The Playful Chef set includes 10 kid-sized cooking tools, one toolbelt apron and five healthy hands-on recipes, all packed in a backpack for easy storage. The Chef gives children safety tips, color-coded measurements, 10-step instructions and 11 illustrated learning lessons. It also helps them learn how to plan a healthy meal, shop for nourishing ingredients and cook with the right tools. This cooking kit received a 2007 iParenting Media Outstanding Product Award and was selected for Dr. Toy’s Best Products Resource Program Spring 2007. Launch date: November 2006.
— Lots of companies make cooking toys and accessories, but Playful Chef was awarded a TDmonthly Top Toy 2007 award for giving kids a chance to try to their hand at the real thing. With authentic tools, recipe guides and a sturdy apron, this quality set prepares children for a true chef’s experience in the kitchen, including attention to safety.

Where to Buy: The Satin Button

The kit provides parents with an interactive and fun way to teach young children social skills. Each kit includes 11 pages of parental instruction, 33 ready-to-go kid activities, games, art projects, discussion lists, two tear-out play-sheets for each activity and a CD-ROM of kid activities. Launch date: January 2008.

This clever party planner helps kids learn how to be creative, organized and socially skilled. It is designed for parents to use with younger children, or for older children to use on their own. The kit includes five tear-out, party-planning lists and a CD-ROM of party activities. Launch date: January 2008.
— The kit “includes a CD-ROM of party lists so kids and parents can use them over and over again,” Playful Life CEO and Founder Lisa Ligon told TDmonthly.

This set features five educational recipes in beautiful holiday colors and comes wrapped in a festive red raffia bow. It includes recipes for Chinese New Year’s Fortune Cookies, Mexican Christmas Punch, Passover Matzo Brei Breakfast, Kwanza Creole Bread Pudding and Indian Diwali Delights, as well as a Playful Helper towel and a Chinese good luck red envelope. “The focus is on holidays and traditions from cultures around the world, hopefully inspiring an appreciation for your own family's traditions as well as an understanding of the fun activities that other families do,” President Lisa Ligon of Playful Life told TDmonthly. Launch date: October 1, 2007.