Happy Valentine’s Day!

Below are a few fun Valentines Day activities for kids, as well as Valentine’s Day color pages that can be used as an entry into our Color for iPods giveaway this month! We’re having loads of fun pinning kid’s Valentines on Pinterest as well. Join in by pinning your kid’s Valentines creations! Just mention @piikeastreet and we’ll include it on our board.

Valentine’s Day Coloring Pages

Here are some free Valentine’s Coloring Pages. These pages can be entered in our monthly Color for iPods contest, you could win an iPod Touch just by coloring one of these!

Other Valentine’s Activities for Kids

And here are some fun robot valentines for you to make: Robot Valentines

My First Studio recently released four, that’s right four, awesome new music apps. They are innovative new music apps unlike all the ones that are out now that are more or less the same. You can tell these apps were made by musicians who care about music and the ways they’re teaching their kids about it. From their website:

“The way people write and create music has undergone a renaissance over the past decade. My First Studio is about reflecting this in how we teach our children to think about music making.”

Let’s take a quick look at some of them.

My favorite is Bubble Pedals. It allows kids to take samples and apply a couple effects to them while they loop. I confess I probably use this one more than my daughter does but we have a lot of fun together making beats and saying silly things.

My daughter’s favorite is probably Beak Box, it is a simple beat maker using cute little chicks that happen to be awesome beat boxers. It is very simple for kids to use.

The other two we admittedly haven’t played with much but that’s mostly because we’re so into the others. Play Box is a fun little sandbox of instruments and sounds that is sure to be loads of fun for the littler tykes. Scribble Synth we haven’t gotten yet but it looks totally tubular, you get to draw lines and it converts them to sounds.

All-in-all an impressive debut by a promising developer. The art and technical quality here is top-notch, definitely a developer to keep an eye on!

Kids Learning Station –

A collection of free, printable worksheets appropriate for preschool and kindergarten-aged kids. With these worksheets, kids will learn to recognize letters and numbers, shapes and colors. They will also begin learning basic math and phonics.

DLTK’s Growing Together –

A variety of educational activities and teaching ideas. This website has everything from a collection of coloring sheets from kids’ favorite books to number and alphabet worksheets. For parents or teachers, the site also includes bulletin board ideas.

Enchanted Learning –

A wealth of educational resources for kids of all ages. Enchanted learning includes worksheets, activities and even printable books. With printouts from Enchanted Learning, kids can practice their Spanish, learn about different flags from around the world, learn music, study astronomy, inventors, animals and nature.

NASA Kids’ Club –

Space-centered activities for the budding astronaut. NASA Kids’ Club is an interactive, engaging, kid-friendly website where kids can explore space and even browse real pictures of  earth taken from space! Computer savvy kids will love NASA Kids’ Club. Younger kids can enjoy the space activities as well, with the help of a parent.

Chinese New Year is the most important traditional Chinese holiday and is celebrated by millions of people all over the world. It is a 15-day celebration ending with a Lantern Festival on the day of the full moon and is thus often called the Lunar New Year. For many people of Chinese descent living in other countries, it is a fun time to celebrate their culture and to teach and share it with their children and those around them.

Some staples of Chinese New Year celebrations are: great feasts, firecrackers, lion dances, dragon parades, and the giving of red envelopes that contain money or treats. Red is the color of joy and symbolizes virtue, truth, and sincerity so you will see lots of red things.

Here are some fun Year of the Dragon goodies for you:

2012 Year of the Dragon coloring page (You can enter this coloring page in a contest to win an iPod Touch!)
2012 Year of the Dragon iPad wallpaper
2012 Year of the Dragon iPhone wallpaper

And here are some special crafts for you:

Dancing Dragon Craft

Red Envelope Craft

Here’s a video of the amazing Lion Dance

And the Dragon Dance:

Here are some other fun things for Chinese New Year:

Check out Activity Village for some great Crafts and Coloring Pages

Kaboose has lots of great Chinese New Year Crafts and recipes

Here is a great list of kids books about Chinese New Year

With this craft you can do your own dragon dance!

Color and cut out the dragon head. You can also cut out the parts and pieces and make your own dragon head!

Use construction paper or colored paper to make two long strips. Color them as you wish, you can even tape strips together to make them longer. Crepe paper works great for this as well. After you have your stips fold them in a zig zag pattern.

Tape or glue the strips to the back of the dragon head. Tape or glue a stick or straw to the middle of the back of the dragon and make it dance!

Download the Dragon Dance Craft

Chinese New Year 2012 is on January 23rd this year and to celebrate we’ve made a fun red envelope craft for you! In Chinese and other East Asian societies, a red envelope or red packet is given during holidays or special occasions. It typically contains money or a small gift.

Have fun and a Happy New Year!

Download the Red Envelope Dragon Craft

Parents should first set parameters for how the device can be used. Navigate to Settings>>General>>Restrictions on the device, set up a four digit access code, and choose from the following options:

• Allow access to certain features that connect directly to the Web, such as the Safari Web browser or Youtube

• Enable users to browse iTunes content, download apps, or make in-app purchases

• Restrict explicit language or set specific ratings restrictions for games, music, movies, and other content

• Manage access to Apple social networks such as Ping or Game Center

Second, there are hundreds of new apps added every day, each with differing features and content that will need to be evaluated closely before adding to your child’s smartphone. We’re proud to say the apps created at Pi’ikea Street encourage positive interactions and good behavior, making them a safe option for parents. They are designed to be extremely kid-friendly so that kids can use and discover them on their own without parents having to worry.

If you haven’t ventured very far into the app store yet, the best place to begin exploring is in the “Featured” section, which has a list of the newest apps and also “What’s Hot” (according to Apple). At the bottom of that page there is also a link to the “Education” and “Staff Favorites” sections, which bothhave great options for kids as well.

Another option for app discovery is to use the search bar to look for specific apps or app publishers.

The advantages of introducing mobile devices and apps to children can be both exciting andoverwhelming. We hope this post helps you with getting your child off to a great start.

To learn more about Pi’ikea Street’s apps for children, reference individual apps on the right, or head over to http://www.piikeastreet.com/apps/ for full details. Feel free to reach out to us on Facebook or Twitter and say hello! We’d love to hear from you!

We hope you’re having some wonderful times with your friends and family. Thanks for all your lovely reviews, emails, and coloring pages throughout 2011. They make every day a joy for us.

Through December 26^th, we are offering our brand new app, Counting Bees, for only 99 cents! We hope you enjoy this new addition to the Pi’ikea Street family, and our other apps as well through this holiday season. We would love to hear back from you on your thoughts.

If you’ve enjoyed our apps and would like to share them with friends or family, you can gift any of them in a couple different ways. First, we created a new gifting page that can be accessed from any web or iOS browser at http://piikeastreet.com/gift/.  Simply click or touch the one you want to gift and fill out the recipient form. You can add in their name, email address, and even a personal message!

If you are already in the app store on your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), search for “Counting Bees,” “Interactive Alphabet,” or “Memory Train.” You can also simply search for “Pi’ikea Street” to pull up a list of all of our apps. Scroll to the bottom of any app info page and click “Gift This App” to open up a quick form. Enter in the recipient’s information and you are good to go!

Again, thank you so much for being a big part of Pi’ikea Street through 2011. We are excited for what is to come in 2012, and hope to have your participation and thoughts along the way. Have a lovely and safe holiday celebration and a beautiful new year!

Duck skates by Lynne Berry and illustrated by Hiroe Nakata is one of our most favorite books. The story reads like a musical poem following five little ducks as they head out into the snow for many winter adventures. It is beautifully written and a blast to read. The illustrations by Hiroe Nakata are indredible (Hiroe actually deserves her own fave post, major illustrator crush going on here). The watercolor pictures are bright, beautiful and fun. Her skill is precise and deft yet retains a child-like quality that creates a most charming setting for this story. This book is one in a series of Duck books by Lynne and Hiroe and they are all great.

Perfect Soup by Lisa Moser and illustrated by Ben Mantle is the story of a mouse who sets out to make a pot of soup for a winter day. He finds that he is missing a key ingredient which sends him on an adventure in the snow to find it. Along the way he helps many friends and ends up making an unexpected friend to share his Perfect Soup with. Kids will love this story that focuses on helping and sharing. The theme of making soup also makes for a great activity to do with the kids after you read the book. This is a great book that’s as perfect on a winter day as a hot pot of soup.

Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner and illustrated by Mark Buehner is a whimsical imagining of just what those snowy sirs do while we’re sleeping. Follow the snowmen on all the winter shenanigans they get up to unbeknownst to us. The illustrations are fun and detailed and have many hidden images in them so it’s fun just to sit and look at this book.

Some runners up: I Like Winter, One Mitten, You Can Do It Sam

What are some of your favorite winter books?