The Hunger Games Trilogy $31

Pinkalicious $9

I See Me! Personalized Books $29.95 (Variable titles – all can be personalized!)

The Dangerous Book for Boys $16

1,000 Places to See Before You Die $12

Delirium $10.98

Merry Christmas Curious George – $5.38 Hardcover Price!

Steve Jobs $19.25

Divurgent $10.98

Elf on the Shelf $29.95

The way it works — join now and get 6 books for $2 plus a FREE gift with membership.  Then purchase 4 more books (the prices are low). You can cancel at any time, but who wouldn’t like books coming to the house every month! Click here for more info on how it works.  If you aren’t happy, return your introductory package within 20 days (they’ll pay the shipping).

Thank you to the Children’s Book of the Month Club for providing samples for review.

It will be no surprise if my 7-year-old turns out to be a marine biologist someday.  I know that phases pass but my own dear husband has always been obsessed with marine life and Nate is following in his footsteps these days.

He can’t get enough of watching NatGeoWild and Animal Planet and especially loves anything having to do with the ocean and sharks.  We’ve gathered quite the collection of shark products over the past year and for those of you out there with boys who live and breath for learning about sharks, I thought I’d put together a little  shark-related product list.  If you know of another great program, book or product, don’t be shy – leave me a comment!

For Preschoolers: I’m a Shark book by Bob Shea. We first heard this one this summer at a storytime at the beach.  A completely adorable story about a great white shark who is scared of spiders.  Wonderful illustrations and fun for preschool storytime.  $11.55 with free shipping on Amazon.

For Early Readers: National Geographic’s Sharks!  Level Two Reading.  Educational and factual about different kinds of sharks.  $3.99 with free shipping on Amazon.

For preschool & elementary school aged kids: Animal Planet Shark Attack Playset.  Santa brought this one for my 4-year-old, seeing as he loves anything his big brother loves.  I thought this playset was a great price for what it comes with and it’s seen many hours of play in our house.  $11.99 at Toys R Us or $11.55 with free shipping on Amazon.

For the older child: Discovery Channel’s DVD “Shark Week: the Great Bites Collection”.  We let Nate (7) watch Shark Week.  It can be graphic so use digression when showing this to your child.  But each year the Discovery Channel hosts Shark Week where they have various shows that are shark-themed.

We look forward to it each year and watch reruns all throughout the year.  It’s educational but graphic for sure.  Get the DVD collection on the Discovery Store website for $19.99.

For all kids: trendy & awesome shark clothes at 77kids.  On a recent trip to my local 77kids, I was impressed with the style and fun designs they offered for boys clothes.

I ended up going home with several shark-themed tees, much to the happiness of both of my boys.  Check out your local 77kids or view their collection of shark clothes online.

Enter PBSKids and iVillage’s Summer Reading Challenge.  My ears perked up for this one given my fears.  Sign up for this free program to receive six weeks of emails and daily prizes.  Best of all, the emails will include tips on getting your children to read more and giving you good book suggestions.

To kick off the summer, I hosted a local Summer Reading Challenge Party with a couple of my good friends including Julie from Just Precious and Melissa from Girlymama.

Here I am reading Diary of a Spider to the kids

We read books, played games & activities and got the kids excited about reading over the summer. Which is what it’s all about, right?  Get your kids reading too this summer!  PBS has some great tips here on their Raise a Reader website.

You can use coupon code BLOG20 to receive 20% off your order at ScholasticStore.com

Disclaimer:  I was not compensated for this event.  However, I was given books to give out to the guests at the party to encourage and jump start their summer reading program.  I do feel strongly that keeping up with some sort of reading program during the summer vacation is imperative to our children’s continuing education.

The product teaches them about sorting, counting, measuring in the following: a 48-page workbook, a 24-page math adventure storybook, 24 cards with math adventures and challenges, a 48-page activity book with games and activities and a “Team Umizoomi” DVD with one episode on it from the tv show.  It also comes with two pencils and an eraser.

The kits will be out in July, will cost $19.99 and will be available at Toys R Us and Babies R Us.

The stories themselves are not life-changing. With titles like “Frog Sat” and “Sun Sets”, the books are a little light on plot, but they definitely held my son’s attention. And when your 4-year-old reads YOU a story. That’s priceless.

There are a number of book sets to choose from including Beginning Readers, Word Families, Complex Words, Long Vowels, Kindergarten Sights Words and others.

The books are numbered and build on each other so it’s worth reading them in order. Each box also comes with 30 double-sided sight word flashcards with a sentence on the other side for additional practice. From time to time you can find the Bob Book sets on sale at Costco, otherwise they are available all the time at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Toys R Us and other book and toy stores. There’s even a new Bob Books app!

Visit www.bobbooks.com to learn more.

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Disclaimer: A sample of the product was submitted for review, but the opinions expressed are my own.

Much of the book is laid out page by page as “wear” and “toss”.  For example, I just opened up to the page “Wear – A top with billowing sleeves – comfortable yet defined” vs. “Toss – over-sized flannels, crinkled cottons” that create a sloppy and disheveled look.

The comparisons are complete with pictures and I’m enjoying the book more than I thought.  Some of the wear vs toss comparisons are pretty self explanatory (the trend being that things should be fitted and not over-sized) to some great detailed style tips that I wouldn’t have thought of.

Like here’s an obvious one, the fitted jacket vs the bulky wrinkled one:

But then I thought this one was pretty cool.  It talks about some current must have trends in belts like glitter belts, belts with grommets and western belts.  Belts to toss:  rainbow stripped ribbon belts, thickly braided belts and belts with huge bows:

And this, which shows a nice v-neck fitted dress.  The author shows how it looks nice with a bold necklace vs the visually detailed pattern dress on the right which is not only too visually impairing with all the patterns but not flattering and it’s sort of boring in its cut:

So I’m really enjoying this book.  As I’m definitely a visual person, I like the quick read this allows – I can flip from page to page getting some great current style ideas.  Definitely worthy of the coffee table or at least your nightstand.  Get wear this, toss that! on Amazon for $15.07 with free shipping.

Check out these other great Fashion Friday posts:

So while nothing can replace having a parent there in person, that modern technology allows us to do to ease the pain of feeling that absence of the parent.  Beyond just email, phone calls and video chat, there are products like Record-A-Story.  Adults can record their voices within these stories for future playback.  Children can then open their favorite childhood tale and rather than having it read in-person, it can be read via the speaker and the pre-recorded message that’s been taped.

Love this for a military family, grandparent or anyone who has a parent who is on the road.  So far, Record A Story offers the following stories:  Dora the Explorer, Guess How Much I Miss You, Twas the Night Before Christmas and Sesame Street. Get it on Amazon for $13.95-$17.95, depending on which story you chose, with free shipping.

The Lost Hero, By Rick Riordan (the same author who brought you the Lightning Thief and Percy Jackson) releases as Book One in a series of all new heroes at Camp Half-Blood. $10.95 on Amazon (Hardcover)

Hey, Where’s Perry? Comic Book, $4.99 on Amazon

For Rapunzel fans, Tangled – Rapunzel’s Journal, Letting Down my Hair is full of fun illustrations.  $9.35 on Amazon.

I put off reading this because I didn’t have much interest – did I really care about Bree Tanner and her brief appearance in Eclipse?

While I didn’t care much before, I do now that I’ve finished her short story.  I did love Bree’s story and character, which only made the ending that much harder.  You can get it on Amazon for $8.50.  Did anyone else read it? What did you think of it in comparison to the official Twilight series?