Too Much Awesome

I’m a sucker for things you can make with household materials. Cardboard, paper, rubberbands, whatever…if it’s cheap and available, I’ll try to make something out of it. Why spend money on something when you can get it for free? And origami fits the bill wonderfully.

Since writing an overview of poker for the uninitiated, I have noticed how commonplace it is to find someone who has not played the traditional board games that populated my youth. But I think everyone is familiar with Yahtzee. Origins and Comparisons The official game began as an activity aboard a Canadian couple’s yacht in [...]

If your toddler is between the ages of 2 and 20, it is likely that she is going through a scared-of-the-dark phase. One of the most common solutions (aside from camping out in your child’s bedroom to stave off the boogey-man) is the soothing comfort of a night-light. A company called Cloud B has a [...]

A few days ago I made a point of talking about telescopes and how simple it should, in theory, be to encourage kids to learn via the usage of such a simple and relatively inexpensive technology. But now that you’ve got that telescope and space is all learned up, where do you turn next? Simple, [...]

It can be really, really hard to get kids interested in anything even remotely related to science or education, especially when it comes with the word “toy” somewhere. Kids aren’t clueless. They know when you’re trying to sell them something other than what they want. That’s why you have to find science and learning toys [...]

If I were pressed to defend the educational value of video games, I probably couldn’t do much other than say they can teach reading, math, problem solving, community interaction, cause and effect, and hand-eye coordination skills, so really I’d have an uphill battle talking about their benefits (wink). However, there are a handful of very [...]

What makes a toy a learning toy? It is quite possible that any toy can be a learning toy — from coloring books and building blocks on. But most people have something quite different in mind when they talk about learning toys. So when looking for something interactive with an educational spin I found a [...]