Baby Einstein Discovery Kits Review and Giveaway!!

*This Giveaway Has Ended*

We love the Baby Einstein company at our house! From the time my now 10 year old son was a tot, Baby Einstein's videos and DVDs have been among my children's favorites! Baby Einstein DVDS are designed to encourage discovery and inspire new ways for parents and little ones to share meaningful time together. With beautiful real world pictures, music, art, animals and nature your baby will be both entertained and educated!

New to Baby Einstein are the Discovery Kits!! Each kit includes a DVD, a music CD and a picture book or Discovery Cards, each element complementing the others. The new kits give parents another way to interact with their babies by extending the moving picture and music experience of the DVDs to other areas of a baby’s day through the CDs and book or cards which feature the same music and images experienced in the DVD.

The Discovery Kits are designed with 3 age groups in mind. Level 1 is geared for young babies and comes in 3 titles "Baby Beethoven", "Baby Lullaby"and "Baby Mozart". Level 2 is for the older baby and toddler. Titles include " Animals Around Me", "Neptune's Ocean" and " Wild Animal Safari". Level 3 will delight your toddler and preschooler with "World of Colors", "World of Rhythm" and "World of Words".

Watch this video clip to learn more:

Our experience:

I was sent "Wild Animal Safari" and "World of Colors" Discovery Kits for review. As my two toddler sons are already familiar with Baby Einstein DVDs, they were excited to watch these two DVDs. We snuggled up on the couch to watch together. I love hearing all the Ooohs and Aaahs coming from my boys. They point to the animals and pictures and I say the names. Little E repeats the names as best he can. This is great to hear because "E" has difficulty with speech.

After watching the DVDs we pulled out the animal flash cards included in the Animal Safari kit. My boys love looking at each animal picture as I read facts from each card. They may not fully understand all that I am teaching them, but this early exposure is certainly good for them!

The music CDs are a nice bonus to these kits. My kids enjoy listening to the familiar music featured on the Baby Einstein DVDs. They enjoy listening throughout the day and at bedtime.

I am loving the Discovery Kits! They are a great teaching tool for my little boys. I appreciate the added components of the kit as they enable me to interact beyond the DVD. My boys love them and everyone's happy!

Want to win a Discovery Kit for your child?

WIN IT: Baby Einstein is giving one Happily Domestic reader, "Wild Animal Safari" Discovery Kit. $15.99 Value.

BUY IT: You can purchase the Baby Einstein Discovery Kits at Amazon, Disney Store, Target, and Walmart.


First Mandatory entry:

Visit Baby Einstein and tell me an interesting fact you learned from their site.

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Giveaway ends Friday, April 8th, 2010 at 8:00 p.m.(MST). Winner will be drawn by the random number generator at Random.org and will be notified by email. Winner will also be announced on this blog. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn.
*This giveaway is open to USA residents ONLY. Must be 18 years old or older to win.*

Thank you to Baby Einstein who provided me with the products for review free of charge. All opinions are my own and no other compensation was received to conduct this review and giveaway.

*This Giveaway Has Ended*

Project 365- Week 11

What an exhausting week this was! My oldest some had CSAP testing Tuesday-Thursday which meant I had to have all 4 kids dressed, fed (cooked breakfast) and to the church where testing was done by 8:45am!!! Did I mention this church is also in the next town over? So, I also had a 25 minute drive each morning as well. To top things off, I also had (have) a miserable head cold!! Ugh!

We also had swim lessons on Tuesday and Thursday, piano lessons on Thursday and little E had 2 evaluations with a speech therapist and occupational therapist. Little E also had a preschool class on Friday (one that I enrolled him in at a local activity center).

During CSAP testings I didn't want to drive all the way home (since it was far away) and took my other children to various places. On Tuesday we went to story time at our local library (forgot my camera). On Wednesday we went to Barnes and Noble to their storytime. This was a lot of fun. The kids got to make a craft and then they had milk & cookies at Starbucks.

Barnes and Noble Story Time

Duck Craft

Milk and Cookies! Yum!

Waiting for big brother and sister at piano lessons
It was a tiring day, they crashed!

At E's class on Friday, the theme was "Fun with Farming" they brought in a baby cow to show the kids. E was excited to see it but a little scared as well. The guy that brought the cow kept letting it suck his fingers. GROSS!

Feeding time!

Here is the cow craft E made at his class
(with help from mom of course!)

After class the kids were able to play in the big gym. My boys LOVED playing with all the balls. C made lots of baskets!

And Baby J tried with all his might to make a basket!!

The best way to shop! Haha...diaper was going down the pant leg. ;-)

Baby J you are so funny!

Developing your child's love for reading

One of the most important things we can give our children is a love for reading. How do we do this? We do this by giving our little ones (including babies) every opportunity to discover books.

In our house we keep a large basket filled with colorful, fun, soft cloth books and chunky board books. We keep this basket in our living room where the books can easily be accessed by our baby and toddler throughout the day.

Here are some ideas to help your child develop a love for reading:

• Read to them everyday! Make this a special time with no TV or other distractions. Bedtime is a great time for this as it allows your child to settle down.

• Visit your local library. Most libraries offer story times for infants and toddlers.

• Switch out some of your child's old books with new ones to keep up the interest. Yard sales and thrift shops are great places to find children's books at incredible prices!

• Make reading fun! Be expressive when you read and point out point out objects, talking about them with your child as you go.

• Model a love for reading! When your children see you reading books on a regular basis, they will follow. After all our children model what we do, not what we say. If we want our children to love reading, we must love reading ourselves!
  

Studies show that early exposure to books can increase your child's reading development and give them a greater ability to learn. By discovering books your child is learning about the world around them. They will also learn the very important lesson of sitting still and listening. This will be vital down the road in the school years.

When my two oldest children were babies reading was very much a part of our everyday lives. I read to them daily. For a time I did not see my son and daughter wanting to read on their own. However, now that my children are able to read I find them with their nose in a book quite frequently and I can now see that all my hard work paid off!

What are some of your favorite children's books and what do you do to encourage reading in your home?

Project 365- Week 10

Well, I am a day late at posting this and didn't take a picture everyday. There are multiples of some days because we had a birthday in the house this past week and some were too cute not to share! :-) I guess this should technically be called Project 52 since it is more weekly pictures then daily. Oh well!

Monday
Trip to the Dentist

Tuesday
Our daughter's 9th Birthday!
We do parties every other year now. This was her off year, but we still made her day special. We had omelets for breakfast, walked to the park to play, had ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, presents, dinner at a pizza place and then went to see "The Muppet Movie" at an old historic theater downtown. Loads of fun!

The ice cream cake. It was yummy but their decorating job stunk!

Reading her card from mom and dad :-)

Trying out her new scooter!

My daughter is NOT a picky eater. She actually chose the pizza with chicken, artichoke hearts, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, etc. I was glad for that! It was wonderful! The picky boys got Hawaiian Calzones instead.

The gang, minus my husband. That is my dad next to me.

Waiting for the movie to start

Smiling with his plug intact. J, you are a hoot!

Thursday
I had ordered my daughter several doll outfits for her birthday, but they came a few days late. She was thrilled!

Friday
You know you have boys in your house when you have little Darth Vaders running around!

Hey, where ya going with my light saber!!

Take that!

Saturday
Another shot of our skirts

Sunday
Purim Party at our friend's house
For those of you who do not know what Purim is, it is the celebration of Esther (from the Bible) saving the her people the Jews. Typically is it a Jewish holiday, but as believers we think it's a worthy event to celebrate as well! :-) The kids dress up as kings and queens and the story of Esther is told. The children boo and clang on pots when Haman is mentioned, cheer when Esther and Mordicai are mentioned. It's a lot of fun. This was our 3rd time celebrating the holiday.

My Weekend Sewing Project

Remember this skirt? I shared about it a few weeks ago in one of my Project 365 posts. For those of you who missed that one...well, the story is I bought a HUGE skirt at Goodwill for $3.00. I really liked the fabric and knew I could make something else out of it. About 2 weeks ago I got out my seam ripper and took out the entire waist band as well as one side. Today I decided to figure something out. With half of the skirt I made a skirt for me. With the second half I made a skirt for my daughter and her American Girl doll. I didn't use any patterns and all three skirts turned out great. I am very excited about it! Yay, for upcycling!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope you all had a fun St. Patty's Day today! We had our Bible study group over for a traditional St. Patty's day dinner. I cooked up cornbeef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes and we also had rolls, cream soda to drink and carrot cake with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Yum! We had 6 adults and 15 kids in our tiny house, but it was a lot of fun!

No, I did not make this cake. I ordered it from a local bakery.

The cupcakes were store bought too! I was too busy cleaning my house and cooking to decorate anything myself.

E excited about the cake!

So tempting!

Here is 8 of the 15 kids enjoying a movie :-)
Good thing we have a big couch!

I didn't give baby J any cake because he did not eat his dinner. However, I found him later on top of the kids table eating someone's leftover cupcake. He devoured it! Haha!

He was determined to have some dessert!
Note: Pacifier stayed in hand while eating.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

My Wonderful Walls WINNER!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO SUE!!!

She left winning comment #152...

sue_momof4 said...

1 follow publicly
sue_momof4@hotmail.com

March 14, 2011 12:41 PM

Winner has been contacted by email and has 48 hours to claim prize or a new winner will be drawn.

Wilton- Monkey Cake Supplies WINNER!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ORGANIC MOM!!

She left winning comment #211....

OrganicMom said...

I have your button on my blog
http://organicmomblogs.blogspot.com/

organicmom@rocketmail.com

March 14, 2011 12:34 PM

Winner has been contacted by email and has 48 hours to claim prize or a new winner will be drawn.

Project 365- Week 10

Sorry for the quiet week everyone! My kids started swim lessons this week and besides that we have had something going on everyday. March is a busy month- besides swimming twice a week we also have our daughter's birthday, St. Patrick's dinner at our house, all the school state testing for C (which is 6 days long), piano lessons, tutoring, then they start art classes, etc. etc. Busy! Busy! I look forward to summer break!

Baby J likes to tote around his pacifiers. He takes turns sucking on each one. Funny guy!

My daughter's swim class (she is the last one on the right).
Can you believe her teacher is only 17???? Crazy!

C's class doing their kicks

Prairie Girls

Potty Time!
We're not making much progress, but he did go once this week! Woo-Hoo!

His big brother likes to read him the "Once Upon A Potty" book while he sits. E loves it and cracks up every time! C is such a good big brother. By the way, C made me cut him out of the picture because he was in his PJ's here. Haha!

Way to go!

The weather was beautiful this weekend! Our family went for a long walk and stopped off for ice cream cones at a gas station. We also picked up a movie for the kids. Gotta love Redbox!

Little E enjoying him ice cream
-Before-

-After-
Whoa, what a mess!!