalgic for that 90's catchphrase: #girlpower

*I had been living in this apartment for a whole bunch of weeks with a broken play kitchen. The fridge had some loose screws and 2 cabinet doors had fallen off. I stashed them behind the kitchen, and figured I'd get someone to come fix it. I didn't. It wasn't exactly an urgent priority, and so it sat idly somewhere on my to-do list. Until one day recently - I just got fed up with looking at a broken piece of furniture in the girls room - I just grabbed a lonesome screwdriver that had been sitting amongst a slew of pens and pencils at my desk, and fixed it all up like new. It was so easy! And I felt so dumb! I couldn't get over how ridiculous it was that since I was always used to someone doing the handywork for me, I figured I shouldn't even try. It made me think about how many other things I leave waiting on the back burner because I think I don't know how or am not able to do them as well as somebody else... And so this lil' tool triumph has taught me to (at the very least) give things a try. 

Yes. She's cooking Foofa. And frying Plex. I know, perplexing.