As a mom and an educational consultant, I believe in the power of play. A few carefully chosen toys can boost creativity and problem solving–here are a few of our top picks this year. With the best educational toys, your children will not even realize how much they are learning!

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…

As LeapFrog Summer Reading Ambassadors, we’ve been showing off the LeapFrog TAG and TAG Junior systems at schools, libraries, and playgroups in our area.

When I reviewed the LeapFrog TAG last year, I was impressed. As an educational consultant, I believe the TAG system is a great example of technology that genuinely engages kids in learning. Download classic stories onto the reading pen and children can listen to the whole story, hear individual words, and play games. Using the TAG helps build reading comprehension and fluency.

When I’m not with my family or obsessively shopping on the Internet, I’m an educational consultant. And I was just named one of Education.com’s JustAsk Experts. Education.com has some amazing resources, including a community, articles, and plenty of activities.

My daughter and I signed up for the Summer Activities Challenge–just complete 20 activities by August 31, 2009, and you’ll get a certificate of achievement and even be entered to win some prizes.

You can make summer a fun, educational time for your kids. Prevent summer learning loss with “stealth” educational activities.

If your kids enjoy playing video games and being online, introduce them to the All Star Buddies. Moms Caryn Burns and Cindy Prince started www.allstarbuddies.com in order to close the gap between websites that were created for entertainment and those developed for education.

Is your child entering kindergarten or pre-school in the fall? Teach letter recognition over the summer using two fun, educational resources: How to Build an A and the LeapFrog – Letter Factory.

Learning to spell can be as easy as ABC.

Lionsgate sent us the LeapFrog Talking Words Factory and this DVD is now my 2.5 year old daughter’s top pick for her daily video…

I wasn’t bored much growing up. On rainy days and lazy Saturday afternoons, I’d be engaged in some craft project or interesting game. My mother, a teacher, has a gift for finding and organizing fun activities on a moment’s notice. Now that I’m a mom, I appreciate how easy she made it all look.

Some organized moms dedicate entire closets to craft supplies and keep file folders full of craft-ideas clipped from magazines and newspapers on-hand. But if that’s not your style, you can still entertain and educate your children with the fabulous art kits from Eye Can Art.

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.