When you live in the North East, holiday gifts are even more important than you can imagine. You see, after the New Year, you are pretty much guaranteed that you will have at least a dozen days when you will be stuck indoors, without the ability to leave for even five minutes, thanks to the snow gods.
Yes, you can go outside. If you have the energy to bundle everyone up, (20 minutes), only to be told that someone needs to use the bathroom (10 minute undress/redress), at which point you finally make it outside, when (5 minutes later) someone is cold and wants to go inside. At this point, when you are sweating your butt off, and have created an entire load of laundry for five minutes of “play” you may be thinking never again.
I reiterate, holiday gifts are of extreme importance. They need to keep your children happy, and occupied, for more than 5 minutes ALL WINTER LONG! Therefore, I put a lot of thought into my purchases. Today, I got one of my fabulous purchases in the mail, and as I was about to put them in my closet, I decided that my kids needed this new toy. Today!
I got the Milliwik Splashimals Floating Playing Cards, and they are amazing! I threw the kids in their bathing suits (I knew I wanted to blog about these cards – and to be honest, it makes it a little more exciting for them!) and poured extra bubbles in the bath and told them that they had a “present!” (Squeals prevailed at this point!)
P, my little man who is almost 4, was beyond excited. He kept asking me “Can I get these wet??” At this point he was already in the bath, so um, yeah… His first instinct was to find the matches to create animals. (There are 30 cards that form 30 common animals and many, many more unique ones). I actually thought it was pretty great that he was doing that because the cards split the word in half and this is a great way to work on phonics with my pre-reader.
See… “ze – bra” (FYI I found this image from another mom’s review of these cards…thanks Google!)
When I told him it would be really funny to put a monkey’s head on a turtle’s heiny, he just about lost it. He was quite the comedian coming up with different combinations and sharing them. Combining the octopus’ bottom with any head produced many “ewwwws”!
We seriously spent about an hour in the bathroom, and even Bean, at 18 months, could not get enough of these cards. The fact that they “magically” stick to the wall was enough to keep her interest. She would gather them all up and then place them all around, take them
down, and repeat.
I seriously LOVE these cards. They were so much fun and my kids got to spend an hour playing together, while learning and getting clean. Does it get any better than that?! Plus, the cards come in a mesh storage bag…perfect for drying out after you are done playing. I am going to pack these for our upcoming trip to Aruba. Sounds like fun in the kiddie pool!!
Milliwik has a few other varieties of cards and now I totally want to order more! Check out these awesome sets.
These are super cool! It’s a real standard set of cards! I want a set of these to use at the beach next summer! I don’t know why the tag says ages 2-11…it should say 2 – 111. Who wouldn’t want to relax with friends in the hot tub, with a glass of wine, and a good card game! (Am I aging myself?? Hey, when you have two kids following you around ALL the time, that is what a great night sounds like.)
Or these “Sum Bodies” floating cards. (Hehe 
) I like these because they come in three parts, so you can really create some hilarious combinations.
I kind of think the alien is cute with her little cupcake and ballet slippers.
So anyway, weather you will be stuck inside all winter long or not, I give these cards an A+ on the present meter, and at only $11-$13, these are the perfect stocking stuffer or gift topper. After you check them out, come back and leave comment with your thoughts. Do you love them as much as I do??
Published by Nancy Caron for ODIZ Baby Supply.
The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author.
