This week I took along Aquadoodle. When you fill the small pen with water and draw on the mat, it gets wet and turns your markings blue. The mat is large enough for more than one child to pay with, though it only comes with one pen, so I may need to go purchase another as I tend to be in homes with multiple children! This mat is recommended for children ages 2 and up.

Parents have been loving this large mat simply because no matter what else kids try to color on with the pen, it leaves absolutely NO MESS other than drops of WATER! Once you wet the mat it does take a bit for it to dry, but since I have about 20 minutes in my car between visits, it’s usually pretty dry after that timeframe.

Here are some developmental ideas for this Aquadoodle Mat:

- Encourage your child to draw simple lines, curves and shapes after you draw them first

- Draw pictures and encourage them to use their language to guess the picture

- Draw half of a picture (left side) and have your child draw the other side (right side)

- I’ve even used this as a system where during mealtimes we draw a picture of what the child will eat first, followed by what they will eat next. This is a great way to get those picky eater kiddo’s to try something new first, when they can earn a few bites of something they really like after!

- When drawing children can lie on their tummies to develop more strength or the mat can be hung up on a wall to provide a portable easel. It can also be rolled for storage and is lightweight for travel.

- Older children may enjoy drawing a person, copying letters, writing numbers, making dot to dots or creating mazes!

Spinmaster provided this Aquadoodle Mat free for the purpose of this review. The opinions expressed in this post are purely the bloggers own.

The Clay Center with Play-Doh comes with LOTS of items that include: rolling pins, scissors, molds, stampers, extruders, body part pieces, sculpting tools and 4 cans of Play-Doh in its own tool kit.

So how does the Clay Center with Play-Doh help with Back to School? Easy, use it to help your child review their skills before they return in the Fall:

- Any smooshing, squeezing, pinching and pulling will help rev those hand muscles back into shape for better endurance during pencil/paper tasks

- For preschoolers, use the body part pieces to review body part awareness by making a person. Encourage them to draw a person after they have made their own Play-Doh person to reinforce the positioning of head, body, feet, arms, etc.

- Roll out the putty into long “snakes,” using the scissors with a “thumbs up” position, cut the snakes up into several pieces to get those hands ready for scissor cutting control!

- If you have older children who know their letters, encourage them to make different letters with the Play-Doh, have an alphabet strip nearby from them to look at to help their memory, or push the playdoh onto a letter tracing card.

- Use the purple sculpting tools and hold them in a tripod fashion (using thumb, index and middle finger) with a good grasp and draw letters or words into the Play-Doh.

I would also recommend adding some Ziploc bags to this kit to help keep some of the smaller pieces sorted. If this kit ever got dumped over, the pieces would be everywhere!

Make sure to check out the Constructive Playthings website for other back to school and learning toys.

The GIVEAWAY this month is a Clay Center with Play Doh for one lucky person!

Mandatory Entry-

1. For a mandatory entry go to www.toyqueen.com and click through the blue Constructive Mom button on the right hand side to enter the Constructive Playthings website.  Leave a comment under this post about another great back to school toy that you saw on the Constructive Playthings website. Remember, anytime you click through to the website using this button, you will get 15% off your entire purchase!

Extra Credit Entries- Make sure to leave a comment under this post if you complete any of the following.

1. Follow @ConstructiveMom and @Toyqueen on Twitter

2. Like Constructive Playthings on Facebook and ToyQueen on Facebook

This Giveaway will end on Wednesday August 18th at 11:59 p.m. EST

I received products from Constructive Playthings in return for review. All opinions are my own.