Kids love tracing. My daughter will set there filling page after page, tracing numbers and letters. In an attempt to save a few trees, I got her a dry-erase book for copying her letters and numbers. Which works pretty well until she forgets to clean it or the pen dries out or her baby brother gets ahold of the marker and tries to eat it.

Even better? The LeapFrog Scribble & Write…

I received a review sample of the Thomas and Friends Great Race Game several months ago. I finally had a chance to test it on a rainy afternoon when a friend and her children visited. Her 3 year-old and her 5 year-old played happily for several hours.

Learning to recognize different coins and understanding their value is an essential part of the preschool and the kindergarten curriculum.

Parents can use coins to introduce math concepts like sorting and counting. You can help your child learn to identify coins and their value while teaching them to save money using Coin County: A Bank in a Book, an award-winning book by Innovative Kids.

Calendars and schedules are such an integral part of adult life, but understanding concepts like days of the week, months of the year and the seasons can be difficult for young children. Without a strong understanding of how the calendar works, it can be tough for a preschooler to understand concepts like exactly how long daddy will be away on a business trip or when his class is visiting the zoo.

Your kids will learn calendar skills at preschool or kindergarten, but you can give them a headstart with the “My Week” calendar from 2fishkids.