CSC Giveaway: Wiggle Giggle Learn

This contest is now closed. Thanks to all who entered.

I often find myself home with Little AG, wanting to help her learn and to expand her mind, but in all honesty, not knowing what things I can do to facilitate that. I often wished that someone would just give me a list of things to do so that I could do them with her and KNOW that what I was doing was helpful. Thankfully, there is a program out there called Wiggle Giggle Learn that does exactly that.

We recently received a learning program from Wiggle Giggle Learn for Little AG and I love it. It has lesson plans for each week of their life for 2 years! We received the 12-36 month CD, and though Little AG is already 18 months, when we run out of things to do, I dig back into the older lesson plans and we pull some of the activities from them. All of the activities can be done in less than 15 minutes per day, so even busy parents will get good use out of Wiggle Giggle Learn. We have already used so many of the activities, like keeping a stack of books in the car next to her car seat so that she can look through them as we drive along, or creating a box on the floor out of masking tape and teaching her the difference between "inside" and "outside" of the box. I love having the structure that Wiggle Giggle Learn provides, yet being able to pursue the curriculum at my own pace provides me with the flexibility to fit our schedule.

Wiggle Giggle Learn was developed by a Master Teacher (A Certified Teacher - much like you would be a board certified doctor, lawyer, etc) of early childhood education who has taught kindergarten for 15 years. Wiggle Giggle Learn was proud to be named as a top ten finalist (out of 5,500 applicants) for the Seeds for Success: Empowering women entrepreneurs grant given by Yahoo! Small business and Carolyn Kepcher’s (formerly Donald Trump’s assistant) new firm, Finding What Matters.

You can view sample plans on the Wiggle Giggle Learn Website. All of the activities are created so that they require very few materials beyond what is already in your home. The program also teaches you how and in what order babies and toddlers learn, so you have reasonable expectations for progress. My favorite part about Wiggle Giggle Learn is that it's not just about learning, it's about fostering a love of learning, which is a lifelong benefit to your child.

Wiggle Giggle Learn has different packages to fit each budget and each child. You can also purchase all of the Wiggle Giggle Learn products a la carte, if you so desire.

Oh, and who doesn't like FREE! Wiggle Giggle Learn offers free information and parenting tips on their site Learning Early Site so be sure to stop by and check it out! It's chock full of great ideas!

Win it! Tracey Stuckey, of Wiggle Giggle Learn has graciously offered to give away The Ultimate CD Package -- a $216 value -- to one lucky CSC reader! This package includes plans for each child in the family under 5 years old!

The Ultimate package:
Includes...
2 years of weekly activity plans
25 nursery rhymes
18 finger plays
60 vocabulary word cards
20 family field trip cards
9 behavior plan charts
30 reward tickets
Kindergarten readiness checklist
Early childhood teacher support at any time

To enter to win this package -- just follow the easy peasy rules below!

• Visit Learning Early and come back here to leave a comment on this post telling me one thing you learned or tip you'd like to share.
  
• Earn extra credit! You may do these for extra entries.
• Blog about this giveaway and send me the link in a separate post.
• Subscribe to my feed and let me know about it in a separate post.
• Stumble my main webpage (not this post please, but www.chicshopperchick.com) and leave me your Stumble Upon name in a separate post.
• Favorite Chic Shopper Chick on Technorati. There is a button in my right sidebar, and let me know about it in a in a separate post.
• Add me to your blog roll. Not just my button in your sidebar, I'd love to be on your blog roll! Let me know about it in a separate post!

That's it! Good luck! Oh, and the official rules and legal jargon are below.

US entries only, winner will be chosen via random.org at the end of the contest. Winners are posted here and on Prizey Fetch, please leave a valid email address or blog address if you'd like to be contacted should you win. Winner has 72 hours to claim their prize. This contests ends at 11:59 pm CST on September 5th, 2008.

Watch out, she bites!

So we've had some, urm, issues with Little AG lately. In all of her 18 month old glory she has started biting people. Usually me, actually. For a while I felt completely helpless. I knew she was doing it out of frustration based on the actual moments when it happened, but I knew there was no way to reason with her being that her ability to reason is a ZERO on a scale of one to ten -- you know, what with her being a baby and all.

We talked to a friend of ours who works in Child Development and she suggested that we start a quick 2 minute time out system for Little AG that would teach her that the behavior is not acceptable. We follow each time out with a positive activity, like reading a book, dancing, or singing a song so that she learns (hopefully) that we are able to deal with issues but move on.

She has quickly learned that she needs to sit still for the duration of the 2 minutes, but we are having trouble establishing a place for her in our house that doesn't come with distractions. That is why I think that this Time Out Pad by Keen Distribution is an awesome idea.

The Time Out Pad is pressurized -- so it knows when the child gets up and pauses the countdown as well as sounding a little alarm and flashing a red light so both the child and caregiver realize that the timeout is not yet complete. When the child sits back down the Time Out resumes until it is completed. Most experts recommend one minute for each year of the child's life (so I guess we should REALLY be doing a minute and a half then), and the child can see the time being counted down on the pad itself.

We have only been doing these timeouts for a week, but her behavior has dramatically improved and we've only had to do 3 timeouts, so my outlook is rather positive about her behavior. However, timeouts seem like a good parenting option to me, so I think that the Time Out Pad is something we would benefit from.

The Time Out Pad is still a work in progress but will be available soon. I'll keep you updated here but you can also check out Keen Distribution's website for details.

What do you think? Do you use timeouts with your children? Is the Time Out Pad something you would use?