Webkinz World

I have 3 daughters, and this summer they have been lost in the Webkinz virtual world. Have you been there yet? Webkinz are the new "beanie baby" craze. They are cute plush little critters made by Ganz, and they come with an online code. You plug in the code on the Webkinz.com site, and create a virtual world for your pet, or, um, petz if you have more than one. It's birthday season in our house, so the girls have each gotten another critter, I think this will be 4 now for each of them! Yikes! It's a fun site though, the kids can play games to earn money to buy things for their petz, and I like how it teaches them about how to budget their money for things they really want. The hardest part is limiting their computer time, but they have been pretty good about it. These plush critters were really hard to find by late spring, as their popularity was not well planned for and they did not have enough supply to meet the demand. However, stores have been getting in shipments in the last month or so, and we are seeing them everywhere again. If you have a child in the 5-8 yr range, this would be a great gift idea!