Gift Ideas for Dinosaur Lovers and Scurvy Pirates

Still looking for gift ideas for your beloved? Today Kobold has selected his favorites for dinosaur lovers and survy pirates.

Kobold's picks for dinosaur lovers include:

1. I Dream I Was a Dinosaur board book from Barefoot Books. Join a young boy on a dreamland adventure to prehistoric times, where he meets dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. The rhyme filled text is followed by fascinating notes about the age of dinosaurs and includes illustrations by Kobold's favorite Clare Beaton.

2. The 63 piece Mighty Dinosaur puzzle is is a wonderful gift for advanced puzzler. Kobold Toys also offers an adorable puzzle for the starter set with Shure's "My Dinosaur's Puzzle & Book."

3. For the artsy dinosaur lover, Kobold recommends the Calafant Dinosaur craft (only $6.99!). Children can use their imagination and creativity to color their own dinosaur and then play with it. This beautiful craft is made of pre-punched white cardboard, so it can be put together without glue or scissors. In addition, it comes with 6 markers and building instructions, all sealed in a plastic bag.

You will not have to walk the plank if you take Kobold's suggestions and wrap up these gifts that the scurviest of pirates will love:

1. The Little Pirate Bag of Books set lets your child set sail with this merry crew and enjoy all sorts of pirate fun with Port Side Pirates! with music CD and Pirates: Fun Activities, filled with puzzles, mazes, treasure maps and reusable stickers which will keep young landlubbers happily occupied for hours.

2. If you have a Pirate Girl, consider the cute pirate tooth pillow doll by North American Bear Co.

3. Pirates encounter many dangers in the deep blue sea. The Bloco Marine Creatures Scholastic set lets your child build and learm about sharks and other creatures so your pirate is prepared!

Have fun learning! And for more gift ideas and discounted items, visit the website every day.

Happy Holidays!

Fish Are Friends!

I can not believe that this is the first week of August - where is the summer going! I have not even had the chance to take the children to the beach this year as all of our vacation destinations have been inland. This past weekend we took a family day to the National Aquarium in Washington, DC. (Note to Washington DC visitors: you will feel like you paid to much for this little aquarium. It is a great distraction and intimate enough to keep the smaller set entertained as my one year old loved doing laps and grabbing human tushies (!) along the way. Make time for the National Aquarium in Baltimore if you want to be impressed). Miss E is a shark lover so we went to celebrate shark weekend. Now as someone who grew up in the Jaws generation I have a healthy fear of sharks and because of this I don't really think about them too much in my day to day life. There are around 400 different types of sharks and they are found in oceans all over the world. There are very small sharks, like the spined pygmy shark, and sharks that are bigger than a bus, like the whale shark. I did learn some sobering statistics. Almost 1/5 of all sharks and rays are critically close to extinction. Did you know that 250,000 sharks die each day? Miss E was NOT happy, and is very concerned about her favorite Hammerhead friends (we even ended up with a large, plush hammerhead shark named Alex Fred, Junior.).

So today we celebrate summer, the shark, and our other underwater friends.

My son's favorite sea animal is the turtle, and the aquarium had an adorable sea turtle for him to ooh and ahh over during his laps. If you have a turtle lover, Wild Republic offers the Sea Turtle Belly Bunch. The Sea Turtle is made of soft plush, with a "belly bag" that holds other animals (a crab, two different kinds of sharks and a sea turtle) that share her environment. This is a great "take along" toy to the doctor's office, a restaurant, or a long car ride.

Mudpuppy's Under the Sea First Puzzle shows a polkadot fish, a seahorse, an octopus, and a porpoise illustrated by Roge. All four puzzles are packed in a colorful box with a handle. Kobold Toys also offers their Color Me Under the Ocean Puzzle Mudpuppy's Under the Sea Color Me Puzzle shows a big blue whale, an octopus, sea stars, a swordfish, sea snail, seahorse, porpoise, jellyfish, and lots of other oceanic life. Design your own sea stacks with Mudpuppy's Under the Sea Constructibles Building Set. Jennifer Yanok has illustrated jelly fish, octopus, sea turtle, seaweed, coral, crab, sea urchin, seahorse, sea star, sea snail--and of course, lots of colorful fish--all on this set of 25 interlocking slotted card pieces in 5 basic shapes. In addition to being fun and a creative outlet, constructibles building sets improve hand-eye coordination, develop fine motor skills, and reinforce principles of balance and spatial relationships.

Although we have yet to encounter a mermaid at an aquarium or on the water, we still believe they exist. Peter Pan says it is so! If your child's favorite sea creature is the mermaid. Consider Manhattan Toy's Maddie Mermaid. She is exquisitely designed from her shell inspired handbag to her polka dotted tail and long, lavender hair. An easily removable tail reveals a playful skirt and legs to take Maddie from sea to shore in no time!

If you have a shark lover, you may want to check out Shark Week at Discovery Channel. The fun/fear starts on August 2nd. I hope your summer continues along swimmingly and that you are all having wonderful adventures.

Have a great week! ~ Ashley

Kobold Goes Loco Over Bloco!

Kobold Toys is delighted to welcome Bloco™ to our line of toys that help children explore their creativity and imagination. Award winning Bloco Toys has been making foam construction toys in their native Quebec for three years. With an emphasis on product safety and fun, Bloco is dedicated to "providing highly original, high quality and really entertaining toys."

As with any Bloco construction set you can build the illustrated designs or let your imagination take charge. Each set can be combined with other Bloco construction sets to build even more interesting creatures.

Build lizards, sharks, fish, dinosaurs, birds, and wildcats. Let your child's imagination go crazy with these wonderful additions to Kobold's line of creative play.