Gift Ideas for Tots and Preschoolers...

Hi Friends,

Our sweet Abby just celebrated her 2nd birthday and she LOVES the toys she received so much that I just had to recommend them. We've been really into classic wooden toys lately (love Melissa and Doug!) as well as old fashioned educational toys. Fortunately, we have a wonderful parent-teacher resource center in the area where we can borrow toys and educational products. Whenever I borrow something she loves, I just add it to her Amazon wishlist and send it out to family members for birthdays and around Christmas time.

She loves these toys and she is able to play with them independently (yes!) while I work with Rachel on something more academic or while I'm simply reading her a story.

~Catherine

Giving Goats

For the MFW goat lessons we read several books, but two go nicely together. They are:
Beatrice's Goat by Page McBrier
Give a Goat by Jan West Schrock

Beatrice's Goat brought tears to my eyes. It is a story of how out of out abundant blessings, we can give a gift that will have a great change in the life of someone less fortunate. Give a Goat is about a classroom whose teacher read them Beatrice's Goat. The book inspired the class to raise money to buy a goat for someone like Beatrice.

I wish I would have thought of this early, but it would be a wonderful experience to read these books as a family and to set a goal to buy a goat for another family. We could set up a little glass jar with a goat picture on it to save money for the goat.

Give a Goat mentions how to go about the process, but I think I would prefer to give the goat through a Christian organization, like World Vision. As of yet, I have not looked into World Vision very much. I am not sure how much of the money goes to directly help other people. However, I assume that when you donate to buy a goat, that someone actually gets a goat, though I want to make sure that is absolutely true.

Does anyone know of any other Christian organizations that would be good for this? Or know more about World Vision?