Personalized Game of Guess Who

My kids had received 2 games of Guess Who, a while back, in a kid's meal from one of their favorite restaurants. They played it once and then it was left sitting for a couple months. Normal unfortunately for kid's meal toys in my house.

I was trying to find fun activities for my kids while we are on vacation next week and wanted to surprise them with a personalized game for them to play.

We had a portable version of the game, but you could easily do this with the regular size game and it would work much better. These pictures are so tiny, but I made it work.

I made one with all our immediate family members. I also made one that has a bunch of Harry Potter characters because we are big Harry Potter fans.

I collected all the photos I wanted to use in a folder on my computer than selected the ones to print. Then I chose "Contact Sheet" or "Index" on the print settings. I will print out a bunch of thumbnail size pictures. I still needed to shrink them a bit so I printed the page out 55% instead of 100% size. You can obviously make the photos whatever size you need.

Hope this inspires some of you to create your own personalized games for your family.

Dealing with Pack Rat Kids

It's a chilly, rainy day here in Maryland and I'm into cleaning, decluttering and purging throughout the house. I can't really stand having clutter all over the place. Piles of stuff with no organization or order just make me feel claustrophobic. Guess I'm sort of a neat freak.

My hubby and two older kids are reasonably like minded. They like being able to find their stuff when they want it and really don't like tripping over toys in their rooms. Each night we remind all the kids to take their toys or electronics back to their room at bedtime leaving our living room neat and clean ready for the next day.

The only one not of the same mindset is my youngest who's 8 years old. While we love her immensely, she is a bit of a pack rat. She has a VERY short attention span and quickly moves from one thing to the next totally forgetting the previous task. Plus she tries to save everything. You may remember I posted about her room here back in December. Well, it's a bit of a mess again.

We're wondering if it's just her or is it partly her room to blame. In her defense she does has a very tiny room (about 8X9). She has a twin loft bed, a tall dresser, night stand, a bookshelf/toy box and a small table to do homework on. That's a lot of stuff and doesn't even include her toys which as many of you know smaller kids have bigger toys.

She seems to collect anything my older two don't want and that's natural, but she doesn't really want to part with an equal number of her younger kid stuff.

The hubby and I are considering getting rid of a good sized chunk of her toys. This would be devastating to her plus we wonder if she would have it messed back up in no time flat.

We are at our wits end.

Any advice for some neat freaks dealing with a pack rat child???

Taming Kids Clutter

Do your kids have a drawer like this? Full of a ton of little toys?

My youngest loves little, tiny toys. Polly Pockets, Littlest Pet Shop, kids meal toys, Barbie accessories, etc.

This is what her drawer looked like this morning before she went to school. There is no after picture because it doesn't look much better with half of it gone.

I'm a neat freak and want everything grouped together in nice, neat containers, unfortunately, my youngest is not. She is my messy child. My borderline hoarder.  She collects paper, jewelry, toys of all sizes, shapes and conditions (broken and not), rocks, well almost anything really.

So here is how I help keep the toys to a minimum.

One In One Out
For every toy that comes home they need to choose one from their current toys to give away.

Avoid the Toys
When given an option, we choose not to get the toy that comes with some kids meals. They are usually low quality and my kids never play with them for more than 5 minutes. We prefer the meals that comes with books or games.

Purge
Every few months go through the toys and get rid of anything broken, missing pieces, or that the kids don't care for anymore.  I usually do this when my youngest is at school, but I only get rid of toys I haven't seem anyone play with in a long time, if at all.  My older two kids do this on their own.

Give to Charity
When all my kids were little we would get duplicate toys from the kids' meals. I would save the extras (unopened) and send them into school to be used in a prize box. Doctors and dentist offices sometimes give away small gifts to kids who needed a shot or who had really good dental report. 

Tidy Tuesday - Help Organizing Your Kids Room

Are you sick and tired of cleaning up your kids' rooms? Tired of tripping over toys left on the floor? Are you always stepping on matchbox cars, doll shoes, or blocks?

Here is one really easy way to help your children clean up after themselves.

Storage totes - they are incredible organizing tools for many reasons. Here are just a few reasons to consider putting your child's toys inside clear, plastic, storage containers.

See through
When containers are see through children can  see what's inside. They are able to choose the container that has the blocks, cars, dolls, crayons, etc. instead of pulling them all out opening each one in search of the items they want.

Easy to get out and put away
Children are able to handle smaller containers about the size of a shoe box. Most boxes are easy for kids to open and close. Plus if the containers are put down lower kids can reach certain items unassisted. Just please consider keeping containers holding smaller pieces up higher because of the possible choking hazards for younger children.

Easy clean - up
Clean up is quicker when all the child has to do it put everything inside the storage box. Children can dump everything out of the box and quickly put everything back in.


Durable
Most are made of hard plastic. They last much longer than cardboard boxes or plastic shopping bags. They are also much easier to stack.

Sorting
Children can practice sorting their toys. When cleaning up their rooms they can sort the items according to the different containers. Make it a game.

Just a few ways to help children learn to keep their rooms clean. Using clear storage containers can help your child learn to put their own toys away, help keep their room a bit more organized, and maybe help save you a couple headaches. :-)

Review of V Smile TV Learning System

My family received the V Smile TV Learning system last year for Christmas as a present. I wanted everyone to know the pros and cons of the system in my opinion.

First of all the pros:

Name brand games appealled to my kids because they love Scooby Doo and Bratz.

Price appealled to my family because it was considerably cheaper than Wii, Playstation, etc. that were out at the time. The system and the games were much more affordable.

Now the cons:

Do you remember the old Atari games? Well the V Smile games are made almost identical and all the problems with the Atari games apply to the V Smile games. If you had Atari games you probably remember blowing on the game cartridges hoping to get them to work again.

Some of the games were extremely easy and some where a tad bit difficult for my 7 and 6 year old. By the way I went by my kid's ages (6 & 7 at the time).

The old saying applies: You get what you pay for. After a couple months of normal use, we threw the system away because it no longer worked.

My recommendation is * (1 star out of 5). Pass on this product. Like I said in the beginning, this is my opinion. Take the good and the bad reviews and make your own informed decision before you buy.

Vtech - V.Smile TV Learning System

It Really Works

I bought my kids the "Fisher Price Computer Cool School" at Aldi's the other day. I have to say it really is cool! They haven't wanted to stop playing with it. It is easy to set up and easy for them to use. My youngest is 4 and hasn't really gotten too much exposure to our computer, but she is still able to use it with very little assistance from me. She is still learning her numbers and letters and she's having a lot of fun with this system. She actually tried to trace the letters with the stylus and I've been trying for weeks to get her to try writing letters to no avail. I have to give this ***** (Five Stars out of 5). I would highly recommend this product.


You can find it on Amazon.com. Click below.
Fisher-Price Fun-2-Learn Computer Cool School