Baby Toys
Great Gift Ideas for Newborns
Buying for newborns can be a little tricky. You don’t know what the mum and dad already have and what other family members and friends will be buying. Here, we’ve got a great list of ideas for ensuring your gift is a huge success. From newborn toys to outfits for special occasions, we’ve got unique ideas that will make the ideal newborn present:
A special outfit
We aren’t talking onesies and knitted booties (although they are useful gifts too). Often mums will have a new bub, stock up on the practical clothes and miss out on those adorable designer booties. Buy the little bundle of joy something truly unique and a little bit designer. They’ll have something cool to wear to a special event and their parents will love the sentiment.
Click Here To Read More
Introducing Your Dog to Your Newborn
Having a baby is so exciting. There is so much to prepare and if it’s your first, things to learn. But one thing that can get overlooked is how your dog will react to your newborn. To ensure a smooth transition for your pet, we’ve got some great tips for setting up the boundaries and making sure that all four-legged members of the family are respectful and understanding of your newborn. From taking home toys with your babies scent and slowly introducing your dog to their smell, to clearing up any behavioral problems before the baby arrives, we’ve got the all important tips you don’t want to miss:
Iron out any behavioural problems
If your hound is a little on the naughty side you need to take these nine months to iron out any problems. This is the time for you to make sure that your dog knows who’s the leader of the pack. If they are currently running your household, you will have problems when your baby arrives.
Click Here To Read More
The Forgetful Aunty or Uncle’s Guide to Great Gifts
If you’ve got nieces and nephews but don’t have children yourself, it’s likely that at some stage or another (unless you’re very organised, in which case, well done) you’ve experienced that pang of panic when you realise that it’s your niece/nephew’s birthday in a few days and you’re yet to organise anything. If this is you, don’t worry. It happens to plenty of aunties and uncles around the world, and the way we usually cope with the guilt of forgetting is to overcompensate with expensive toys, so everybody wins! Here, we’ve put together a guide for creating great gifts that don’t require a visit to the toy store. Click Here To Read More
4 Reasons Why Dora The Explorer is a Hit Among Kids
Dora The Explorer burst onto our screens from Nickelodeon in the year 2000. Since then it has been firmly lodged into the hearts and minds of preschoolers and parents. The Dora toys are still one of the world’s best sellers.
Whether the adults like or hate the show there is no doubt that the show strikes a positive chord with the children of the world. Parents treasure that enthralled silent time when children are completely taken into the colourful world of Dora and all her friends.
The Dora Concept
Dora seemed to fill a much needed niche in cartoons available to the preschool/kinder age group and in some cases children older than that. It is in essence a show that teaches kids in a practical and fun way about many basic skills including math, problem solving, basic Spanish, music, and physical coordination.
But it may well be the underlying lessons that make the show a hit. Dora The Explorer deals with many social issues of differences and people having talents in differing areas, and that being okay. It demonstrates tolerance and love of things around us. It brings a different culture to kids seems to spark an interest in other parts of the world.
4 Reasons Why Australians Love Roary The Racing Car
Roary The Racing Car is one of the most loved shows on television right now. So many children love watching the racing antics of Roary and his friends who are various types of racing cars and other vehicles, some animals, and the humans who work at the racetrack. Roary kids toys are a great value buy anytime of the year.
A most exciting development this year has been the introduction of Conrod, the Australian V8 Supercar, to the Silver Hatch Racetrack. Adding to the seventeen strong character cast, Conrod has been very much anticipated on our televisions.
Craig Lowndes Voices Conrod
Champion driver Craig Lowndes is the voice for Conrod and he has been out and about promoting his part on the show and Roary and Big Chris have been seen regularly at the V8 Supercar meets. Roary also gave a show at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne last year and has been popping up in shopping centres and other events during the lead up to the
Buying Toys and Maternity Items for Baby Showers
The unspoken rule of any baby shower is that you are not really buying gifts for the new baby so much as you are buying gifts for the mother. Even when buying, say, new baby furniture or clothes for the baby, your ultimate goal is to make life easier on the mother.
Raising a new infant, especially for the first time mother, is both expensive and demanding. The National Children Study in the US has conducted a number of studies into the total stress a new mother must deal with, from conception to birth and through the first year of an infant’s life. While every mother will experience different stress levels based on factors such as income, marital status, employment and so on, pregnancy and motherhood are almost invariably amongst the most stressful periods in an individual woman’s life.
Furthermore, the cost of raising a child from birth to their first birthday, according to a survey conducted by Baby Center, an online resource for new mothers, will average a minimum of ten thousand dollars US, or about seven thousand AU. This is a minimum. For many mothers, it may wind up being several times this number. The average income amongst Australian households is said to be around fifty thousand dollars a year, but most Australians actually live in states with an average income of under forty thousand a year, and many are lucky to make half the average annual income in a year. In other words, seven thousand dollars as a bare minimum of what you can expect to pay for an infant’s first year of life can take quite a toll.
Make no mistake, having a child is also a wonderful experience, but it is just as stressful and expensive as it is joyful. As a friend or family member of a mother-to-be, it should be considered a duty, an honor, and a privilege to help lighten the load placed on the baby shower’s guest of honor.
The necessity of toys for the development of infants
One question some parents ask themselves; When should you start buying developmental toys for the baby?
The answer: Before they’re born.
Playing is the most important part of a human being’s development. We’re not just saying that to sell some toys, it’s true. In every sense of the word, playing is the most important part of personal development.
If wolf cubs don’t wrestle and fight in the litter, they’ll never be able to hunt as adults, and if children don’t play in their early developmental years, the entire learning process will never be anything but a chore to them.
In a way, every form of learning is a type of play. When you’re solving math problems on a worksheet, you’re not solving a real math problem, like “how many hours of overtime do I have to work to make the car payment?” you’re solving a pretend problem on a sheet of paper to practice for when you have to solve a real problem. That’s what playing is, and it starts in infancy.
For an infant, playing is how the basic functions of life are first learned. Playing for an infant is, of course, not quite the same as it is for a slightly older child. An infant isn’t able to piece together some Lincoln Logs and make a cabin, or drive a remote control car around the living room. What an infant does is much simpler, and much more critical. For an infant, playing amounts to things like watching the mobile go around in circles, feeling the textures of stuffed animals and blankets, and learning from a game of peekaboo that just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.
The importance of stimulating toys for newborns
The first year of development is pretty much the most important year of anyone’s life. Yeah, you might have learned calculus and how to fix a car when you were seventeen, but when you were just a few days old, you learned to see, you learned to hear, to breath, to feel, to eat, to smell, and to go number one and number two. Throughout the rest of that first year, you learn to move, you learn to communicate with people around you, you learn to read other people’s moods, to empathize, you learn about colours and light and music. Ninety nine percent of what you’re doing right now, you learned to do in your first year of life.
In learning basic motor functions, how your body works, and how to interact with the world around you, playing is one of the most important ingredients to proper development.
When you’re shopping for toys for infants and newborns, bear in mind what the baby is learning and developing at this early stage. This would include the five senses, but babies should also get a little bit of exercise and physical activity into their schedules, and remember that infants are always chewing on things to assist in the teething process.
Shopping suggestions for the new mom (maternity items, newborn-safe toys, etc)
If you’re having your first child, you probably have about one million questions, as well. It’s only natural that expectant mothers should worry day and night about whether or not they’ll be a good parent, whether they’re providing for their baby well enough, and so on.
The first step is to relax. Raising a child certainly ain’t easy, but it’s a lot harder to make all those mistakes new parents worry about than most realize. Just make sure to be prepared, and you should be okay when the baby arrives.
If you are expecting a child, you may want to start looking for toys that are appropriate for newborn babies, so as to ensure that the learning process begins right away. And while you’re at it, you might want to check out some maternity items, as well (note to baby shower invitees, this list is for you, too!).
Stuffed Animals
