Daddy Mojo, Author at Daddy Mojo

Little Tikes Fish N’ Splash Water Table review

Hey, we received the item for review purposes. All thoughts are our own. There are a couple mandatory items that I have for children three and under. They include a good quality stroller, a sandbox (with some sand toys!), building blocks for inside play and a water table. We did not get a water table for our oldest until he was almost four and he immediately gravitated towards it. Currently our almost four year old can’t get enough of the Little Tikes Fish N’ Splash Water Table. It’s his go-to play area when he’s outside and his almost six year old brother gets in on the action too.

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Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight-a young reader book packed with great imagery

Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight has the imagination and wallets of older elementary school or middle age students its sights. It’s based on a simple premise that you’ve certainly heard before but what makes the book really stand out is the through-the-looking glass world you experience once things go sideways. The chapters are around 12 pages so they’re too long for a good-night book, but just right for those school age children that we mentioned.

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Simpatico by Renee & Friends needs more kindie and less lullaby

Renee & Friends’ Simpatico is a compilation between singer Renee Stahl and lots of other folks. They include Colin Hay, Glen Phillips from Toad the Wet Sprocket, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon and many others. This release is intended to be a bridge between the time when kids are exclusively listening to lullabies and then start listening to songs with more structure. It does have a lush, relaxed sound throughout the release. However, it’s too relaxed and is more at home in a coffee house where naps are encouraged than as a kindie release.

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Snow doubt, Are We There, Yeti? is a 1-pun book that small children will enjoy

Are We There, Yeti starts out with Yeti, the school bus driver being introduced. Yeti is about the take the kids on a trip and they want to know where they are going. Anyone who had driven children two or older around will have a Pavlovian response to the “Are we there yet” query. It’s closely related to the
“Are we done yet” query, but possibly more annoying because everyone involved in the conversation is trapped inside of a moving vehicle. Are We There, Yeti? takes that question, makes the driver of the vehicle a Yeti, combines it with soft, muted art to create a good-night book that kids 2-5 will really get a laugh out of.

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Robot boxing in our #ManCave, our wish list item at Best Buy

We’ve been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service at a reduced price or for free. Have you seen Real Steel? It a Hugh Jackman film from 2011 about robot boxing. It’s a fabulous film that my wife even liked, it’s not that she’s a movie snob, she just went in with low expectations-partially due to my constant raving about it. In my ideal man cave I would have a robot boxing ring like this vision of robotic wresting on the Best Buy site.

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Celebrate World Play-Doh Day on September 16

Wednesday, September 16 is World Play-Doh Day! What exactly did parents do before Play-Doh was invented in 1956? And they only had four colors to entertain the kids with! Now there are over 50 colors, more than two billion Play-Doh cans have been sold and the average time that each separate color is blended into one green/gray color is :60. OK, that last factoid is based exclusively on our house, the amount of time could be shorter or longer in your house.

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New All Age Comic Books for Wednesday September 16, 2015

Happy #NCBD ! New comic book day is yielding some new all age comics for everyone. This is the list that highlights the new all age comics that are released in a given week. All of these comics are OK for all ages, but some ages won’t enjoy them. Case in point are the new Princeless comics this week. Princeless Raven Pirate Princess and Princeless Be Yourself don’t have anything objectionable in them and have fabulous role models, but their realistic style might not be something that a five-year old wants to see.

It’s not that all ages comic books have to have an anime look about it with all of the characters having soft, rounded features. It’s the content that makes up something that’s OK for any age. A great example of this is a conversation with a seven-year old I had recently. I gave him a stack of our son’s all ages comics and some of our graphic novels. He looked at our graphic novels and wanted to see the action and superheroes that his friends like, but asked if there was blood. “Yes”, I told him. An all age comic book isn’t about lack of story or young elements, it’s about content and what is appropriate for kids.

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Not This Bear is pre-school comfort food

Our oldest grew up on the Biscuit books. We purchased the Happy Halloween Biscuit board book shortly after his birth and it’s been with us ever since. When he turned two we also got a couple from the I Can Read Book series and they’re still with us. Author Alyssa Satin Capucilli’s latest book, Not This Bear, is not a Biscuit book, but it has all of warmth, charm and approachability that you’d expect her stand out title to have.

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