Hot Wheels Trick Tracks Sets

I was pretty excited when the Parent Bloggers Network offered me a chance to review Hot Wheels Trick Tracks Triple Stunt Starter Set and Power Loop Stunt Zone. K chose a Hot Wheels racing set as his reward for potty training a few months ago, and at the time he had a hard time narrowing down which Hot Wheels set to get. All the sets looked pretty cool to him.

When the first set, the Triple Stunt Starter Set, arrived, the kids took one look at the box and started to jump up and down with excitement. If only their mom was better at deciphering the assembly instructions! The set up took 30 minutes, during which time the kids were asking every 2 minutes if I was done yet. The instructions were only diagrams that were not as clear to me as they could have been. I would have liked a few more words to help me as well.

However, once assembly was complete and the kids were turned loose with the toy my frustrations were lessened by the joyful sounds of my kids playing together. I heard things like “Awesome!” and “Watch this!” followed by “cool!”

The first time playing with it they played for 1 hour, and fought over who got to do what stunt first approximately 4732 times.

I didn’t really see the lure of some of the “stunts” like the crane drop. But since the toy isn’t aimed at 30-somethings I guess that’s okay. The kids still thought all 3 of the stunts were quite spectacular and had fun digging out a bunch of their cars to try in the different stunts.

When we (and by we I mean Craig) set up the Hot Wheels Power Loop, it took slightly less time than the first set took. Craig took about 20 minutes to put the toy together, abandoning the instructions in favor of looking at the picture on the box.

Once the toy was together, K especially enjoyed the Power Loop. This toy came with more tracks that K also liked to just attach end to end and slide cars as far as he could.

With the Power Loop, you put a car on the “launcher” and press the launch button. The car then does several loop-de-loops, lifts up a sort of escape hatch and the car rolls out across the floor. The first time I saw the car do that I thought to myself “cool.” Then I realized that I’m a grown-up. Ha.

Both of these sets were “starter sets” so there are several more sets that all connect together. The fun is expandable, yet still fun with just the starter sets.

Each set comes with only one car, which isn’t a problem around here since we have a giant bin full of cars, but that fact might frustrate people who are just starting their Hot Wheels collection.

These sets, once put together, offered my kids hours of entertainment so I’d definitely recommend them to other parents of car enthusiasts.

Amazing Baby

Amazing Baby, written by Desmond Morris author of the best-selling book The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal, covers baby’s development from conception through toddlerhood. The book has 9 chapters that are further broken down into one or two page sections that make the book easy to read in tiny time segments. Any parent knows that tiny time segments are often the only time we have for reading.

The book is written in a respectful, almost reverent, tone that celebrates the bond between mother and baby. I found myself actually tearing up at times while reading about the (and so the book is aptly named) amazing process that all my children have gone through and that I am witnessing now with my third child.

This book is not only aesthetically pleasing, with striking images of beautiful human babies and carefully formatted text, but it is also filled with interesting facts about human development.

For instance, in the section on bonding I recognized what Baby D is currently going through with separation anxiety emerging:

For the first few months after birth, human babies are not particularly choosy. They are happy to be cuddled by any caring adult who happens to pick them up. In this respect they are slow starters, because with many animals the newborn becomes tightly bonded with its mother from day one. Usually by about six months (although this may vary from four to eight months) the process begins in earnest for the human infant and he starts to become highly selective in whom he trusts.

Baby D is definitely highly selective about whom she trusts, and her little lip comes out in protest if someone picks her up when she’d rather be with Mom!

My two older kids were intrigued by the paper overlays of the baby’s skull, skeletal system, musculature and eye. M requested to look at the skeleton and recalled how she had learned about the body in Kindergarten last year.

The book itself is substantial both in size (9 x 10) and heft (208 pages) and qualifies easily as a beautiful coffee table book. But the book would also make a wonderful gift for any mother, whether she’s just had her first child (or is expecting her first) or had her children years ago.

In this video, the author tells a little more about his latest book:





Amazing Baby can be purchased online at Amazon. Visit the Parent Bloggers Network to read what other bloggers thought about Amazing Baby and other products.

My Baby A to Z

We may have a bit of a DVD problem at our house. I think we have about 100 DVDs at our disposal. And these are just the kids’ shows. But we don’t have cable so that’s how I justify the movie habit to myself. Just let me live in my little fantasy world there.

So, when I was offered the chance to review a DVD, I jumped at the chance for some fresh scenes. I received the first title, My Baby A to Z – Come Explore Shapes With Me, in what is expected to be a series of DVD offerings. This first DVD focuses on basic shapes and is aimed at children 2 to 5 years old.

Mom’s impressions

The stars of the show are two puppets named Moo and Beans that are learning their shapes. The puppets were cute and engaging and attracted the kids’ attention immediately.

I really liked how each shape was repeated several times and drawn with different media. First, each shape was drawn with a marker; second it was painted, and last drawn in the sand. Then the characters tried to search for and point out shapes like that in the objects around them, which again reinforced the shape.

Kid’s reactions

D (5 months) talked and cooed but not necessarily at the show. She seemed to enjoy the music but was not really engaged with the show. She’s obviously too young for movies anyway.

K (4 years) talked to himself, murmuring the answers that the puppets posed during the program. There were several get up and move break during the 23-minute program, which I liked. However, K didn’t actually get up and move until about the third break. I don’t think he understood that he should actually get up and move like the puppets said to do. The second time we watched the show, K was up and moving with every break.

Verdict

This DVD was a good introduction to shapes for young kids. It encouraged participation and included a lot of the repetition that is key to learning.

Buy it - Win it!

I have one copy of the DVD to give away. If you’d like to win a copy, please leave a comment on this post and tell me for whom you’d like to win the DVD. (Remember to include your email address if you don’t have a blog with one listed.) This giveaway is open to those with U.S. or Canadian addresses. I’ll draw for the winner on Saturday November 15th.

If you don’t win or if you’d like to just order a copy for yourself you can get a 20 percent discount from the $19.99 list price by entering this code during checkout at http://www.mybabyatoz.com/: K4K5878T

PBN also has 5 more copies up for grabs so if you don’t win here so head over there and enter too!