One of our favorite childhood memories is looking through toy catalogs and circling the ones we loved and hoped would arrive wrapped with a big bow. Flipping through the pages and dreaming about each item was a big part of the whole holiday experience – the anticipation of something wonderful. We want to give you that feeling again with our Jingle Holiday Gift Guide. We have been busy all year testing and evaluating to bring you this wonderful collection featuring more than 250 award-winning toys, games, books, family music and other unique finds. NAPPA Awards has been celebrating the best in family products for 30 years. This year’s selection includes products with positive messages of kindness, inclusion and community – products that celebrate diversity and uniqueness. This year, watching those smiles on our kids’ faces when they rip open their holiday gifts will be even more special. Happy Gifting!

Here’s what you’ll find inside:

  • Gifts with a Positive Message
  • Unique finds, including items perfect for those who love cozy and warm
  • Toys to spark imagination
  • Products that are all about creativity
  • Outdoor Fun
  • Book, music and games

We have great new NAPPA Award winners to share with you – something for every interest.

Digital Fun & Learning

Get ready for an adventure with the Let’s Roam App, great for curious kids and families. Explore like never before as you take on riddles, trivia, and photo challenges. The in-home educational scavenger hunts come in seven selectable-themes that transform your home into a world of creativity. Outdoor scavenger hunt tours allow families to discover any city, learning its history, and seeing remarkable sites. Every hunt comes with downloadable photos and built-in memory-making technology. $12.99, ages 3+.

TutorMe is an online tutoring platform for individual learners that provides 24/7 live, on-demand support in 300+ subjects with qualified tutors. Using their personalized approach, TutorMe helps students regardless of ability, resource, skill level or age not only improve academically but also gain support so they never feel lost. Prices vary, ages K-higher education.

Duolingo ABC is a free app that teaches children how to read. Developed by learning experts, the app includes over 300 fun, bite-sized lessons building on prior lessons and guides children on a step-by-step path to reading. Duolingo ABC is aligned with Common Core standards and is based on recommendations by the National Reading Panel. Ages 3-6.

Love Music

Get up and dance with Growing Up Great, an eleven song musical CD for children created during the pandemic. The songs are energetic and filled with sweet reminders about being kind. $9.99, ages 2-6.

“To Awaken the Sun” is an album of classical music recorded to take music into public schools, with CD sales benefiting the Oklahoma Foster Youth. An acclaimed cellist, Remy-Schumacher has created this album that is predominately instrumental – beautiful for all ages. $15.

The Seaper Powers Connecting to Animals album is all about our connection to animals, making friends, and how important it is to accept people for their differences. Sing along to Tropical House sounds, Reggae Beats, Calypso Rhythms, Jazzy notes and colorful vocals. $8.99, ages 4-17.

Mix Fun & Learning

In KidZ expands children’s knowledge of different countries and customs through fun memorable experiences. Chocked full of activities and games, kids will be able to share details about a country without having to get on a plane or get out their passport. Both the America box and Diwali box include interactive learning items, like language flashcards, puzzles, books, games, flags and more. 50/monthly or $49/per box, ages 2-11.

Loop Lab STEM Subscriptions are created by the folks at Mad Science to bring science enrichment home. Each box has a different theme and step-by-step instructions. $32.99/per box, ages 8-12.

MindLabs Energy and Circuits is a magical STEM learning tool for children that combines a digital app, physical cards and augmented reality in a fun and exciting approach to learning core science concepts. $24.95, ages 8-11.

Bring a miniature ecosystem home with Froggy’s Lair BioShere. Each one-gallon tank comes with bioactive sand, colored gravel, a piece of living bamboo and 2 African Dwarf Frogs. All you have to do is change water every three months and feed these swimming, hopping frogs two times per week. $69.95, ages 5+.

Orbital Velocity is a space-themed numerical strategy board game where players are rocket scientists. Game focuses on math, physics, and AI, introducing kids to the concept of decreasing orbital velocity (explained in the rulebook) and gross vs fine acceleration. $19.99, ages 10+.

For more product reviews, visit nappaawards.com

 

 

We’re excited to introduce you to entrepreneur and dad Jordan Weiner, the founder behind the 2020 NAPPA Award winning How to Be Good Behavioral Learning Kits.

Jordan Weiner with daughter Lauren Alexa.

We would love for our readers to get to know you better. Tell us a little about your daily life.

In addition to investing time daily in children’s educational businesses I also own Internet Consulting, Inc.  Working on these businesses aren’t work to me – it’s play. I am a single father, which is my most important job/love.  I truly live an American Dream fairytale life, which I am grateful to the core of my being.  Everyday I wake up and wonder how did I get to be so lucky in life, and I try and give back as much as possible.

One of my favorite parts of the job is seeing our illustrators bring our characters and products to life.  Knowing our work will help kids strengthen and expand life skills and self-worth.  The work is chicken noodle soup for my mind, heart, and soul.  Seeing and hearing the kids, parents, grandparents, teachers, nannies, babysitters, counselors, and therapists all say how much they love our materials makes getting all the details done fun.

What was your motivation behind launching this company and developing these behavior education kits?

How To Be Good For Santa was my daughter’s, Lauren Alexa Weiner’s, flash of genius when she was only 7 years old.  She was playing a SIM’s game and building an online bookstore when I asked her what some of the titles of her books where.  She rattled off some amazing titles such as “The Meaning of Life” and I forget most of the others … but when she said “How To Be Good For Santa” I immediately knew that it was a flash of genius because what kid doesn’t want to know the secrets for how to be good for Santa and what parent wouldn’t instantly by that product as long as it was truly top tier award winning materials that would genuinely help their kid(s) build life skills?

A few of my motivation goals for launching this business where to show my daughter that she has million dollar ideas, to help her learn real business in the business world, and to help her get into a top college by brining her idea to fruition.  Other core motivational goals are to genuinely help kids have fun learning to build life skills and making it easy for guardians to have access to award winning materials that help their kids live happy and wonderful lives.

I help a lot of businesses and people with Internet Consulting, Inc., which is what is funding How To Be Good For Santa and How To Be Good with Polly the Parrot (The Polly the Parrot product versions are for people that don’t believe in Santa and for the educational market).  By the time I die, I want to leave something truly humanitarianly beneficial behind – and what better way to invest time, money and my human resources than helping children build life skills and self-worth? The pay it forward returns are exponential.

Our products are amazing, with hand illustrated water colored animal characters that kids, parents/grand parents, teachers/educators, counselors/therapists, and everyone that sees them love.

Why do you think character development is so important for kids?

Helping children build life skills and self-worth provides a solid foundation for them to do well and feel good about who they are.  If we invest a little time, efforts and resources while the children are learning how to act it truly helps all stakeholders.  Knowledge is power.  Kids minds are sponges, by being a little proactive instead of reactive we can increase our children’s positive to negative ratio, helping them know how to be safe, how to act properly so the ongoing cause and effect is in a positive direction.  An evolutionary advantage humans have is the ability to create tools and pass knowledge down through our generations… so our children don’t have to recreate the wheel for experiences we know have already learned.  Investing time helping kids with their character development will pay exponentially in their lives as well as the lives they influence.

What do you enjoy doing when not working?

I love raising my daughter, spending quality time with my family and friends.  Playing any type of game, watching quality movies, I love to cook and feed the people in my life, I used to love to travel but the pandemic put a stop to that for a while.

Favorite place to be with your family?

Anywhere as long as I am with family and friends.  I’ve done everything from parachute to scuba dive and try all types of experiences in my life’s journey.  I truly appreciate the nuances of life and living in the moment, the where and what are not as important as the with who.

Best life advice?

One of my characters Georgey the Gerbil who specializes in greeting people nicely sums up my best advice in life “Run through life happy and free while treating others with dignity!”  A couple other Jordanisms are everyone goes through ups and downs and you must make it through the lows to get to the highs.  Positive actions usually get positive reactions and negativity usually gets negative responses so for your own best interest it is best to be kind to others.  I also believe that you can only do so much with your own hands and thoughts and that to truly leverage yourself and ideas in life you need to work well with others by building a strong relationships with quality people. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and/or admit to being wrong.  Live to learn and enjoy the ride, you only go through this life once so try and be kind and help everyone, so you don’t have any regrets.

Best advice for dads?

Say and do positive things for the kids, role model how you want your kids to act, and most important is time on task… spend as much time with your kids as possible and they will turn out knowing they were loved and be good humans.

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