Category Archives: Ages 10-13

Child ID Kits & Safety Products

Chickandcubs_braceletYour child is the most precious thing in the world to you right?  Do you have a child ID kit for each of your children in case of emergency?  Studies show that over 80% of parents don’t have any official form of identification for their children.  I had a hard time believing that to be true but when I questioned several of my ‘mom friends’ I found the percentage to be more like 90%.   

Unfortunately, a lot of parents aren’t aware that child ID kits, and other child safety products are easy to purchase online at stores like ChicksAndCubs.com.   Please help spread the word to your mom friends!

Chicks and Cubs offers a wide range of child safety products including ID bracelets like the blue one you see here, car seat ID cards, and everyday ‘carryable’ ID cards. These are just a few of the child safety products available through Chicks and Cubs. 

Chicks and Cubs child safety products are affordable, durable, and best of all easy to ‘set up’ and use.   We had an eight year old test the bracelet and he found it to be very comfortable.  The bracelet is a great safety product to put on your child when going to the mall, or airport for example and ALL parents should have a copy of their child’s ID in their car, purse, and diaper bag.

Visit Chicks and Cubs to learn more about child safety identification kits and to purchase yours today.

SquidSoap

"Awww… you made me ink!"  That is one of my favorite lines from Finding Nemo.  Did you know that your kids can have fun with ink?  No, not the kind in a pen but the SquidSoap kind which is actually vegetable dye.

          SquidSoap by Airborne® is designed to teach and
train proper hand-washing technique to children. It’s the only
liquid-soap dispenser with a specially designed pump that stamps a
child’s hand with vegetable dye. It takes about 20 seconds of thorough
hand washing to remove the ink mark, leaving the child with clean
hands. So it literally takes the guesswork out of whether or not your
kids have washed their hands thoroughly. It’s easy, fun and effective.

I have to admit that Sebastian, 8 years old, was a little bummed that he had to put ‘ink’ on his hands at first.  However, after using SquidSoap a couple of times he thought it was cool. Eight year old boys just don’t have the time to stand around washing their hands.. silly me.   Now I simply require that the kids wash their hands in the kitchen where I can see them use vegetable dye on the top of the SquidSoap dispenser and then check to see that the dye is gone when they have finished washing their hands.

This is a great product. One that every parent should have in their home.

WEBSITE: SquidSoap

Table Topics – a conversation starter and more

TabletopicsWe all know how important it is that the whole family eat dinner together every night, but do we always
have something to talk about?  When I ask Sebastian what he did at school today, he says "not much". "Did you learn anything?", I ask.  "not really", he says. When he wants to talk, he’ll talk until we ask him to please stop. He can talk your ear off.  When he doesn’t want to talk though, it’s a different story. Dinner time is one of those times when it’s hard to get him to talk to us.

Now that we’ve got Table Topics Sebastian enjoys dinner time. He knows that he can tell us stories, and ideas, and give us answers to all sorts of questions like "what would you do if you were invisible for a day?" and we won’t tell him to stop talking. We do however, put a time limit on his answers as he tends to go on and on and on if we don’t.

Table Topics take up minimal space on your table and come in a clear, attractive container that will match any room decor. 

There are currently seven Table Topics themes including family, girls night out, teens, couples, and more.  I have found that the dinner table isn’t the only time to whip out the Table Topics cards. When Sebastian can’t seem to find anything to do except watch TV, I choose a Kids Topics To Go card with a question that would spark his interest and ask him to turn his answer into a story. He really enjoys writing stories and the Kids Topics To Go is a great starting point.

Times to use Table Topics and Topics To Go:

  • Dinner time
  • When kids are bored they can’t write a story based on a Kids To Go question
  • While traveling
  • At a restaurant
  • Slumber parties
  • Playgroup (for the moms)
  • There are many more times and places to use Table Topics and Topics To Go

Get your kids talking again with Table Topics!

WEBSITE: Table Topics

Kajeet cell phone service for kids

Skins The Kajeet cell phone service and our Sanyo KANTARA cell phone have been SO FUN to review!  I’ve had a blast using all of the features including the digital camera, downloading fun wallpapers and ring tones, and setting the alarm to wake Sebastian up bright and early in the morning!  Besides all of these features, the Kajeet cell phone service gives parents the opportunity to set which features your child is allowed to use, when your child can make and/or receive phone calls and from whom.

Below is a screen shot of my contact manager page on the Kajeet.com website for Sebastian’s cell phone.  On this page, I can add contacts, state if he is allowed call/text these contacts and I can even assign which ‘wallet’ these calls and text messages are paid from.  I can log on to this page and edit contacts, what’s allowed and wallet information 24/7.

Contact_feature_2 Camera_photo

Both parent and child can have their own Kajeet ‘wallet’ accessible on the kajeet.com website 24/7.   If you want your child to pay for calls he/she makes to friends, you can require that they pay for those calls out of their wallet.  If you want to pay for calls your child makes to you or receives from you, those minutes are paid for out of the parents wallet.  The ‘wallet’ feature is one of my favorite features.

The digital camera quality is great… better than my cell phone as a matter of fact!  The photograph to the right was taken from Sebastian’s kajeet cell phone but keep in mind that the quality isn’t going to be the same being transfered from the phone to this website. The actual quality was quite a bit better than this.

Like other cell phone plans for kids, the kajeet phone plans are paid by minute. I think this is a great way to teach kids how to save and spend money. When Sebastian first started using his kajeet phone, he wouldn’t talk for more than about 30 seconds at a time before he would tell the person on the other end of the line that he didn’t want to use all of his minutes and he better get off the phone in a hurry! That is so great!

Other notable features –

Favorites – When Sebastian opens his Sanyo cell phone, one of the first things he see’s is the "favorites" button in the bottom left corner of the screen. When he pushes this button, he is taken to a list of his favorite contacts AS WELL AS other favorites including one of my favorite features of the phone which is the Google Maps Application. Oh my gosh.. I can’t tell you how much I love this feature. Simply enter a business name or type of business and the phone finds the businesses in YOUR area (based on the zip code entered when you sign up for a phone number) so you can quickly find a place to eat or shop right from your car!

Alarm – You can set up to five alarms. I set one to wake Sebastian up nice and early in the morning.

There are so many other features including security and media features.  You can visit the website to learn about all of the cool kajeet features and to view the four kajeet compatible phones currently available.

Here you go: https://www.kajeet.com.

We got the new kajeet cell phone for kids and can’t wait to share it with you!

Kajeetphone_2 Wow! This is a cool cell phone for kids. Complete with a digital camera, text message capabilities, bluetooth compatibility and more, this cell phone is going to be a huge hit!

Look for my review of the kajeet call phone in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, you can learn more about the kajeet phone on their website here: http://www.kajeet.com/.