Kid Stuff

I looked around a little bit on the Discovery Toys page and remembered some of the things we had from them. When MiniMe was born, I had a friend named Kathy who sold Discovery Toys for a living so she could stay home with her daughter. It looks like there’s a ton of new stuff, but there are still some things that are the same…like Marble Works… I remember Kathy had two sets (before they came out with all the different ones) and they set them up side by side with different “plans” from their mantle to the floor to “race”. It was fun to try to come up with the fastest course with all the twists and turns you make constructing the run. I’m pretty sure the grownups had just as much (if not more) fun than the kids!

Of the things we had, one was the Boomerings –Those little colorful chains that interlink. We used them for so many things because they are WAY tougher than the look-alikes found in stores. It’s been over 14 years since we got them and we *still* have some around that we use in a pinch for stuff. They were great for hooking on to a baby bag and linking toys to instead of shoving toys in the bag to take up space. I gave a couple to my mom when her luggage tags broke off of her suitcase at the airport and she STILL has them on a bag she travels with!… oh! I used them to link in front of the lower cabinet doors from knob to knob in order to keep prying fingers out of the cabinets! When we moved to our second home, we were renovating all the bedrooms and the closet was nonexistent for awhile…I had those links strung from the changing table to a doorknob and used them to hang all of her clothes until the closet was finished and the organizer was installed. They never warped from weight or anything. When we had a dog, we also used them to extend his leash! HA! Hmm…that’s all I can remember using them for off the top of my head!

We also had the Measure Up Cups – There are 12 of them and they’re not only numbered, but they each have an animal shape on the bottom that actually makes a pretty good cookie stamp!
These were really great for math, too! Like if you had sand in cup 2 and cup 7, and if you dumped them both out they would fill cup 9.

The books, music, and family style things are mostly different (except for the bath gels, etc.), and I noticed they don’t have the clothing line anymore. That was really neat because all the clothes were reversible, and they were all tagged with colors and shapes in the label so that your child could match any of the label pictures and the clothes would make an outfit together from the socks up. It’s really a neat way to let kids learn to dress themselves when that independent streak hits! I wonder why they discontinued that line.

We also had the whole line of Think It Through Tiles. Those were awesome. They were these little plastic cases with tiles inside. On the back of each tile was a design and the front was a letter or number. In the booklets that come with them, you answer the questions by placing a tile in the matching square in the case. When you’re finished, you close the case, flip it over and open it back up. The design you’ve made (from the back sides) should match the design in the book (like a self correcting answer key). MiniMe’s kindergarten teacher liked them so much when she borrowed them for class, I ended up giving them to her and buying the next stage that was a little more difficult.
Anyway, all these things are really worth looking into.