Summer vacation has started, and parents across the nation are scrambling to find entertaining activities to occupy their children.
It won't be long though before all of the movies will have been watched, all the parks and swimming pools visited, and boredom will start to settle in. Not that our job as parents is to keep our kids entertained, but planning meaningful activities throughout the week definitely helps reduce the amount of sibling bickering and fighting.
After the small fortune that my kids made recently picking cherries and selling them on our sidewalk, they were eager to spend their hard-earned profits. My folks gave one of my kids a Webkinz toy for her birthday a few weeks ago, and so my son wanted one as well.
My kids have fallen in love with Webkinz. They frequently come up and tell me what they did with their pet online, what they learned, what they bought, what they taught their pet. It's as close to really owning a pet that I have seen yet.
I have never been more impressed with a toy as much as I am with Webkinz by Ganz (even more than Nintendogs). They're little stuffed animals that each come with a unique ID that can be entered on webkinz.com to create a personalized and secure pet management account.
Your child can give his pet a name and do all kinds of fun activities that will do more than just entertain. Ganz claims that more than 2 million units have been sold to retailers and 1 million users have registered on the Webkinz site, where kids can create lively domiciles for the virtual versions of their animal, shop for pet paraphernalia, and chat with fellow Webkinz owners.
I asked my kids what they liked to do the most with their Webkinz, and here's what they said:
"I like to dress my pet."
"I like to play games with my pet, and she tells me when he gets tired and yawns so I know to let her rest for a while."
"I like to play games with my pet and win money and cool stuff for my pet's room."
As a dad, I love the interactivity they built into these pets, and the fun that they have with them online. But I also dig that they actually get tired after a while and you have to let them rest. That's like having a built-in timer feature, which helps ensure that your kids don't spend too much time in front of the computer screen.
I also like the online safety factor. The only way to communicate with another Webkinz owner, is if you already know someone with an account, which limits the prospect for interactions with new people. And more importantly, you're limited to pre-defined things that you can say to other Webkinz users. That way I don't have to worry about someone saying something inappropriate to my kids while they're playing online.
You'll probably find that Webkinz are already sold out at your local toy store, but you can still get them online. Amazon
