AAA HOBBY SHOP for so many things - EASTER 2025

TODAY IN THE BRISK CLEAN BREEZE OF A NEW SPRING DAY, I DROVE OVER TO 705 N. WHITE HORSE PIKE, MAGNOLIA, NJ. I hadn't been to the AAA Hobby Shop in decades. My daughter is now 41 and she is the main one for whom I had shopped at AAA in the past. However, I have a nephew and I had bought him many things there as well, and I bought my father and my brother models there that they used to put together for my father's grandsons.

AAA Hobby Shop is my Santa's Workshop. They have EVERYTHING there. I bought my daughter's first set of trains there, and as she got older, her second set. And when she was a toddler, I bought bags of various kinds of animals for our potty training scheme. For anyone contemplating potty training (as my next door neighbors will be in a year or so) Here is a great idea! Of course you probably already know that the best training mode is positive reinforcement. Many parents make the mistake I think, of trainig with candy rewards. This is bad for their children's teeth and not a good way to encourage healthy food attitudes. The first great tip I got was from another mother at a party. She said she bought potty chairs at flea markets and put one in each room. My idea, in addition to this, was to make a wooden ark in my father's wood shop and I bought bags of different kind of animals at AAA Hobby Shop and whenever my daughter had a successfully potty event, she got two animals to put in her ark. My mother, in addition, bought her fancy panties with the days of the week on them, and I sewed her 12 little cotton print dresses to make it easy to get on the ptty. We bought the African wild animal assortment, the FArm animals, the ranch animals, woodland animals, and we even got creative and added some reptiles, dinosaurs and domestic pets. We had birds, too.

Many years later, I bought my daughter a radio controlled car there. This year, I went because my sister's grandson is 8 and spends far too much time on his IPad. He doesn't even want to walk around the farm anymore, where she lives, and visit the horses, cows, and alpacas. He used to love to do that.

These electronc games are stealing childhood. When he visits, he sits indoors captivated by video games on his IPAD. One thing he still loves, however, is Model Magic modeling material. So for his Easter Basket this year, I bought several packets of different colors of Model Magic and some cookie cutter shape cutters. AAA also has air drying clay! There are somany things there that would be great in an Easter Basket!

On one of my healthy living e-mail newsletters there were several suggestions of things to put in Easter Baskets with or instead of candy, jumping ropes, markers, bubbles, and depending on the age of the child, I recommend those bags of animals, and play dough - or better yet drive over to AAA Hobby Shop and look around! You might ind you have enjoyed the visit yourself! You might even find a hobby you'd like to try.

Happy Easter - Jo Ann

(please use my e-mail if you wish to comment as the comments function on blogspot is completey polluted by spam. Thanks!) wrightj45@yahoo.com.