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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Max & Ruby: Max's Mole Mash App {Review}



Max & Ruby: Max's Mole Mash

This app provide kids hours of fun with their favorite character. Help Max mash moles before Grandma gets home. When the mole appears, tap them and they will disappear back into their holes. Mash all the moles before time runs out to win!

•Select from 8 Max & Ruby themed mole mash machines.
•Play in Arcade or Puzzle mode.
•Enjoy an unlimited number of levels to play and mash.
•Unlock a mini version of the racing game, Speedy Max.
•Collect 8 Max & Ruby Wallpapers.



Brandon is a huge fan of Max & Ruby. Finally, there's an app available that features his favorite characters. Our television is always on the Treehouse channel. I think this game helps a bit in his reaction and response skills. The game is very simple and fun. I hope the developers will create more of these apps and more games that feature Max & Ruby (and other Treehouse characters like Franklin, Dora, Kai Lan).









Disclosure: I received a code for the mentioned app to try in exchange for my review. Thanks to Watch More TV Interactive Inc. The opinions expressed are my own personal and honest thoughts. No other compensation was given.




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Monday, January 30, 2012

Tiny Prints Valentine's Day Cards



Valentine's Day will be here in a couple of weeks. This year will be Brandon's first special Valentine's celebration at preschool. And it is also the best time to get creative and get crafty. I usually like to order prints and greeting cards online because I can choose the ones I like (and even personalize it).

Tiny Prints offer a wide collection of Valentine Cards for kids that is perfect for giving to friends in the classroom. I will be helping Brandon celebrate Valentine's by baking heart-shaped cookies and bringing them to his preschool to share with his classmates and teachers. The cookies will be individually wrapped and will have the cards attached. That is our idea for making it special.

Here are some of the cute designs available. These are my favorites...



Brandon loves the pictures of the car and animals.


Visit TinyPrints website and let me know which Valentines Day Greeting Cards are your favorite.

To stay up-to-date with the newest designs and offers,
connect with Tiny Prints via Twitter
and Facebook




Disclosure: I am receiving a gift code to use at Tiny Prints in exchange for my review. The opinions expressed in my review are my own personal and honest thoughts. No other compensation was given.



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Sunday, January 29, 2012

Crafts: Chinese New Years Firecrackers

I had a bunch of toilet paper rolls I've been collecting and gave me an idea of making Chinese New Years firecrackers. Brandon was excited in making some, so I told him what to do. I showed him some pictures from the internet so he has an idea what it looks like.

What we used:
- toilet paper rolls
- red tissue paper
- lucky red envelopes (we had some scraps)
- stickers (we had shiny stars)
- glue stick
- scissors






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Saturday, January 28, 2012

Visit to the Dentist for Filling

This was the 3rd attempt to have Brandon get his fillings done at the dentist. Can't believe he had to get a filling at this age. There was a bit of cavities underneath the top front teeth. Dentist say that it is possibly from drinking juice and because he was breastfed when he was a baby. I water it down every time when I first gave him juice to drink. Anyway, since Brandon is a bit older now, he was more willing (and a bit more brave). Good job! We finally have this done and over with!

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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Chinese New Year Outfit

Last night (well, around 3am), Brandon came into our room and woke us up. As usual, he wants mommy to sleep with him in his room. Just when I was tucking him into bed, he started hurling. For the rest of the night till morning, Brandon threw up about 7 times and tells me he had a stomach ache. Poor little guy. I was blaming on the carrot cake he had.

I didn't get much sleep myself. I had to change his soiled clothes like 3 times! Since he was still throwing up and hurling, we had to miss out on the Chinese New Year Potluck at Frog Hollow Neighborhood House. He really wanted to go. Later that evening, I took some photos of Brandon in his red Chinese New Year outfit. This will be the last time he will be wearing it because he was already growing out of it. 

And he seems to be feeling a bit better. Hope he'll be fully recovered for preschool tomorrow.







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Monday, January 23, 2012

Hasbro's Annual Fun and Game Event

Are you looking for great savings and amazing daily deals on some of your favorite Hasbro toys and games, then check out Hasbro's Annual Fun and Game Event going on now! You can register today to print over $125 in coupons (quantities are limited) and get access to incredible daily deals. All daily deals include free shipping! U.S. residents only. Sorry my Canadian friends.

Kids, ages 6 - 13, can also get in on the action by playing games for a chance to win hourly prizes from their favorite brands, such as My Little Pony, FurReal Friends, Littlest Pet Shop, Beyblade, Nerf, Transformers, Connect 4, Bop It! and Simon Flash.




Disclosure: I did not receive any products nor was paid for this post. I was provided info from the PR firm to share. Any expressed opinions are my own and personal thoughts. No other compensation was given.



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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Kid's Bento Lunch: 3 Little Piggies

This was my first attempt making kids bento lunch box for Brandon to have at school. It took some time to prepare so I got up early in the morning to make it. It's fun to make if you have the patience. Here I made The Three Little Piggies. Pretty cute!


What I used:
- Japanese sticky rice (mixed a bit of ketchup for coloring)
- mixed vegetables (corn, peas, carrots)
- seaweed / nori (leftovers I just placed around the bowl)
- cheese sticks (I made little trees as garnish)
- ready-cooked bacon strip (for snout and ears)




I've seen images from the web and books. I'm actually reading this book called Yum-Yum Bento Box by Crystal Watanabe and Maki Ogawa.



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Friday, January 20, 2012

Study Finds Robots Inspire New Learning and Creativity Possibilities for Kids



According to a new Latitude study, Robots @ School, robots are helping to reveal a potential shift in kids’ social and learning psychologies, suggesting new opportunities for educators and technologists to better address common hurdles children encounter in the learning process to inspire self-direction and creative risk-taking and to enhance kids’ experiences with technology more broadly.

Latitude, an international research consultancy, asked kids across the world to write and illustrate a short story answering this question: “What if robots were a part of your everyday life – at school and beyond?” The goal of the study was to provide educators, entrepreneurs, technologists, and interactive content creators with insights about the close, often overlapping, relationship between learning and play for today’s children, to identify common frustrations in the learning process, and to suggest possible solutions – both high- and low- tech.

The multi-phase innovation study was designed and run by Latitude, and published in collaboration with LEGO® Learning Institute and Project Synthesis, an Australia-based ideas consultancy. Robots @ School follows on the heels of Latitude’s 2011 study, Children’s Future Requests for Computers and the Internet, which envisioned possible futures for technology (as seen by kids across the world, ages 12 and under), and highlighted actionable opportunities for new content, user experience (UX), and technology offerings. Robots @ School focuses more specifically on kids’ psychology of learning and the role of technology in education.

"On the surface, this study is about robots but, more importantly, it’s about a new paradigm for learning and creativity, which kids – using robots as a focal point – are helping us to uncover,” explains Steve Mushkin, founder and president of Latitude. “Education and learning are moving, at least in many children’s eyes, beyond acts of knowledge transmission toward acts of exploration and creation. As participants in this new model, robots and other intelligent technologies could help unleash the inherent and expansive capabilities of each child in ways that we've only begun to conceive."

Nearly 350 kid-innovators, ages 8-12, from Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have participated in the Robots @ School study, submitting drawings and text-based narratives of their imagined experiences with robots. Latitude is planning to expand the study to include children in Asia.



View some more of the kids’ drawings here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37527143@N03/sets/72157628799529293


Specifically, children were asked to select, as the basis of their stories, one of three narrative prompts rooted in particular life settings: in the classroom, at school but outside of class, and at home after school. Researchers scored kids’ stories on variables relating to human-robot relationships and the dimensions of human-robot activities (e.g., play, learning, creation, and exploration).

See infographic displaying some of insights derived from children’s submissions:

Overall, the stories demonstrated that, unlike many adults who see technology as separate from humanness, kids tend to think of technology as fundamentally human: as a social companion that can entertain, motivate, and empower them in various contexts – blurring the line between play and learning or higher-level creative pursuits, and highlighting a variety of new directions for content and technology based on kids’ evolving relationship with it.





Key insights from the Robots @ School study include:

1)  Smart = Social, Machines Tell Us: Nearly 2/3 of kids took for granted that robots could make excellent human friends in spite of their machine intelligence. In most cases, kids conceived of their fictional robots as humanoid peers that they could identify with and aspire to be like. Moreover, children imagined robots that were considered popular and socially successful by their human peers precisely because they’re smart; in other words, being perceived as a “nerd” actually creates, not detracts from, social opportunities – giving children a solid motivation to learn. This is, no doubt, also true in the real world (sans robots) for today’s digital natives – robots simply helped to illuminate what many kids already value in social scenarios.

“This study clearly emphasizes, that if you ask children about their relationship to robots, it will not only provide a glimpse into the future of technology but, more importantly, the children will describe to us how we should imagine our future relationship to each other,” says Bo Stjerne Thomsen, Senior Research Manager at LEGO® Learning Institute, which collaborated with Latitude on the study.

2) Robots Free Us to Learn and Create in New Ways: Kids imagined robots that were, essentially, better versions of our teachers and parents, offering limitless time and patience, encouraging confidence and self-direction, and allowing us to make mistakes sans self-consciousness. The majority of kids’ robots (75%) acted patient and supportive in educational contexts. Kids also saw robots as figures that could inspire them to take more creative risks: emotionally, without the risk of becoming a social outlier, and practically, by taking on boring tasks so they could be freed up for higher-level pursuits (which 25% of kids explicitly conveyed in their stories).

“While children imagine robots that are virtually human in many regards, it’s their slight machine-ness that ultimately makes robots such effective partners for learning and creative exploration,” says Ian Schulte, director of technology and business development at Latitude, who led the study. “Robots support and encourage, but don’t judge. They don’t run into scheduling conflicts, and they certainly don’t ostracize kids for wrong answers or unconventional thinking. Because they’re just mechanical enough, robots enable kids to grow and explore without regard for social stigmas that so often stifle learning and creativity.”

3) Let’s Close the Divide Between Learning and Play: While one might expect kids to create more stories about play than learning, an equal number (38%) focused on each of these themes. In fact, kids didn’t make much distinction between the roles of “playmate” and “study buddy” when describing their robots; they tended to view learning and play as related, often overlapping, pursuits, moving fluidly between the two – even if their lives appear much more compartmentalized in practice.

“Robots @ School demonstrates the importance of respecting and engaging with the ideas and expectations of children,” says Daniel Donahoo, Director at Project Synthesis. “This study gives us an early insight into the world they want to create, how they expect technology to interface with their lives and their positive aspirations for the future.”

Read Latitude’s blog post discussing the findings of Robots @ School:

About the study
The multi-phase Robots @ School study was designed by Latitude (and published in conjunction with LEGO® Learning Institute and Project Synthesis) to understand kids’ evolving learning psychologies in today’s digital age, and to highlight specific opportunities for educators, technologists, and content creators to integrate learning and play and to enhance educational experiences overall.

Over the course of 2011, Latitude asked 348 kid innovators, ages 8-12, from Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States to submit drawings and text-based narratives of their lives as if robots were a fixture – both at school and at home. Researchers then scored and analyzed kids’ stories and drawings based on the presence of specific themes.

About Latitude’s Kids Innovation and Discovery Studies (KIDS)
Robots is one installment of Kids Innovation and Discovery Studies, an ongoing research series by Latitude which invites kids from across the globe to tackle big ideas in structured problem-solving scenarios, providing valuable insights for educators, technologists, and society. For other KIDS studies, visit: http://www.latd.com/#kids


About Latitude
Latitude is an international research consultancy helping clients create engaging content, software and technology that harness the possibilities of the Web. http://latd.com

About the Study Collaborators
Robots @ School was designed and run by Latitude, and published in collaboration with LEGO® Learning Institute and Project Synthesis.

LEGO® Learning Institute
The LEGO® Learning Institute carries out foundational research on creativity, learning, play and child development based on the values of LEGO® play and learning. The institute has an extensive collaboration with academic experts and research institutions, to understand how to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. http://learninginstitute.lego.com


Disclosure: I was not paid nor received any products for this post. I was provided info to share. Any opinions expressed are my own personal and honest thoughts. No other compensation was given.


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Thursday, January 19, 2012

Pampers Gifts to Grow Codes (January 2012)

Here's some new codes. Enter them before they expire. Please comment and let me know you used them and I will continue collecting the codes for next month's list. Thanks!



FBMLKKU4RPP6P12 (10 points) - expires Jan 20, 2012
10PTSFREECODE4U (10 points)
FB2012NYAFJRYCN (10 points)





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{WINNERS} What To Expect Books Giveaway



Hope everyone is having a great week! The 3 winners of the What To Expect Books Giveaway (winner's choice) that ended January 16, 2012 have been randomly selected. The winners are..... (drum roll, please).


Congratulations to:

Jessica W (#200)
Andrea Amy (#244)
Lori Beth Carson (#35)




Again, CONGRATULATIONS to you all. I have sent you an email. You have 48 hours to respond. Thanks everyone for participating in my giveaway contests.





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Tuesday, January 17, 2012

DailyScoup's Blazing Hot Giveaway: WIN a Kindle Fire


DailyScoup's Blazing Hot Giveaway - WIN a Kindle Fire!!! 


Daily Scoup is hosting an exciting contest just for us, for one of  the hottest items on the market - the Kindle Fire!  Their DailyScoup's Blazing Hot Giveaway - WIN a Kindle Fire Contest is designed to help you monetize your blog and give you a chance to enter for two amazing prizes!

Daily Scoup is a brand new site for daily and local deals! They offer services to merchants for FREE so they always have the better deals than competitors, and best of all - they have an affiliate program that pays 50% on a 60 day cookie! There is huge income potential there!!


Here is how it works!

ONE (1) Kindle Fire will be awarded to the person with the most REFERRALS

$100 CASH (via Paypal) winner will be drawn at random from the Rafflecopter form below!

To enter - join the DailyScoup.com affiliate program

Then fill out the Rafflecopter form HERE!

Best of All
You can earn a TON of extra entries for promoting the contest!!! For every blogger that signs up and names YOU as a referral, you get 5 extra entries on the Rafflecopter!

Ready Set GO!!! And make sure you say 
Baby Brandon's Adventures sent you!!






Disclosure: I did not receive any products nor was paid for this post. Any expressed opinions are my own and personal thoughts. No other compensation was given.




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Saturday, January 14, 2012

My Very Own Kitchen Set {Review}

Today, we went to the mall and had lunch at the food court. Later, we went to Walmart that is just in the mall and just browsed around. We always like to browse around the toy department to see what's new and see what's on sale. We saw a toy kitchen set (My Very Own Kitchen by American Plastic Toys). It was only $20 so hubby said it's not bad and I was still thinking about it. Then we walked around the clothing isle and I saw this cute Lightning McQueen Cars racing jacket. That was $25. So we asked Brandon if he wanted the toy kitchen set or the jacket. He picked the toy kitchen set.




My thoughts:
The box was really light so I assumed it wasn't too big. We would put it near our kitchen. When I took the parts out of the box, I saw there was a lot to put together. The cheap plastic was a bit warped so matching the screw holes was a bit difficult. It took me a while to assemble and I had to clip it all apart with an adams plier. After assembly, it does look a bit smaller than expected. Basically, you get what you paid for. I would only give it 2 stars for this product.




We decided to keep it since it was already opened and assembled together. And also Brandon will have something to keep busy with while I am cooking dinner.





PROS:
- small size didn't take a lot of space
- comes with utensils and pans
- features stove, oven, and microwave

CONS:
- took a long time to assemble
- cheap quality and plastic is thin
- flimsy and can tip over (so I put it against the wall)
- the toy cell phone included was kinda useless



I wish I would've gotten the jacket that I mentioned too, but I am waiting for the price to drop.



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