Get a Melissa & Doug 25% Off Coupon When You Take the North "Poll"

Our playroom is loaded with Melissa & Doug toys. From a wooden play kitchen, to play food, puzzles and wooden tools. My boys have never met a Melissa & Doug toy that they didn't love. Every Christmas I usually end up buying one of their toys for my boys. This year I already have a 3D dinosaur puzzle set aside.e. For a limited time, Melissa & Doug is offering a fun way to get a discount off your next purchase and I plan on adding a few of their toys to our Christmas stash.

Melissa & Doug want you to tell them which of their educational toys you think is the best! Just click on the image below to place your vote in the North "Poll!" You'll Get a Melissa & Doug 25% Off Coupon to use at MelissaAndDoug.com just for voting!

I just voted for the play kitchen set that we have. What will you vote for? What will you buy once you get your 25% off coupon?

Pure Play Kids Creative Toys Review & Giveaway

As a mom of four, my house is full of all types of toys: educational, electronic, wooden, and on and on. My favorite kind of toys for my boys are ones that spark their imagination and creativity. Ones that that fosters hours of pretend play with each other. It is easy to get wrapped up in battery operated or electronic toys with all of their cool bells and whistles. And I have nothing against those kinds of toys, we have those too. But I do think it is important to balance it out with "unplugged" toys.

Pure Play Kids is a Connecticut based, online toy store that offers a large selection of creative playthings including wooden toys and cloth dolls. The majority of their toys are made here in the United States while the rest are made in Europe.

"Kid-powered is the term we use to describe our products. Let kids provide the motion, sounds, storyline and characters that drive the toys – not vice-versa – and witness a flourishing of imagination, confidence and skills. Always remember as your shop for toys here and elsewhere: a great toy should be 90% kid and 10% toy."

When I learned that Pure Play Kids was founded by Tania & Mike Grant living right here in Connecticut, I was thrilled. I often feel alone in my green quest here in the Nutmeg State so seeing other CT parents who feel the same as me was exciting. In addition to selling fun creative toys made by other manufacturers, they also have a line of their own original toys. Pure Play Kids sent me the Wooden Cash Register from their original line for my boys to play with and try out.

This Wooden Cash Register is made completely of wood and comes with 6 wooden coins and a wooden charge card in a fabric pouch. There are slots on the top to place each coin in and your child can practice matching the numbers and sizes of the coins to the correct slot. There is an abacus on top for them to use for counting and a charge card swiper.

The cash register also opens up so you can store all of your money inside.

If you want to add some more fun with paper money, Pure Play Kids offers a free download from the Pure Play Kids blog with $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills. This is such a great way to introduce the concept of money to your children.

When the cash register first arrived in our home my boys literally fought over who got to play with it. So we initially had to set up intervals and taking turns that first night. The next day we brought it into the playroom and set it up on a table so they could play store with it.

Watching and listening to them play with this was a lot of fun for me. At one point, the 6 year old walked up to one of the 4 year olds and said "I want to buy this Thor mask because it is my kids favorite." So funny! They went back and forth taking turns of who was shopping and who was the clerk. I even broke out some reusable shopping bags after a while so they had something to tote their purchases around it.

After nearly a month of playing with it I can say that my boys love this cash register and are still playing with it a lot. For me I am really happy with the sturdy quality and I love how creative they can get with it.  I know we will enjoy many years of fun with it!

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Pure Play Kids offers $5.95 flat rate shipping within the continental USA. With holiday shopping just round the corner, this is a site you want to add to your list!

Giveaway
One (1) winner will receive a $50 gift certificate for Pure Play Kids

Mandatory Entry
Visit Pure Play Kids and tell me which product you like the best.

Extra Entries
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#Win a @PurePlayKids $50 GC & shop for great creative toys! via @GreenMamasPad! #Giveaway ends 8/2. http://bit.ly/p1M7mt
- Worth 20 entries! You may not use this entry method if you already used it on another one of my giveaways. Sign up and verify your free account at Zumbox through my referral link (https://www.zumbox.com/giveaway/23922wf). Once you sign up they will snail mail you a verification code within a few days that you must enter into the website to verify. Once you do that, you will then be given your own referral link. Come back here and leave me your referral link in 20 comments to get all of your entries.

This giveaway is open to legal US residents 18+ only and will end on Tuesday, August 2 at 11:59pm EST. One winner will be chosen at random using Random.org and will be posted on the Winner's Announcement Page. Winner has 48 hours to claim his/her prize otherwise a new winner will be picked. Please leave your e-mail address in all of your comment(s) so I can contact you. I will not share your e-mail address with anyone, it will strictly be used to notify you if you win. Good luck!

Please note that the opinions and views expressed in this review are my own and based on my personal experience with the product and/or company. You may encounter a different experience with this than I did. Pure Play Kds provided me with a free product to review

Plan Toys Trimino Bugs Review

I am a really big fan of Plan Toys and I cannot tell you how excited I was when I was given this opportunity to test out one of their new toys. Plan Toys makes high-quality and quite honestly beautiful wooden toys. But they are so much more than that too. It is one thing to say you make a green product but it speaks volumes when you can say that not only is your product green but the processes that you use to make it are green as well.

PlanToys practices the "Three R's" of green living: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Our manufacturing processes are designed to reduce waste and save energy. We reuse materials, and have introduced innovative methods to recycle paper and other products. We are always looking for new ways to improve and preserve our environment.

Plan Toys uses green materials in their toys such as organic rubberwood, water-based dyes and non toxic glues. They use solar energy and low emission biofuels to power the machinery that kiln-dries the wood as well as using biomass to produce heat. So in every possible way, they realy are a green company making green toys.

 

Plan Toys makes some really great educational toys and developmental toys and the new Trimino Bugs  matching game (pictured above) is an excellent addition. Now I had no idea which toy they were sending me but I was thrilled when I opened up the box to find this one. Well, I would have been thrilled with anything they sent me. One of my favorite things about the Trimino Bugs is the vibrant colors. They immediately catch your eye and draw the kids' attention. In the Trimino Bugs set there are 5 wooden tiles and 9 colored bug pieces. The wooden tiles are used to create your pattern. You can arrange them in any pattern you want, here are two that we came up with.

Once you have your pattern set up with the tiles, then you can start using the bug pieces on top. The bug pieces are green with a different colored bug on each side: red, blue and yellow. And not all of the bug pieces are the same either. There are 2 slight variations.

This adds a little bit of an extra challenge because you may only have all of your pieces matched up on top of the tiles but the bugs on the last one don't match up with the spot that is left. So the child has to rework their matching a little bit to make it all fit together.

I have mentioned before on my blog that my twins (who will be 3 in May) both receive speech therapy and occupational therapy (for fine motor skills). So I immediately knew this would be a good toy for them. For one it helps them with colors and color words. There is also some logic involved which gets their brains moving and thinking. I loved watching them sit down and look at the pieces and figure out how to match them up. They honestly surprised me on how well they did with it. They even got silly after a while and would match up the wrong colors and then look at me and say "noooooooo". Now I focused on the twins with this so I never even showed it to my oldest (5) at first. Then one morning he saw the box, opened it up and figured it out all on his own. "Look mommy, I made a hexagon!" he told me and he had all of the bug pieces matched up already. I was impressed that he knew what the wooden tiles were for without any instruction for me.

I am extremely happy with the Plan Toys Trimino Bugs set. We have had a lot of fun with it and I try to incorporate it into daily therapy with the twins. And any parent will love the quality and craftsmanship that goes into all of the toys that Plan Toys make. These are toys that will last a lifetime to be passed onto future generations

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You can purchase Plan Toys directly from their site or use their Shop Locator to find a retail store near you. From baby toys to preschool toys, they have something for every child.


Please note that the opinions and views expressed in this review are my own and based on my personal experience with the product. You may encounter a different experience with this than I did. Plan Toys provided me with a product for review.