These Atlanta toy stores are the stuff of kid dreams. Stocked from floor to ceiling with the best gifts around, no matter what the occasion

Looking to get a jumpstart on your holiday shopping? Stop in to one of these local toy stores Atlanta kids and families can count on. Maybe it’s because they offer curated gifts with customer service that goes the extra mile. Or because no matter who you’re shopping for (or for what occasion) they’ve got STEM toys, puzzles, games, outdoor toys, and all the arts and crafts supplies you could dream of, plus a few more. The next time you need to find that just-right gift, these spots can take out the guess work.

Rhen's Nest Toy Shop

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This small but mighty shop with a location in Ponce City Market is filled with engaging toys, books, puzzles, and more to provide unplugged play for all ages. We particularly love the books with book character dolls and stuffed animals—the perfect partnership. Parents will love the fact this cute store always stocks the hottest gifts—the ones your kids can't wait to unwrap, no matter what the occasion. No matter what you're looking for—from ride-ons to fidgets to puzzles—you can find it here. Don't forget to browse the novelties section filled with the oddest gifts in town.

Good to Know: Rhen's Nest offers free shipping on orders over $100.

Ponce City Market
675 Ponce De Leon Ave. N.E.
Atlanta 
Online: rhensnesttoyshop.com

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Seed Factory

This boutique Atlanta toy store opened in 2002 and has grown from "Sprout" to a complete Seed Factory over the years. It's your go-to spot for a curated selection of smart and sustainable children's gifts. In the toy area (they sell amazing kids' clothing too), shelves are lined with books, wooden toys, puzzles, and the softest stuffed animals around. Everything here has a vintage feel—no bells, whistles, or blinking lights in sight. What you will find are trusted brands like Begin Again, Elm + Otter, and Jellycat that engage kids' imaginations while they play.   

763 Trabert Ave. N.W., Suite D
Atlanta
Online: seedfactoryatlanta.com

Kazoo Toys

Kazoo Toys is a full-service toy store in Buckhead with a full selection of high-quality toys, games, puzzles, and creative playthings. Excellent, friendly customer service means that you will walk away with thoughtful gifts for everyone on your list, from the athletes to the scientists—and everyone in between.

3718 Roswell Rd.
Atlanta
Online: kazootoysatlanta.com

Related: Light Up the Holidays with Locally Made Gifts

Learning Express

Though there are multiple Learning Express stores, this locally owned operation has kept a focus on filling its shelves with well-thought-out toys, crafts, construction sets, and more. Organized by age and interest, shopping is a breeze—especially with informed associates and inventory that's been tried and approved before making its way to the shelves. 

Good to Know: Learning Express offers a gift registry, which takes the guesswork out of holiday shopping for grandparents and extended family.

4407 Roswell Rd. N.E.
Atlanta
Online: learningexpress.com/buckhead

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Treehouse Kid & Craft

At Treehouse Kid & Craft, you'll find shelves stuffed with unique, kindly-made products from all around the world that encourage critical thinking, problem solving, and imaginative play. Treehouse is fueled by a love of design and a focus on quality. It's our go-to spot to find art supplies and gift options with endless creativity. Splurge-worthy Art Pantry packs include everything kids need to set up an complete art station (from ages 1-12), and the Box of Happy makes a great small, custom gift for any kid on your list. 

533 W. Howard Ave., Suite A
Decatur, GA 
Online: treehousekidandcraft.com

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Blabla Kids

Everyone's favorite cozy doll once had its own storefront in Atlanta, and it was filled with hand-knit dolls, decor, and baby clothes. These days, Atlanta families can find Blabla products at these local toy stores in Atlanta. Each is made with natural fibers, the softest cloth, and fair trade always. Blabla kids plants a tree for every doll sold.

Online: blablakids.com

Hoppy Easter, y’all! This year is bursting with Easter fun in and around Atlanta, from egg hunts to photos with The Bunny, brunches, blooms, and more. Keep reading for our favorite ways to spend Easter in Atlanta with kids, below.

Spend a Day in a Garden

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Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens
The State Botanical Garden is a 313-acre preserve set aside by UGA in 1968 for the study and enjoyment of plants and nature. It contains a number of specialized theme gardens and collections, more than five miles of nature trails, and four major facilities, including a tropical conservatory. There is also a 2.5-acre, accessible children's garden that contains a variety of fun, immersive locations—including a chestnut tree house, fossil wall, giant water-misting mushrooms, vegetable garden, a replica of a North Georgia cave, and more—all designed to be learned from, crawled through and touched. Details can be found here.

Gibbs Gardens in Ball Ground
Spring is in the air at Gibbs Gardens with millions of golden daffodils covering rolling fields. Stroll along paths, traverse hills, and wander through the woods to experience more than 220 acres of specialty gardens, including the Japanese and Waterlily Gardens. All tickets must be purchased online, and reservations are not required. Here's more info.

Dye Eggs Naturally at Atlanta Botanical Garden
Certain plants contain powerful dyes that create stunning colors. Head to ABG in this interactive program to learn more about these plants and decorate three vibrant eggs. This annual program has been modified to meet best practices for health and safety during the pandemic. Please read the Garden's procedures before attending, which can be found on the website and here.

Visit Smith-Gilbert Gardens in Kennesaw
Smith-Gilbert Gardens is composed of serene woodland paths that showcase more than 3,000 species just minutes from Kennesaw Mountain. Unique plantings and fascinating elements such as The Rose Garden, Bonsai Exhibit and waterfall area delight the senses in this designated wildlife habitat. Smith-Gilbert Gardens is open Tuesday through Saturday. Before your trip, review the garden's COVID-19 precautions. Pre-purchased timed tickets are required. Want more info? Click here.

Brunch or Photos with the Bunny

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Easter Bunny Photos in Alpharetta
The Easter Bunny returns to the Boulevard this spring! Refresh your photos and create memorable moments with vibrant new images of the family alongside the Easter Bunny at Avalon. Sessions will be available April 7-16 on select days. Easter Bunny at Avalon is located in Boulevard East, between Biltong Bar and Jeni's Ice Creams and appointments are walk-ups only. Click here for more info.

Easter Brunch in Piedmont Park with Egg Hunt 
Experience a delightful brunch set up with Chef attended stations complete with all your brunch favorites overlooking the Midtown Skyline & Piedmont Park. Guests ages 12 and under will enjoy a special visit from the Easter Bunny. The Easter egg hunts begin at noon. Details can be found here.

Hop & Hunt Bunny Brunch at Milton's Cuisine & Cocktails
The Easter Bunny is visiting Milton’s two times this year on Sunday March 20th & March 27th and wants you and your family to hop on down for a delicious brunch, photo opportunity and egg hunt in Milton’s Garden Acre! We have brunch seatings from 10am-3pm both Sundays and egg hunts will be held at 11:30am, 1:00pm and 2:30pm. Here's the scoop.

 

Egg-citing Egg Hunts

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Attend the Acworth Egg Hunt
Join the City of Acworth and Freedom Church at the Acworth Egg Hunt at the Acworth Sports Complex baseball fields. Face masks are strongly encouraged. Please do not attend if you or your children are feeling unwell or exhibit cold or flu symptoms. Only one parent per child will be allowed on the egg hunt fields. The egg hunt is divided into five age groups. To mitigate crowd sizes and maintain social distance, hunts will occur in 30 minute increments to allow each age group time to clear the area. Hunts will alternate between fields. Here's all you need to know.

Hop-A-Long Scavenger Hunt at Avalon
Head to the Concierge to check-in and meet your special story book character scavenger hunt leaders. Then, hop down the Boulevard as you collect Easter egg clues to find the Easter Bunny and other special surprises. Contact Avalon Concierge for advance tickets, as they're limited. Find out more, here.

Easter Egg Hunt at Smith-Gilbert Gardens
Enjoy fun and games, stories and crafts, pictures with the Easter Bunny, and an egg hunt, then explore the gardens and visit the newly renovated Gift Shop and Art Gallery. Your family will make memories for a lifetime. Advance tickets are required. Here's the scoop.

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Can you believe that Maisy the Mouse was published three decades ago? Lucy Cousin’s iconic children’s book character is ready to turn the big 3-0 and Candlewick Press has plans to celebrate.

Cousin’s books have long entertained children, parents and educators with simple stories and visual humor. With over 45 million books in print, including a variety of formats, Maisy continues to encourage a love of reading.

Candlewick Press’s celebration of Maisy includes activities that include a robust activity kit, updated First Experience brochure for educators, downloadable sheets and expanded resources for educators. Parents can also find tons of free Maisy and friends activities on maisyfunclub.com.

The 2021 publishing program includes a robust list of titles which exemplify the breadth and variety of Maisy, designed to keep preschoolers engaged and excited. Titles include:

You can introduce your young readers to Maisy with the newly published Happy Birthday, Maisy to celebrate on her actual big day––Feb. 10. Don’t forget to pick up Maisy’s Chinese New Year and Maisy’s Moon Mission, as the adorable mouse learns abut Chinese New year objects and learns about space in her interactive board format.

––Karly Wood

 

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Ready or not, here comes Clifford! The big red dog is coming to the big screens on September 17, along with beloved pal Emily Elizabeth, in a live action movie.

Paramount Pictures is giving us a first look at this larger than life pup with the drop of the official trailer. It’s rated PG and will be exclusively in theaters. Back to school season just got more fun!

 

Middle schooler Emily Elizabeth (Darby Camp) meets a magical animal rescuer (the one and only John Cleese) who gifts her a red puppy. But that puppy is about to turn into a giant ten-foot dog and fill the family’s small apartment in New York City. While Mom (Sienna Guillory) is away for business, Emily teams up with zany uncle Casey (Jake Whitehall) for an adventure in the Big Apple. Based on the beloved Scholastic book character, Clifford will teach the world how to love big!

—Jennifer Swartvagher

Featured photo: Paramount Pictures

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Photo: Annie Tlusty

With the freedom of outdoor summer fun waning and the school year quickly approaching, are you lying awake at night wondering what school might look like for your family? Will you be trapped at home with distance learning? Or will your kids be going back to school? When you hear that kids, as young as 3, will be required to wear face masks at their school and daycare this year, do you think “Masks? I can’t even get my kid to wear shoes!”?

You aren’t alone. Just take a breath, because you’ve got this. As a parent, this is the kind of challenge you deal with all the time. And we know it’s essential if we want to keep safe, stop the spread of the virus, and have things get back to something approaching normal and as a parent, you know there is always something you need your kid to do that they don’t want to do. It’s part of your job keeping your child safe and healthy.

The advice we read on the parenting blogs, hear from our pediatricians, and our mom friends is always the same…be creative. Invite them to take ownership. And don’t turn it into a power struggle. Like with vegetables, we’re told to engage them in gardening or food preparation and they will enthusiastically eat what they grow or make. When you bring them into the process and give them ownership of the process, they happily embrace it. You can use this same theory to get them to wear a mask. I have seen it work with my own child and others!

Here are some ideas to try if your kids are struggling with wearing a mask:

1. Explain: Use non-threatening and age-appropriate language to tell your child why they need to wear a mask. For example, tell her that when we cough, sneeze, or even breathe too close to someone else, our germs can travel from our body to someone else. Even if our own germs don’t make us sick, they can make someone else sick. We don’t want to spread our germs to our friends, neighbors or teachers. Masks help keep those germs from spreading.

2. Make It Fun: Allow your child to choose from a selection of colorful and kid-friendly masks. Kids are more likely to wear something they find fun or appealing. And if they pick it out themselves, they will have a sense of ownership and independence. Put a mask on a favorite doll or stuffed animal. Draw one on their favorite book character. Point out that superheroes wear masks. Maybe they want to wear a cape with their mask!

3. Engage: Involve them in the process: If you are crafty, help them sew or make their own mask. There are many tutorials for simple masks online.

4. Decorate: Give them a simple blank mask that they can decorate with fabric markers. They can even make or decorate masks for the whole family to wear, building a sense of “team spirit.”

5. Empathize: No one actually likes wearing a mask. You can say, “It’s frustrating that we have to wear masks,” or “I’m sad too that we have to do this.” Show your child pictures of other children or superheroes wearing masks. And of course, make sure they know we are all in this together by wearing your own mask.

6. Rules: Let them know that wearing a face mask is a rule right now. Explain that we often have rules in place to keep each other safe. Like looking both ways before you cross the street. You can show them the signs at the entrance to most buildings or businesses.

7. Togetherness: We really are all in this together. If your family finds this challenging, you can be sure you are not alone. When your child gets to school and sees the other kids wearing masks, they will be more likely to go along.

8. Change It Up: What works one day with your child, may not work the next. Be creative, try different things. And by all means, reward your child with lots of hugs and togetherness. Wearing a mask can make a person feel disconnected. Reward them with quiet time together coloring or reading.

9. Don’t Stress: We are all at least a little overwhelmed right now, which is not the best recipe for good parenting. Just make sure to take a little time for yourself to destress every day. Our kids are more likely to listen when we are patient and calm.

If you have your own ideas or stories from the trenches, please share them with us or tag #BringItMasks on Facebook or Instagram.

Sources:
www.healthychildren.org

www.childrensmercy.org

 

 

 

An artist and designer, I left a career as Hollywood set decorator for a new creative pursuit, motherhood. Having a child reconnected me with the joy of making things and recently, that has meant masks. BringIt! organic cotton face masks are designed to be comfortable, breathable and beautiful in 3 sizes for the whole family.

You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly use it to make some super, silly Instagram posts. If you haven’t yet discovered the bookface trend on Instagram, you’re going to want to stop everything and search the hashtag now. You’ll never look at a book the same way again.

Creating a bookface post involves holding a book cover featuring a head or face in front of your own to make it appear that your body is the book character’s body. While the trend extends to adult titles as well, Instagram user BookFaceKids has the best collection of kids books. No amount of words can really do justice to how hilarious and magnificent #bookface is, so we’ve rounded up a few of the best examples.

Fancy Nancy

No, David

Grumpy Monkey

Clever Tom and the Leprechaun

Woke Baby

Elephant & Piggie

For more awesome bookface creations check out the BookFaceKids Instagram feed.

—Shahrzad Warkentin

Featured photo: BookFaceKids via Instagram

 

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Who is the most inspirational children’s book character of all time? According to a recent survey of 2,000 parents conducted by UK-based book store The Works, the number one kids’ lit pick is none other than the magical Harry Potter.

J.K. Rowling’s now-iconic young wizard was voted to the top spot, above some pretty classic characters. So who followed Potter to the front of the list of inspirational fictional friends?

photo: Harry Potter via YouTube

Second place went to Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Charlie Bucket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory took third and another Potter fave, Hermione Granger, made the list in fourth place. Along with these children’s book characters, parents also voted Mary Poppins, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Paddington Bear, Willy Wonka and Peter Rabbit into the top 10.

As if your child hasn’t already gotten enough “Wizarding World” already, Rowling recently announced the release of four new eBooks just in time for the summer. Based on the audiobook Harry Potter: A History of Magic, the first two volumes debut on Jun. 27.

—Erica Loop

 

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From the soccer carpool to the never-ending assortment of mismatched socks, sometimes there are days when you’ve only got a few seconds (or 140 characters) to get in a good giggle. Well, sit back and get ready to scroll because we’ve scoured the Twitterverse for moms and dads that rap about the highs and lows of parenting, and the results are hilarious.

1. Really? Ugh.

2. We are now equals.

3. Great example…

4. On second thought, pass the hand sanitizer.

5. Such imagination.

6. When you  need to fight for your daughter’s affection…

7. Gotta love last minute notice.

8. The struggle is real.

9. Ooh… Someone’s in trouble.

10. Ouch.

 

Do you have any #funnyparenting moments to share with the Red Tricycle Community? Tell us in the comments below! 

— Noelle Buckband