$25 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway

I want to thank everyone for reading and/or participating in my weekly "Toys My Children Actually Play With" post. I am honored that you would take the time to read my post and participate.

With Christmas coming up, would you like to win a $25 gift certificate from Amazon.com? My favorite part of this giveaway is that it is open to ANYONE, even those outside of the U.S. because the gift card can be printed off from your computer.

Here's how to enter:

Mandatory entry:
1. Leave a comment below about a toy that you would recommend to other Mommies for Christmas. Please include for what age the toy is appropriate.

Additional entries:
2. Follow my blog and leave a comment so that I know that you do. If you are already a follower (Thank you!) please leave a comment telling me so.

3. You will receive TWO more entries if you write a post on your blog about a toy that your child actually plays with and link it up to one of my Thursday post by November 27th. (If you have already linked to me in the past 6 weeks, I will automatically give you 2 entries for each post that you have entered.)

4. You will receive TWO more entries if you blog about this contest and link back to this post. Leave a comment so that I know that you did.

****Make sure you leave a separate comment for EACH entry. Please make sure that your blogger email is enabled or leave your email in the comment so that I can contact you.

I will choose a winner with Random Number Generator on November 29th.

¡Buena Suerte! (Good luck!)

Toys my Child ACTUALLY plays with

*** If you want to join in, read the post here and then link up to the MckLinky below. It will be open for a couple of days. If you do not have a post ready to go this week, I will be posting a new one each Thursday. It doesn't have to be a new post, an OLD POST about a toy that your child loves would be fine! Also, post or email me if you have a question about a toy that you do not own but are considering buying so that we can look for someone to give you a review of it.

For example, I have two little boys so it is very hard for me to decide what to buy my five year old niece. I would love some suggestions.

Melissa & Doug Floor Puzzles

In our house we own several puzzles. By far the favorite two puzzles that we own are the Melissa and Doug Floor Puzzles. You can see the exact two that we own above . D received the dinosaur puzzle last year for his third birthday (with a dinosaur theme) and the second last summer just because I was so happy to find an alphabet puzzle in Spanish.

Pros:

1. Has large pieces that are easy for little hands to manipulate.

2. Has thick and durable pieces. However, if a very active 18 month old gets a hold of it, they will bend.

3. Has an appropriate number of pieces for 3-4 year. D does not get frustrated like he does with some puzzles.

Cons: Honestly, can't think of any.

Toys that we are interested in:

1. What types of puzzles are popular with your kids?

2. What are you favorite Melissa and Doug products?

Playing with Our Food- Leftover Halloween Candy

We had a TON of fun doing activities this week with our leftover Halloween candy.

1. We sorted Smarties by color.

2. We made Candy Art.

3. We made a Cell Phone using Smarties.

4. We found out which candy floats.

Today we played a simple game by tossing the candy into a pumpkin bucket. (I still haven't put away all of our Halloween decorations:)

I found some other blogs with great ideas of what to do with leftover Halloween candy. Check them out.

Silly Eagle Books

Walking by the Way here and here.

Unplug Your Kids

In researching ideas of what to do with our leftover Halloween candy, I came across TONS of fun crafts, activities, and science projects to do using food. Since D had so much fun with all of the candy projects, I have decided that we need to spend more time playing with our food. Every Tuesday I am going to post a craft, activity, or science project that we did the week before with a different type of food. For my own planning, organizational, and shopping purposes, I am going to pick a theme for each week. Feel free to join in with the same theme or just let me know what you did during the week to play with your food. :)

November 10th- Leftover Halloween Candy

November 17th- Gourds and/or pumpkins

November 24th- Corn

December 1st- Sugar cookies

December 8th- Candy Canes or any Christmas candy

December 15th- Gingerbread

December 22th- Christmas Break

December 29th- Anything goes

Would you like to participate in Playing with your Food? Feel free to link up a post that you did using your leftover Halloween candy or any other fun food-related post. It can be a new post or an old post.

Playing with Our Food/ Jugando con Nuestra Comida

In researching ideas of what to do with our leftover Halloween candy, I came across TONS of fun crafts, activities, and science projects to do using food. Since D had so much fun with all of the candy projects, I have decided that we need to spend more time playing with our food. Every Tuesday I am going to post a craft, activity, or science project that we did the week before with a different type of food. For my own planning, organizational, and shopping purposes, I am going to pick a theme for each week. Feel free to join in with the same theme or just let me know what you did during the week to play with your food. :)

November 10th- Leftover Halloween Candy

November 17th- Gourds and/or pumpkins

November 24th- Corn

December 1st- Sugar cookies

December 8th- Candy Canes or any Christmas candy

December 15th- Gingerbread

December 22th- Christmas Break

December 29th- Anything goes

Candy Activity #4- Does it Float?

I have to thank Tati fromWanna Jugar Withmigo and Elise from Inspiration Surrounds, Creativity Abounds for directing me to www.candyexperiments.com. There are a TON of fun science experiments to try at this site. This day we decided to see what types of candy float. I whipped up this simple chart so that we could record the results of our experiment. D can identify the words "sí" and "no" so I had him make an "X" on the appropriate box to indicate if the candy floated or not.

D LOVED this experiment. Interestingly enough, only the Whoppers floated. Click here to find out why.

Candy Activity #3- Smartie Cell Phone

I have to credit my son's pre-K teacher for this idea. First, I cut out the large blue rectangle for the phone and a small square for the screen. Next, I wrote the numbers on phone to make the buttons.

Finally, I wrote the numbers from 1-9 on the Smarties and had D match them up and glue them to the paper.

AFTER I took the pictures (for obvious reasons) I wrote our phone number on phone and D practiced it by pushing the "buttons."

Q de Quesadilla

Since D already knows his letters, we do not do as many letter projects as we used to. He really seems to enjoy them though, so I am going to try to do them more often. Today's letter was Q. In Spanish, like in English, there are not many letters that start with the letter Q. The first word that came to my mind was "queso." A little more thought and no idea of what to make for lunch brought on today's "Q de Quesadilla." Since it is the same word in English, give it a try. It was so simple and muy deliciosa!

First we warmed up the tortillas and cheese on the "comal." (My husband would pass out if I warmed the tortillas in the microwave like I, um, used to do.)

Next I cut out the shape of a "Q" and served to my hungry kiddos.

Spanish Vocabulary:
tortilla- tortilla
queso- cheese
comal- cast iron grilling pan
delicioso-delicious