Mother’s Day is May 10th. To all the moms and moms-at-heart out there: Happy Mother’s Day!!!

According to Treehugger’s Mother’s Day Green Guide, Mother’s Day was started during the American Civil War by social activist Julia Ward Howe to unify women against war and promote nonviolence. Who knew?

Mother’s Day is Sunday May 10th. We’ve noticed that the Expecting Mother Flensted mobile has been popular recently. The leaf umbrella from Fred & Friends is also a great Mother’s Day gift.

And if that doesn’t suit your taste we suggest the Mother’s Day Guide brought to you by the cool mom’s at coolmompicks and the Treehugger’s Green Gift Guide for Mother’s Day.

Special thanks to @greenandhealthy on twitter for the tidbit about mother’s day.

We were quite sad when we received that news from our distributor, as we truly love Selecta’s innovative yet classic designs and high quality workmanship. We especially like the thermal printing process they use for printing pictures on wooden blocks and game pieces, as well as these wooden books and slightly bigger versions of them. Not only are the colors vibrant and vivid, the thermal printing makes the picture last a very long time. To top it off, Selecta uses natural beeswax to seal it so it’s saliva and scratch resistant, able to stand the test of babies/toddlers play.

The whole CPSIA just does not make sense: European toy testing standards and requirements have always been higher than the American testing standards, and yet that isn’t good enough for CPSIA requirements. The new law is in the right direction of making toys and products safer for children, but the unintended consequences of putting reputable manufacturers out of the market is really bad lawmaking. It is probably not what lawmakers and activists wanted. The extreme irony is that, these reputable toy makers were ones consumers sought after when the Toy Recall of 2007 exploded. We were secretly hoping that the 1-yr enforcement stay issued by the CPSC would extend Selecta’s export by 1-year as well, but that isn’t the case, as confirmed by the distributor.

Once our current Selecta inventory runs out, we will no longer be able to get additional shipments. These are truly Limited Editions, at least in the US market.

Building Sand Castles

So, we built our own “little city” with the Baudino Haba sand toys:

• Bucket
• Sand Water Trowel
• Shovel
• and the Carterpillar which we used to make the roads.

Fun!

We’ve put together some suggestions for your child’s Easter basket. Hop, hop, hop… check it out.

Two products from our shop were recently featured on the Coolmompicks Ultimate Baby Shower Guide:

* The Bug Pod by Boon Inc.
* The Rollephants Mobile by Flensted.

Check out the guide. There’s lots of other cool stuff on there!

I love mushrooms more that carrots or zucchini, so that’s not a problem for me, but I know they can be a sticky situation for many kids (and grown ups too).

Luckily, there are some great online resources for getting kids familiar with the wonder that is the mushroom:

• NAMA’s Manual for Teachers and Naturalists They even rent teaching kits; so cool!
• The Great Morel Fun photos of kid shroomers.
• Fun Facts About Fungi Utah State University hosted site includes games, facts and great fast-motion video of growing mushrooms.

And often times play food can help kids get used to new veggies as well. We have a couple types of play-food mushrooms, as well as some other good-for-you veggies like peppers, tomatoes, carrots and more!

Do you have tips for getting kids to eat more veggies? We all want to know!

Terra Kids Keychain Compass

These nifty gadgets can be clipped to a backpack or carried in the pocket. Your little explorer will be enthralled with how a rock or a twig look under the lens and can’t wait to show you what he/she will find next!

This glass plate was used as the basis for Lincoln's five-dollar bill image.

I’m a photographer, so I’m especially interested in the stereoscope image (a really early Viewmaster) and the glass plate used as the basis for his image on the five-dollar bill. There’s also a really young unshaven Lincoln, who freaks me out like whenever I see Tom Selleck without his mustache.

My son’s been studying some of Lincoln’s famous presidential activities, so I can’t wait to show him all these photos after school. The captions are amazing, with great asides and details. I think he’ll also like to see Lincoln with his kids, although photos in those days were never “candid.”

Make sure to check out our President’s Day ideas.

But you can do yourself a favor with an ounce of dark chocolate every day. And, as my favorite nutrition blogger reminded me today, cocoa powder is good too (though she points out dutch-process processes out the bitterness and the health benefits). I started adding cocoa powder to cookies and shakes, and it works really well as an inexpensive, easy nutrition addition.

If you’re looking for non-candy supplements to your Valentine’s celebrating, we have some great ideas.

These kids are so desensitized to violence and, especially girls, don’t have much opportunity for games or sports. Percovich is trying to open a skatepark, Skateistan, so the kids have a safe place to practice.

Percovich is also thinking ahead to when the girls he’s teaching reach puberty and, according to local customs, are not allowed to be in a co-ed class. Skateistan will have separate facilities for girls; many families hope times will change, but realize change will not come quickly or easily.

We know sports and other after-school activities help kids grow into more productive and happy adults. In somewhere like Kabul, where barely have school supplies, much less playground equipment, programs like Skateistan could really make a difference.

At KangarooBoo, we support charities that make life better for children. One, City At Peace, provides a safe place for troubled teens to work through problems using the performing arts. Take a look through the charities we support. KangarooBoo donates a portion of your purchase to the charity of your choosing after checkout.