The holiday shopping season is right around the corner and I’m already hearing, “I want (insert the name of every toy on every infomercial on TV) for Christmas.”

How is it already that time of year again? I feel like I’m just now recovering from last year and now it’s time to do it all over again.

I’m a huge fan of the Box Tops Program and each year that my daughter has been in school (she’s in third grade this year), her class has won the ice cream party at the end of the year for collecting the most Box Tops.

What most people don’t know about the Box Top program is that in addition to the Box Tops you collect on participating General Mills products, you can also earn Box Tops by shopping in the online Box Top Marketplace.

This year, my boys are all about LEGO which I think is absolutely great. I think playing with LEGO’s allows them to be creative and puts that brain to work. Since one of my favorite stores is Target and they just happen to offer Box Tops for purchases made (1.5 Box Tops per $10 spent) in the Marketplace, I decided to get a jump start on the Christmas shopping.

As of the time of this article, Target.com is offering sale prices on many of the LEGO sets. After much thought, I picked out the LEGO Ultimate Building Set ($29.99) and the LEGO Bricks & More Deluxe Box ($49.99). These two sets should give me boys more than enough LEGO’s to start out with. And because every city needs a fire truck and police, I got the LEGO City Fire Truck ($22.99) and the LEGO City Police Dog Unit ($12.99).

For this purchase at Target.com through the Box Top Marketplace, I earned 16.5 Box Tops for my children’s school.

In keeping with the LEGO theme, since my boys also love their Xbox 360, I decided to head over to BestBuy.com and get them the LEGO Star Wars game. BestBuy.com currently offers one (1) Box Top per $10 spent, so with this purchase, I earned the school two (2) Box Tops.

Not only have I made a dent in my Christmas shopping for the boys, I’ve earned valuable Box Tops for my children’s school. I shop online anyways, but being able to give a little back to our community, makes it even better.

The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely that of the blog owners. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. I received gift cards to experience the Box Tops Marketplace in order to facilitate this post.