Good Stuff for Kids

The Charlie and Lola series of books and videos are great! The mixed-media, childlike illustrations are fun to look at, the dialogue is actually spoken like a child, and you can't beat British accents. I love hearing my kids mimic it. We have only four of the many books and I think my kids can recite part or most of each of them. Currently, they are most intrigued by the colorful drawings and explanation of germs in I'm Really Ever So Not Well.
The DVDs each have a collection of several short episodes so they're great for brief periods in front of the tv. Or, should I say, the "telly."



We were given a Stokke Tripp Trapp chair for my daughter's birthday last year and are so pleased with it. You can adjust the height and depth of this chair (seat and footrest, individually) to fit your child and your dinner table. You can get it with a 5-point harness or without. With a cushion or without. With a guardrail or without. In red or not. You don't have to clean up a nasty tray or booster seat when they finish eating (just your nasty table), your child doesn't have to sit uncomfortably on their knees or some other contortionist position to reach the table, and, surprisingly, I don't often find myself telling my daughter to get back in it, as I do with grown-up or child-size chairs. If you find you hate your high chair or the switch from high chair to big chair, put one of these on your wish list.
Oh, and it holds up to 300 lbs, in case you have the world's biggest baby.




My Giant Sticker Activity Book. This is...well, a giant sticker activity book by Roger Priddy, who has tons of kids books I'm sure you've seen or own. It comes with topical pages, like shapes or animals, and corresponding pages of brightly colored or photographic stickers. Each section has a simple explanation or question pertaining to the stickers to be placed in it and color-coded shadows showing your child where exactly to place the sticker. My kids love it. They are young enough that I have to do it with them, but it is pretty fun and a good teaching opportunity. Older kids could entertain themselves with it.
A great thing about this sticker book, besides just being fun matching the stickers, is that when your kids are finished placing the stickers you can go back and reread it like a regular book and they can (somewhat carefully) remove and replace the stickers.
We enjoy this at home, but it would be a great plane-ride surprise activity.