My babies turned 7 a few weeks ago!

Every year I create a birthday DVD for the kids. I include pictures set to songs of all the highlights from the past year- activities we loved doing together, holidays and celebrations and our travels.

Last year I shared our birthday DVD, and I’m back to do it again this year.

I hope it entertains you!!!

• We are going camping for a few days this week along with some day trips, so I need to take another break from posting next week. I’ll see you back in two weeks with a new post. Take care

I’m back!!!

I’m sorry that I haven’t posted anything new this past month. I’ve felt pulled in too many different directions lately, so I had to make some tough decisions and strictly prioritize my time. So that meant taking a break from writing any new posts this month.

One of my family’s greatest passions is travel, so planning trips has taken up a lot of my time recently. I also decided to clean up my family’s diet and start exercising 5-6 times a week (a goal I started in January). This has taken up a lot more of my time, but so far I’m down 18 pounds and feel really good! We’re also going to have a garden this year, so setting that up has been time-consuming, but hopefully it will be rewarding in the end.

Also, my babies turned 7 this month!!!!  I really don’t want them to grow up too fast. Another reason why blogging and posting can’t be a top priority in my life right now is that I want to take advantage of the time I have with the kids while they are little when they want to spend lots of time with me. I loved age 6 and hope that age 7 will only get even better.

This month’s highlights were: the kids’ birthday party, a two night trip to Springfield, IL, the completion of a tree house, lots of fun monster stories read at bedtime, watching our first seedling sprout and exercising with the kids each morning.

Books – Together

Abe Lincoln at Last – A Magic Treehouse Book

Abe Lincoln- A Magic Treehouse Fact Tracker Book

Mr. Lincoln’s Whiskers

Finding Lincoln

Abe Lincoln’s Dream

Akimbo and the Lions

The First Bear in Africa

Pretty Salma: a Little Red Riding Hood story from Africa

Sosu’s Call

Boom Chicka Rock

How do you know what time it is?

Hiroshima: the shadow of the bomb

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes – wonderful little chapter book!

A Perfect Time for Pandas – A Magic Treehouse book

Pandas and Other Endangered Species – A Magic Treehouse Fact Tracker book

50 Monster Stories – We started reading one or two stories from this book together before bed each evening. I found it at Half Price books for $8. It has beautiful illustrations and presents short versions of stories from larger classic books like The Story of Siegfried and Of Gods and Monsters. There are also lots of ethnic folktales and legends.

Alexa’s Reading List

Eragon (we’re reading this together most mornings)

Jared’s Reading List

Benny Uncovers a Mystery –a Boxcar Children book (Jared’s still working on finishing this book- we read it together most mornings)

Travel – Springfield, IL

We had the opportunity to go with Steve to Springfield, IL for two nights this month. Steve had a dinner to attend at the Governor’s Mansion on a Tuesday evening and a half day conference the next day, so we left on Monday to spend an extra day together. We had a wonderful mini-vacation! I feel really blessed that we can tag along on some of Steve’s trips and that most of the trips are paid for by his work.

The kids swam four different times in the hotel pool. Their swimming lessons have really been paying off. Both of them were swimming well under the water, and I didn’t worry at all when they would cannonball into the deep end.

The night Steve had to be gone the kids and I went to a restaurant for dinner, went swimming in the pool, came back to the room for baths, had a brownie treat from the restaurant we had brought back with us, and watched Beetlejuice together.

We also went to…..

New Salem Village  – This village was reconstructed on the site where Abraham Lincoln lived for 6 years before moving to Springfield. We walked around the village, checking out the store where Lincoln worked, the Tavern room where he slept and took a walk down to the mill where he helped out for a while, too. We also bought the kids arrowhead necklaces which they still wear every day.

The Abraham Lincoln Museum  If you ever get a chance to visit this museum, please go!!!! Steve and I went the year it opened before the kids were born. If you get a chance, click the link and check out what you’ll see at the museum. Very impressive exhibits, unique theater/film performances and a fun room for little kids to dress up and play with toys that were around during Lincoln’s time.

Toured Abraham Lincoln’s Home  Both kids also really enjoyed touring Lincoln’s home. There were only 10 people in our group, so it was a relaxed tour where you could linger and feel like you really experienced seeing the home. And it’s free!

TV/DVDS

Spring Holiday Stories- the history of St. Patrick’s Day, Earth Day, & Arbor Day

Abraham Lincoln – A Schlessinger Media production

24 Hours after Hiroshima

Go, Diego, go! The Great Panda Adventure

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episodes

Episodes of Strawberry Shortcake

Episodes of Power Rangers

Aladdin

X-Men II, III & IV

Beetlejuice

Marvelous Math

Life of Fred: Edgewood Chapters 7-15

Both kids have impressed me lately how well they do with real-life mental math. Alexa easily adds numbers like 78+36 in her head all the time. Jared loves to figure out problems like how many minutes he’s been alive.

                Games/Puzzles/Kits/Activity Books

Smaug the Dragon from the Hobbit puzzle- 1,000 piece puzzle the kids and Steve put together

Clue Carnival

Lord of the Ring Helm’s Deep Lego Set- birthday gift

A Batman Lego Set-birthday gift

Lego Pet Salon-birthday gift

Gardening

Raked up excess grass clippings, cleared out big twigs and sticks, pulled up weeds to get garden ready for Steve to till

Started broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes, bell peppers indoors

Transplanted a bean plant we had started growing in a cup in March.

Planted spinach, carrots and kale in the ground and watered little plants growing inside cups

Spring Games and Experiments

Checked the temperature of the soil outside using soil thermometers. We plan to do this once a week to plot out the change in temperature during the spring and into the first part of summer.

Writing/Spelling/Grammar

HEV Project Spelling Lessons 11-13

Both kids have been writing lots of notes and are much more comfortable spelling words on their own without asking for help.

At Home Fun

Inside: Lots of pretend worlds made up and games invented- they even surprise me at how involved and detailed their pretend games can get as well as how long they will play them. I know they did lots more inside but I was really bad about writing it down this month!!!

Outside: Legend of the Tree Monster, setting up “traps” for figures in the sandbox, swinging, bike riding, riding scooters, playing chase.

Helped Steve build a tree house from scratch.   It’s incredible how Steve can just buy a bunch of wood and put together a tree house without following any directions. My mind sure doesn’t work that way!

It was a wonderful experience for both kids (Jared mostly) to help Steve and work on a project with their dad. The house has a rope they can use to climb to the top (which scares me quite a bit!) and a bucket and pulley system so they can lower and raise the bucket to carry things up inside the house. It was a big hit at their birthday party!

Out of the House Activities

Weekly: Library Visits, Grocery Shopping, Church, Gymnastics, Swimming Lessons, Awanas

Homeschool Co-op:

I led a discussion with the kids about the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.

After the discussion, one of the teenagers helped me show the rest of the kids how to fold paper cranes. At first it was very frustrating, but after my fifth crane, I finally got the hang of it and then it was a blast! We made cranes for about two hours.

Visited Steve at his work, said hi to co-workers, looked at the coy pound, a dental consultation for me; then Steve went out to eat with us and went to the kids’ swimming class.

Attended a performance of The Coral King

Attended a performance of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes – this was a wonderful production! I was surprised at how interested both kids were, especially Jared, in learning about the atom bomb, World War II and the effects of the bomb on the civilians of Japan. He asked dozens and dozens of questions this month. I learned so much more about this topic, too.

Kids’ Birthday Party – We had the perfect day for their party. Our house is small (about 750 square feet), so fitting in 23 people for lunch would have been pushing it just a bit! Thankfully it was in the upper 60’s that day, so we all ate outside (we have a wonderfully big backyardJ). Jared received mostly all Lego sets and a few Lego Wii games; Alexa received lots of Lego sets, too, books and a few Wii games.

There was lots of: watching their yearly birthday DVD, talking and laughing, many games of Bags, playing in the tree house, riding on scooters, cake and ice cream, and dance offs with aunts and uncles on the Just Dance 3 Wii game.

Kids’ Actual Birthday – Steve took the day off of work so we could spend the entire day together. I made Snicker doodles for the kids (a special request from Alexa),they opened up our gifts to them, we built some of their new Lego sets together and played some new Wii games, went to the Brookfield Zoo where we saw a dolphin show, spent an hour at the Hamil Family Play Zoo, ate Dip n Dots, and saw lots of other animals, picked up dinner and watched some episodes of Strawberry Shortcake and Batman. Both kids said it was their best birthday ever!!!!  The night before their birthday we also went to Enchanted Castle, too.

Cousin’s Birthday Party – Lots of inside games with cousins, swinging and playing outside, looking at pictures on the computer with Grammy, watching their cousin’s birthday DVD, and having lots of fun J

Brookfield Zoo – My mom took the kids one morning to the zoo. They spent most of their time at the Hamil Family Play Zoo where they held a corn snake and pet a hamster. They also helped water the garden. Afterwards, they went to my mom’s house where they helped to pick up sticks and rocks from her yard for pay.

Hanging out one evening at Grandma and Granddad’s house while Steve and I went out to dinner and to see a movie – Played at McDonald’s Play place, made up pretend games and home and watched Aladdin

Parks – Went to two playgrounds with grandparents

Haircut for Jared

On the Computer, Kindle, I-Phone, or LeapPad Explorer 1

LeapPad Explorer 1: Sugar Bugs

Kindle: new Angry Birds Star Wars levels

PC Games: Doggie Daycare, Sims 3 Pet Expansion, Zoo Tychoon 2

Websites: www.gogirlgames.com. www.lego.com, www.pbskids.org,

Wii:  Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred –both kids work out with me 5-6 times a week in the morning.

Lego Batman 2

Zoo Hospital

Gallop and Ride

National Geographic: Arctic Tale

I Phone:  Alexa spent hours and hours this month looking up different animals on YouTube videos.

Photo Credit: gordsam

What were some of your favorite activities from April?

March was one big ball of exhausting fun!

It’s the beginning of birthday and travel season for us. We did so much that I know I missed things, so this isn’t even a complete list. It was just too hard to keep updated most of the month.

We had our first mini-trip of the year: a three night trip to St. Louis. We also planned a garden…hopefully we will stick with it this year! There were also lots of new games and activities, places visited and books read, too.

I hope you find some new resource/activity ideas below. Happy spring!!!!!

Books – Together

The Invention of Hugo Cabaret- We LOVED this book!!!! I would love to read more of Brian Selznick’s work. I was surprised at how much the kids enjoyed this story and even more surprised at how much they enjoyed watching the Georges Melies films. We’ll have to check out more old movies.

39 Clues: The Maze of Bones Book #1- I constantly get tears and begging for me to read more of this at night…even after reading for 45 minutes straight! Although I find some of the plot pretty contrived, the kids absolutely love it. It’s very fast-paced. I really enjoy all the great history facts we are learning, too. The kids want to read the entire series, so we’ll be reading these at night for a long time!  (I even heard they’ll be a 39 Clues movie out early next year J)

The Mystery on Blizzard Mountain – a Boxcar Children book – Any book in this series is always a hit in our home.

Operation Turtle

Lemonade in Winter: a book about two kids counting money

Discovery in the Cave- This is a really good kids’ book about the Cave of Lascaux

Alexa’s Reading List

Vet Volunteers #5 Say Goodbye

You and Your Dog  Alexa likes to look up dog breeds in this book, reads the entry and then watches videos about same breed on Animal Planet’s top 100 dog breed videos.

Jared’s Reading List

Big Max

Magnificent Mummies

Benny Uncovers a Mystery (A Boxcar Children book) I’m so proud of Jared for reading this. It’s his first chapter book!

CDs

Gregor the Overlander (Book #1 in series)- We LOVED this audio book!!!! If your kids love reading or listening to fantasy stories (our favorite), they’ll love this story of 11 year old Gregor and his 2 year old sister Boots who fall down a laundry shoot and land in a world filled with rats, roaches and other danger.

We started listening in the car on our drive down to St. Louis. I’ve already ordered the second book in the series on audio for our mini-trip next month.

TV/DVDS

National Geographic Explorer: The Science of Dogs

Lascaux: A New Look – the walls of the Lascaux cave

The Hobbit – We saw this in the theater- a rare treat for the kids!

Hugo

Because of Winn Dixie

Georges Melies Encore: New Discoveries – these films brought me back to my film school days!

A trip to the moon; the extraordinary voyage

Secret of the Wings: Tinkerbell

Bambi II

Episodes of Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, Operation Overdrive, Lost Galaxy, Mystic Force, Lighspeed Rescue,

Episodes of Jackie Chan Adventures: Season 2

Episodes of Little House on the Prairie Seasons 4 & 5

Episodes of Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation

St. Louis

We took our first trip of the year on March 8^th – 11^th to St. Louis, Missouri. Steve’s cousin, her husband and their 5 kids live there, so we stayed with them. We had such a good time there! The kids had a blast playing with the other kids, jumping on their trampoline, playing with their dog and cat, going out to a buffet dinner, staying up to 1:00 in the morning, eating popcorn and watching movies. Alexa cried for 20 minutes when we had to leave J

They also enjoyed practicing gymnastics, playing “school,” coloring, building with Legos, and making up pretend games with horses, dinosaurs and figures.

The Gateway Arch – Before arriving at their house, we stopped for a tour of the Gateway Arch. The kids and I watched a documentary about the making of the Arch before we went, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for how tiny the car was that took you to the top or how small of a space it is at the top. I have a little problem with heights! But the view was really pretty, and I’m glad I had this experience with the rest of my family.

Museum of Westward Expansion-At the bottom of the Arch there’s a small but very well-done museum. It includes artifacts from the days of Louis and Clark and also describes (somewhat!) life for the American Indians during that time.

The Magic House- We went to this incredible children’s museum a year and a half ago, but we just had to go back. The museum is housed inside a sprawling Victorian mansion. It has so many unique exhibits that we’ve never seen before including a replica of the Oval office, a courtroom, a wonderful Lewis and Clark permanent exhibit where kids can swing across a rope, climb a rock wall, sit in teepees and crawl through tunnels, and a changing exhibit- this time is was based on The Magic Schoolbus books.

Marvelous Math (no, I’m not being sarcastic either!)

Life of Fred: Edgewood Chapters 1-6

Math Dice Jr. – Jared LOVED this game- mostly because he beats everyone almost every time J. It’s a pretty simple game. You throw down a 12 sided die to get your target number. Then you throw 5 other dice, and everyone has to quickly calculate which dice will give them the target number. We just use addition and subtraction now, but you can also use multiplication, too. You get one point for each die you use to reach the target number. The first person to go all the way around the board is the winner.

Trend Enterprises Math Addition Flash Cards- I had a feeling Jared would really like playing around with flash cards, and I was right.

I take 30 cards, shuffle them, and then use a stop watch to time child while they go through the set. Then they have a little time to review the cards, and then I time them a second time. They get a point for each second they shave off their first time. Each child also uses a separate stack of equations. This way they are competing against their own cards and time rather than each other, making it fairer.

This is the most schooly math thing we have done, but both kids really, really enjoyed it. They viewed it as just another math game. I wouldn’t suggest this at all for kids who would resist it, but for kids who enjoy it, it’s a great way to memorize math facts (although they can be memorized and learned in so many other, more natural ways, too).

                Games/Puzzles/Kits/Activity Books

10 Days in Africa- Alexa LOVED this game! She would play it with me all day. I really liked it a lot, too. Jared tolerated it to be with us. You not only learn a lot about African geography, but there was a lot of math in it, too: square mileage, logical thinking and planning, deductive reasoning.

Easter Activities

Coloring Easter Eggs- Steve actually did this with the kids while I worked on getting the house ready for Easter dinner.

Resurrection Eggs- Have you seen these eggs before? They’re plastic eggs with each egg containing  a little token representing part of the Easter story…a tiny crown of thorns, a scrap of linen, a nail, a little donkey. My mother-in-law brought these over and did them with the kids on Easter afternoon.

Hunting for Easter eggs in the back yard with cousins

Good Friday Worship Concert- Steve played electric guitar for a worship concert at our church on Good Friday. It was excellent! They had a large cross that was laid down across the front of the stage. Next to the cross were pieces of red paper, nails and hammers. We were invited to think of something we wanted to surrender to Jesus, either a sin habit or worry, write it on the red paper and nail it to the cross.

I hate going up to do those type of things…I always chicken out. But Jared insisted that he wanted to surrender something to Jesus and that I had to also J I am really glad I want up, though. Alexa came with, too.

The next Sunday all the red papers had been changed to white papers representing how Jesus’ blood had washed our sin and worries clean. It was a great visual reminder.

Winter/Spring Games and Experiments

-Planted beans in two cups with soil; placed one cup on kitchen counter and the other in the fridge. Talked about how permafrost prevents plants from sprouting.

-Made a model of the earth and the sun using an orange for the sun, drawing a circle around the center with a marker for the equator and toothpicks on either end for the North and South poles, and ourselves as the sun. From the book Explore Spring: 25 Great Ways to Learn About Spring

- Started Planning our Garden

I subscribed to Sprout Robot and got our personalized gardening plan. The kids and I choose plants we would be responsible for and ordered the seeds.

-Participating in the Raging Waves Plunge into Fitness program.  If the kids participate in a minimum of 25 hours of physical activity from Feb 18-April 15, they’ll receive free tickets to Illinois’ largest waterpark. With weekly swimming gymnastics and swimming plus how much the kids love to run around anyway, this wasn’t a problem at all for my kids! They also liked exercising and working out with me many mornings, too.

Writing/Spelling/Grammar

Both kids have been writing random notes and lists on their own this month.

At Home Fun

Outside: scooters, bikes in backyard, shoveling and playing in snow, a little basketball.

Inside: Lots of wrestling and sword fighting games, also lots of new Lego creations built, jump roping, cutting pictures out of construction paper,  wiping the windows in the house (give Alexa a spray bottle and a rag and she loves it!)

Alexa made up this game where one person has to dance and sing a song while the other people throw plastic bags on her or him from the top bunk bed (strange, I know!) Then they climb down, make a circle of the plastic bags around the singers’ feet and then sit on the bottom bunk and eat graham crackers. Then the next person takes a turn. The things kids come up with!

Both kids have ongoing pretend games where the story line goes on for weeks. Its sooo much fun to watch this!

We make up our own dances using the demo songs on the keyboard

Played a lot with those gel caps that you soak in water and then it releases sponge animals

Both kids have been so helpful with straightening and organizing the house. Steve and I both stress how it takes an entire family working together to keep a house running smoothly. They have both also on their own asked many times how they could help out with either cooking or cleaning.

Out of the House Activities

Weekly: Library Visits, Grocery Shopping, Church, Gymnastics, Swimming Lessons, Awanas

Homeschool Co-op:

-Book club discussion of Because of Winn Dixie

- Did experiments where we colored water, salt water, rubbing alcohol and liquid detergent yellow and observed the different ways it combined with water that had been colored blue. We use the free lessons from www.inquiryinaction.com.

Sledding- Besides regular sledding, doing somersaults down the hill and getting ME to roll down the hill (not going to happen again any time, soon!!!)

Ice Skating- One Saturday we went ice skating for two hours. The kids hardly took a break the whole time.

Field Museum: Caves of Lascaux exhibit- The Field Museum did a pretty good job with this exhibit. Both kids said they wanted to see the exhibit although I figured they wouldn’t want to spend much time there. I was right, although there was one part of the exhibit where they recreated portions of the cave, so it was like you were walking through the cave- they liked that part and watched portions of the documentary, too.

While we were there we also played in the Crown Lab kids area uncovering dinosaur bones, and visited the permanent Africa and Egypt exhibits, too.

Oak Lawn Children’s Museum with my mom: After a morning at the museum, the kids had lunch at her house and then went to gymnastics. I had over 8 hours all day to myself- a very, very rare occasion!!!!

DuPage Children’s Museum- We actually stayed at the museum for less than 30 minutes. I had forgotten all about spring break week. I’m so used to going to museums during the week and having hardly anyone there! We escaped the heavy crowds and went back to my sister’s house for lunch and playtime there.

Steve’s Birthday Party- Steve BBQed for 15 people. Besides the usual opening presents and birthday cake, the kids played a lot outdoors, showed off some gymnastics skills, hunted for an Easter basket inside, and played chase with aunts and uncles.

Friend’s Birthday Party- Time for play in the begging of the party and then a balloon man came for an hour and made balloon creations for the kids.

Went with Steve to 5 band practices for the Good Friday Worship Concert- played some Fruit Ninja on the Kindle, threw toy soldiers from balcony, played pretend games, lots of running and chase games. This gave me 5 nights to clean, write and have a little time to myself…nice!

Granddad’s Birthday Party- The kids always love going to their cousins’ house.  They played lots of X-box games and snowball fights outside.

On the Computer, Kindle, I-Phone, or LeapPad Explorer 1

Kindle: Where is My Water?, Temple Run II, Lost Cities, Fruit Ninja, Wind-Up Knight

PC Games: World of Zoo, Explorapedia,

Websites: Discovery Kids Dog Park Game, Google Earth-Alexa likes to search through different countries, www.lego.com, www.pbskids.org, Animal Planet, www.gogirlgames.com,

Wii:  Lego Lord of the Rings, Just Dance 3, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga

I Phone: Cola Maker, Pet World-free

Photo Credit: gordsam

What were some of your favorite activities from March?

Happy first day of spring!

Even though it doesn’t feel like spring today- its 23 degrees near Chicago today- it’s sunny outside, promising long days ahead. Winter is my least favorite month-although I appreciate it more now since I’ve have kids- so I’m really looking forward to warmer days, long bike rides and hikes, and more outdoor exploring.

It’s going to be a crazy spring (now through June 21^st) for the Pilkington family. So far we have:

-a three day trip to Springfield, Illinois

- 5 birthday parties

-5 plays or concerts

- Easter, Memorial Day, Mother and Father’s Day

-an overnight trip for Steve and me to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for our 10 year anniversary

-an overnight camping trip an hour away

-dates set for playing with friends, nature centers, children’s museums, Reptile Fest, and much more

….and this is just a small chunk of what we have to look forward to!

I’ve also found a lot of fun resources the kids and I are looking forward to using the next three months. We go a little crazy gathering together ideas of projects to work on, games to play, experiments to do, books to read, things to watch, places to go. I like to have a long list of things- much more than we can ever do- so we have lots of options and choices throughout the season. Then we can pick and choose based on what we feel like doing and what else is going on.

So, today I’m sharing our Spring Activity Wish List as it looks so far. I’m sure we’ll add more things as they come up along the way.

*By the way, speaking of busy, for the next 11 days we have 2 birthday parties, Easter, 2 museum trips, a concert, besides our weekly gymnastics, swimming, Awanas, and library trips, so I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. I’m taking the next week off from posting.

I’ll be back in two weeks to share more with you.

Our Spring Activity Wish List

1. Taking lots of hikes in the woods. While on our walks, we’ll collect things to make a spring centerpiece for the table.

2. Completing many of the activities from the book Explore Spring! 25 Great Ways to Learn About Spring. Some activities from the book we’re looking forward to: Making a pretend bird’s nest, Playing a migrating animals game, Making our own paper, and Spouting seeds in water.

3. Completing some activities from the book Science around the Year by Janice Van Cleave: Early Risers, Water Walkers, Frog Bite, and Wind Catchers.

4. Easter Origami

5. Starting a garden. I found this great website called SproutRobot. You just punch in your zip code and it shows you where to start in the garden. It figures out when to plant in your climate and helps you keep track of what to do next.

We had a garden several years ago, but I didn’t do a good job keeping it up. Then last summer we were travelling a lot. When the kids said they’d help me and be more involved this year, I decided to give it a try again. I hope this website will help take most of the guess work and research out of the process.

6. Growing a houseplant from lemon seeds.

7. Chick-in-Place File Folder Game

8. Attending Reptile Fest. Every April, the largest reptile fest in the United States is held in downtown Chicago. We’ve been there twice already. The kids love holding the boas, pythons, and getting their picture taken with the alligators. I enjoy watching it from a safe distance away!

9.  Watch some DVDs about spring or Easter: Curious George Swings into Spring, It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown, Eloise in Springtime, Jim Henson’s Animal Jam..Springin, Spring Holiday Stories

10. Read some spring poems. This website also has coloring pages and lots of suggestions for related crafts and activities to go along with each poem.

11. Spring books we’d like to read: Paris in the Spring with Picasso, Earth Day: An Alphabet Book, The Berenstain Bears and a Job Well Done, Kumak’s River: A Tall Tale from the Far North, Cherry Blossoms Say Spring, Skunk’s Spring Surprise, Poppleton in Spring

12. Send away for ants from our ant farm kit.

13. Learn more about spring weather.

-Watch these DVDS: Rain and Snow, Wind, Clouds, Hurricanes and Tornadoes

-Read these books: Why kites fly: the story of wind at work, The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills, Make Things Fly: Poems about the Wind, Rainy Days: Stories and Poems, Can It Really Rain Frogs?

14. Learn more about plants, flowers and seeds

atch: Life Science, Bill Nye’s Flowers, Bill Nye’s Plants, Agriculture for Kids series

15. Decorating Easter Eggs.

Photo Credit:davecito

What are some spring activities your family is looking forward to?

Besides travelling, reading aloud to my kids is my favorite thing to do as a family.

Last night I sat down and estimated that the kids and I have already read over 2,500 books together…..and they’re not even 7 yet! I know the number of books we read together each year will drop as the novels get longer and the kids won’t want to read together as often (it hurts to even think about that!), but we still have many, many years together to share great stories and books.

I’ve compiled 10 of my favorite places to find new books to read with my kids. I’m always on the lookout for something I know they will love to hear, or books which introduce them to new, exciting topics and ideas.

If you have any great sources of new books to read with your kids, I’d love if you’d share them in the comments below.

Enjoy!

10 Great Places to Find Amazing Books to Read with Your Kids

1. Good Reads – This site has been around for awhile now, but I’ve only recently started using it. I love it! After you’ve entered books you’ve read in the past and are currently reading, the site will suggest other books you might like to read based on what you’ve read in the past and how you’ve rated the books you’ve read.

I’ve only done this so far for the books I’m reading, but I’ve anxious to do this with books I’ve read with the kids, too.  What I love the most about this site is how the recommendations change and evolve each time you enter and rate new books. The more you enter and rate, the better suggestions you receive. It’s sort of like Pandora on smart phones.

2. Jim Trelease’s The Read Aloud Handbook.  Jim has so many great suggestions in this book. Its divisions include: picture books, short novels, longer novels, poetry, anthologies, fair and folk tales, wordless books and predictable books. I used this a lot when my kids were really young and was introduced to some fantastic children’s authors that way. I’m going to have to read it again since we’re moving more into reading middle grade fiction together.

3. Amazon’s “Customers Who Have Bought This Item Also Bought” section – This is one of my favorite ways to find new books to read. I just type in the title of a book we’ve just read, scroll down to this section and find dozens more books either by the same author or books similar to the one we just read. I usually keep an eye out for the books that have lots of ratings and close to 4-5 stars.

4. 1,001 Children’s Books You Must Read before You Grow Up by Julia Eccleshare. This is an amazing resource. What sets it apart from other book recommendation resources is that it not only lists books published in the United States but also suggests books published around the world. Most of these books have also been translated into English and can be found at your local library or ordered online. I’ve been introduced to a lot of great international children’s authors this way.

5. All Through the Ages: a History through Literature guide by Christine Miller. This is a great book for finding lots of historical fiction about particular time periods. I purchased the e-book last year, and love browsing through it when we come across a time period we really like.

6. Reading the World With Picture Books by Nancy J. Polette.  I’ve mentioned this book before when I wrote about new geography resources we’ve been using. I think this book would be great to use even with older kids. We’ve spent almost this entire year reading picture books about Africa (probably about 50-60 books so far).  When you read lots of books about a particular country or continent, you start to see patterns and similarities between the stories.

7. The Association for Library Service to Children’s Book and Media Award’s Page  This is a great site to see a lot of children’s award winners in one place. The site lists Caldecott and Newberry Award winners along with 8 other awards. It also has an extensive Children’s Notable List as well.

8. Pinterest – Pinterest is my newest way to find lots and lots of great new books to read for myself and the kids. I just type in a search category and sit back and wallow in all the literary greatness that comes up! I love reading all the reviews and seeing what others have said about the books before checking them out from the library or purchasing them.

9. Library Thing – Now I have to admit I don’t personally use Library Thing yet, but it’s something I’ve been looking into and researching for some time. You can catalog all the books in your home library and keep track of the different books you’ve read.

I buy lots of second hand books, so entering them all in one place would help me remember which books we have when one of the kids express an interest in a certain topic. Also, you can find other people who will recommend books similar to the ones you have read. Users can also rate and review books, too.

10. Blogs. Some of my best introductions to new books for the kids have come from recommendations from the many homeschooling blogger friends I have. It’s nice to hear about the book from someone you know and trust and find out what they thought about it before you check it out for yourself.

Also, when I hear about a book on one blog, I might not check it if it doesn’t capture my attention right away. But, if I keep seeing it recommended by many different people, I’m more likely to check the book out in greater detail.

Photo Credit: Brandi Jordan

Where do you go to find out about great new children’s books?

Hacking Your Education: Ditch the Lectures, Save Tens of Thousands, and Learn More Than Your Peers Ever Will

I few months ago I received an e-mail asking if I’d like to review a book with the above title by Dale J. Stephens.

Have you ever heard of Dale before?

Well, he’s a pretty remarkable guy. He grew up unschooling himself since the age of 12. During that time he started several businesses, lived in France and worked at several startup companies. More recently he founded www.uncollege.org, became a Thiel Fellow, which is part of a 20-under-20 program run by Peter Thiel, and just published his first book.

So, I was more than thrilled to receive a free copy of a book I would have paid for anyway. And I get to share my thoughts about the book with you!

If you’ve read my blog for awhile, you know I love lists. I go a little crazy over them in fact.

So, in keeping with that tradition, I’m going to share 10 reasons why you should read Dale’s book.

Here we go…….

#1 Check out the 30 Hacks of the Day. Dale shares what he calls “Hack of the Day” throughout the book. These are short interactive exercises you can do to develop your own self-education plan.

Here’s the title of a few hacks:

-Plan a Brain Party

-Reach Out to an Expert

-Identifying Talent

-Crash a Class

-Develop a Learning Budget

#2 Learn over 50 resources-websites, books, magazines, names of institutions that allow students to make their own decisions about what to learn, and public resources- to further your own self-education.

#3 Read dozens of interviews from people from all types of education backgrounds who have taken education into their own hands.  These people share specific things they did to become successful, including sharing valuable resources and specific advice.

#4 Browse through the Endnotes at the back of the book. Do you always look at a book’s endnotes? Make sure you do next time. I’ve found so many great new resources that way. Dale shares plenty of great ones in his book.

#5 Apply one of Dale’s out of the box suggestions.  I’m always looking for new ideas I haven’t heard of before. I’ve read a lot about self-directed education, so I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a few ideas and suggestions new to me including how to get in touch with someone whose email address is not listed, how taking people out for coffee can teach you more than sitting in a lecture hall, and how to speak at conferences when you’ve never spoken at a conference before.

#6 Enjoy Dale’s clear, concise and entertaining way of sharing his ideas.

#7 Broaden your perspective about the best way to learn what you need to learn in order to do what you love to do. It might involve college, but even if it does, Dale shares the best ways to take advantage of your college experience.

#8 His extensive advice, ideas and resources about networking- something I’ve found much more valuable than a college degree in getting influential people to recognize you.

#9 Learn about how to enter careers and professions that prefer a college degree without actually having to get the degree.

#10 Discover ways to present your real-life experiences and skills without a college degree.

I’d highly suggest for those of you with teenagers to share the ideas in this book with them. (There are a few instances of swearing in the book so you can decide if you’re ok with letting them read it on their own; if my kids were older, I’d give it to them to read.)

Hacking Your Education was released yesterday, so if you’re looking on a great book discussing innovative ways to take charge of your own education, grab a copy of this book.

Photo Credit: Elsie esq

What ways do you hack your education?

How was your February?

We stayed at home a lot more than last month which was very refreshing, especially since next month will be a travel month for us. As usual we had an eclectic range of learning: rescue dogs, Milton Hershey, Rosa Parks, Because of Winn-Dixie, bar graphs & origami, salt painting & crystals, marshmallow snowflakes and Lego Batman.

What did your family learn about this past month?

Books – Together

Because of Winn-Dixie

Dog Heroes: A Magic Treehouse Research Book

Dogs in the Dead of Winter- A Magic Treehouse Book

Animal Rescuers: a chapter book

Hero Dogs: Courageous Canines in Action

Buddy: The First Seeing Eye Dog

Milton Hershey: Hershey’s Chocolate Creator

Home Now

Jamari’s Drum

The Story of Money

Two of Everything

A Very Scary Valentine’s Day #29 Scooby Doo

The Valentine Express

Alexa’s Reading List

Trickster- Vet Volunteers #3

Manatee Blues- Vet Volunteers #4

Chapters from Genesis in the Bible

Jared’s Reading List

Nate the Great Goes Undercover

Nate the Great and the Mushy Valentine

Curious George Walks the Pets

Curious George Visits the Library

Curious George Rides a Bike

Curious George Goes to a Chocolate Factory

Curious George and the Pizza Party

TV/DVDS

Rosa – A DVD presentation of the book Rosa by Nikki Giovanni

Bears

Deserts – A Bill Nye production – You might already know about Bill Nye, but in case you don’t he’s a quirky, wonderfully weird and funny man who puts out fun science shows that are really interesting and entertaining to watch. When the kids were 4, we checked out and watched about 20-30 DVDs in the series.

Tundra – A Schlessinger Media production – Love everything by Schlessinger Media!

Habitats- from the Real World Science series

Snowy Day: Stories and Poems- A Reading Rainbow episode

Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown

My Side of the Mountain

The Time Machine – This is the 1960 version which I loved watching when I was a girl. Steve and the kids were not that excited about watching it in the beginning (it was my choice to pick a movie….that’s when I get to sneak in stuff they wouldn’t normally choose on their own J ) And……..they loved it! I knew they would J If you get Amazon Prime, you can download it for free.

The Fox & The Hound 2

The Man in the Iron Mask

The Reluctant Dragon

The Secret of the Wings- an animated Tinker Bell movie

Brave

Episodes of Little House on the Prairie Season 5

Episodes of American Idol

Episodes of Power Rangers RPM, Wild Force, Time Force, Super Samurai, & S.P.D, Dino Thunder,

Marvelous Math (no, I’m not being sarcastic either!)

Life of Fred: Dogs Chapters 18-19

Totally Tut- Love this game!

Rat-a-Tat-Cat-I had high hopes for this game since it was a Mensa Select and Dr. Toy winner. And…..it was really, really fun! It had just the right amount of difficulty for the kids to make it interesting. It’s a card game where the winner is the person with the lowest points. Most the cards lay face down during the game, so players have to remember their card values, keep mental count of their score and other players’ scores throughout the game.

Hershey Kiss Memory Match Game – You write on the bottom of a Hershey kiss ten equations, say 12+3 or 15+8. Then you write the answers on the bottom of ten more Hershey kisses. When you match the equation to the correct answer, you can eat both Hershey kisses!

Made a Bar Graph of Sweet Hearts on Valentine’s Day – We first thought we’d graph all the different saying on the hearts, but since there were so many of them we decided to create a graph of the different colors of hearts. All I can say is the sayings on the hearts have sure changed a lot since I was little!

Math….made fun: Dance DVD – A little weird for me….even the kids didn’t like this as much as I thought they would

Addition DVD– a Schlessinger Media production – The series Math for Children is pretty good. In this video they shared six different ways or tricks to do addition.

Money DVD– a Schlessinger Media production- part of the Math for Children series

Valentine’s Day Origami – This was so much fun! We folded paper hearts. The kids wrote messages to their gymnastics teachers and to Steve and gave the hearts to them on Valentine’s Day.

Solving Equations without Paper – Some kids might not like doing this, but Alexa loves solving two and three digit addition problems, including those that involving carrying over numbers in her head. She usually asks me to give her problems when we’re driving in the car. Jared will do this sometimes, too, although I think he mainly does it because she wants to do it. I’ve been so impressed with her ability to do this type of mental math. We play games and answer questions in the Fred books, but the kids never sit down with a workbook to solve equations, yet they both are pretty good at it.

                Games/Puzzles/Kits/Activity Books

Rivers, Roads and Rails – a Ravensburger game.  I picked this up at a garage sale. It’s a unique matching game because the cards can be connected in many different ways, so each game you create an entirely new transportation system. Hard to explain- fun to play!

Lego Heroica Caverns of Nathuz, Draida Bay, Iliron. You can connect all the Heroica games together to play one huge game. Jared’s hoping to get the final three games for his birthday.

Snap Circuit’s Jr. – Made a Space War Alarm circuit and one other experiment.

Valentine’s Fun

Made frozen yogurt hearts using heart cookie cutters

Winter Games and Experiments

Experiments from Janice VanCleave’s Science around the Year and Science around the World

-Used water, cooking oil and dishwashing liquid to show how fat is broken down into small globs similar to the way liver produces bile to digest fat for animals in cold weather climates

-Determined how blubber insulates by placing shortening in the palm of one hand and nothing in the other. Then place both hands inside plastic bags. Place an ice cube in both hands. Compare how cold each hand is.

-Printed with salt water on black construction paper, “cooked” the paper in a 150 degree oven for 5 minutes, and made a salt printing.

-Did an experiment with black construction paper, foil and a lamp to show how plants in the Arctic tilt their pedals towards the sun to direct its energy into the center of its flower. Not a very successful experiment.

-Pretended to be the wind blowing around snowflakes by using a balloon as the snowflake and the eraser end of a pencil as the wind; We also held an inflated balloon and non-inflated balloon and dropped them to the ground at the same time to demonstrate the difference between the rate of fall between a snowflake and a raindrop

-Determined our BMI by weighing ourselves, measuring ourselves and using calculators.

Created Six Pointed Snowflake Structures Using Toothpicks and Mini Marshmallows  – Project found in Winter Day Play

Writing/Spelling/Grammar

HEV Project Spelling Lessons 6-10.

At Home Fun

Outside: Played in the snow, shoveled snow, made a snow castle with plastic block molds, had snow ball fights with Steve, built a snow man

Created rabbit, leopard, sheep, and alien snow sculptures

Inside: Bugaboo dogs (their made-up game), wrestling, of course hours and hours of pretend play, setting up soldiers, blocks and other figures for castle play, cutting dolls and stuffed animals’ hair, jump roping, hitting around balloons

Jared built dozens of robots, ships and other Lego creations

Alexa “groomed” her stuffed animals by washing them in the sink and blow drying them.

Set up Wish Lists for their birthday. Jared put over two dozen Lego sets on his list!

Jared likes bring me the BrainQuest First Grade cards, curl up on my lap, and have me ask him the questions.

Helped bake Lofthouse style cookies and make the frosting

Friends came over one day for a play date and lunch

Out of the House Activities

Weekly: Library Visits, Grocery Shopping, Church, Gymnastics, Swimming Lessons, Awanas

Homeschool Co-op

-Did several experiments involving crystals. We looked at salt, sugar, MSG and Epsom salts under magnifying glasses and wrote down our observations about the characteristics of each crystal- texture, size, and shape, if it was transparent or opaque. Then we looked at an unknown substance (Kosher salt) and compared and contrasted with the other four to see if we could guess what the substance was.

-Book Club. We discussed the book My Side of the Mountain as a group.

Eye Doctor Appointment – We found out that Alexa needs to wear glasses and wear an eye patch. We never noticed that she had any vision problems, but when she tried to read the chart with just her left eye, she could only read the top E. Turns out she had been relying too much on her good eye and now her left eye is becoming lazy. The doctor said if she doesn’t use the patch several times a day and strengthen the eye, she could become legally blind in that eye by the time she’s a teenager. She’s been so responsible about wearing the patch, though. She’s usually the one to remind me that she needs to wear it.

Drove to Steve’s work with him one afternoon and then stopped by a chocolate store on the way home for a treat

Went Sledding

Black Bear Exhibit at the Lakeview Nature Center – We spent about an hour and a half at this small natue center. Every year they put up a winter exhibit. They had a real stuffed bear, a pretend bear cave, blocks, bear figures and other objects to play with, puzzles, lots of hands on things about bears to look at.

John Hancock Observatory – On Valentine’s Day evening Steve surprised me by taking me and the kids to the Hancock Observatory-the same place he proposed to me almost 10 years ago. We had never gone with the kids before because it’s pretty expensive (it was $58 for all four of us to go up there).

We took pictures and walked around for awhile. Then Steve said wanted to reenact for the kids his proposal. When he got down on one knee, pulled out a box, and there was a wedding ring inside I burst out crying! I had lost my wedding ring and band a year and a half ago. I probably cried for two weeks afterwards. Steve completely surprised me. What’s even more surprising was he had taken the kids with to pick out the ring a few weeks before this, and they knew he was going to “propose” to me that night…..and they never said a word!

An evening with Granddad and Grandma- The kids surprised us a few days later with Valentines they had filled out.

Attended a performance of Going on a Bear Hunt

Oak Lawn Children’s Museum – We went with my mom. There was veterinarian play, dressing up for a “theater performance”, puppet play, pretend grocery stores, water and sand play. Afterwards the kids went to my mom’s house for awhile. They played with balloons and set up the soldiers for a war.

Birthday Party for my sister’s husband

Birthday Party for my sister-in-law’s husband (went to a Chinese buffet).

Attended a wake – A friend of my husband’s died this week at the age of 33. It was incredibly sad. He left behind a wife and a baby girl not yet one year old. His memorial service was packed- probably over 700 people.

On the Computer, Kindle, I-Phone, or LeapPad Explorer 1

LeapPad Explorer 1, Pet Pad, Sugar Bugs, Story Studio- They really loved making their own “video” story with this.

Kindle: Angry Birds, Monster Galaxy Exile, Bad Piggies, Temple Run II

PC Games: Zoo Tychoon 2, Sims 3, World of Zoo, World Explorer

Websites: www.switchzoo.com, www.pbskids.org,

Pet Grooming Studio, Net Pet Adopt -These games are at the website www.girlsgogames.com, There are a lot of really cute games at this site.

Maze Games: African Animals,-This game is at the National Geographic Kids website.

Wii:  Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman, Gold’s Gym Dance Workout, My Fitness Coach, Just Dance 3

I Phone: Stack the States (Jared and I usually play this together while watching the ending of Alexa’s gymnastics class). Martha Speaks Story Maker app

Photo Credit: gordsam

What were some of your favorite activities from February?

Grab a piece of paper and write down ten things you have no interest in.  Ask your kids to do this, too.

Are you finished? Ok. Here’s my list.

-watching car racing

-playing football

-reading romance novels

-understanding international business

-watching horror movies

-writing a computer program

-making sales cold calls

-zip lining

-reading fashion magazines

-taking apart and putting together a TV

Now, pick one of those ten things and do it.

You’re probably thinking…Wait a minute. This is supposed to be a blog about following your interests. Now she’s telling me to do things I’m not interested in? And I’m supposed to ask my kids to do the same thing, too?

How will doing these things ever help me be more creative? Shouldn’t I spend the limited free time I have on creative projects I love?

While I think it’s important to spend most your time reaching a creative goal you’re passionate about, it’s also important to develop your creative muscles, too. And those muscles won’t grow when you use them doing the same thing in the same way all the time.

Take physical exercise as an example. You may choose to do a certain exercise routine because you want to reach a certain fitness goal. It could be reducing belly fat, becoming more flexible, or increasing arm strength.

After creating the ideal routine, you work hard to achieve your goal. After awhile you see progress. You’re encouraged and excited. But then you hit a plateau. Your progress is stunted.

It’s only by doing something different, by exercising new muscles, that you’ll increase your strength in muscles you focused on before. You’ll learn to use those old muscles in new ways.  At the same time, you’ll also learn a new set of skills that will complement and enhance your old skills.

It’s the same way with creativity.

Creativity is all about combining things or ideas into unlikely combinations. It’s about gaining new perspectives and angles, about linking unlikely things together.

If you read the same types of things, think about the same types of things, and use the same types of skills over and over again, pretty soon it’s hard to think up new ways to create because you’ve exhausted your store of images, ideas and experiences.

You and your children need to surround yourself with new ideas and experiences, new ways of viewing the world. You need new skill sets that will complement and enhance the old ones.

It’s true that you can fill your creative well by pursing new ideas and experiences that you find interesting. It’s something that I like to spend a lot of time doing.

But by occasionally doing things we don’t find interesting, we also stretch our creative muscles.

How?

When we deliberately do something we find boring or uninteresting, we tend to let our minds wander. We want to be anywhere else but in the moment.

Fight that urge. Be in the moment. Let yourself really experience what you’re doing, or watching, or reading. Make time to reflect on your experience.

This past week I finished reading a book by Richard Parkes Cordock called The Millionaire Upgrade. In the book, he talks about the importance of doing something every day that makes you uncomfortable. The chapter focuses on how true growth only comes when you move outside your comfort zone.

The things we’re not interested in usually fall outside our comfort zone. Usually this is because we’re unfamiliar with them, have some experience with them but it’s been negative, or we let the negative experience of others shape our opinions.

By developing the habit of doing uncomfortable things or spending some time learning or doing things we’re not interested in doing will help stretch us as human beings. It will broaden our perspective on life, teach us something about how we handle discomfort, and fill our creative buckets with skills, images and ideas that we’d never encounter otherwise.

I’m not at all suggesting that you shouldn’t spend a good portion of your time accomplishing dreams and goals that excite you. Nor am I suggesting that kids should spend the majority of their days learning and doing those things that they dread doing, either.

I am suggesting to occasionally do something you wouldn’t normally choose to do. Approach it in a positive way. Learn everything you can from it. Then take those thoughts, ideas and skills and see if you can approach a creative project in a new way.

Then:

Let your kids see you do this.

Talk to them about how those experiences have changed you and given you new creative insights.

Encourage them to pursue something they’ve found uninteresting.

Challenge them to use that experience to deepen their personal creative goals.

Photo Credit: Dione_Higgs

What’s one thing you’re uninterested in that you could learn or do this week?

Last week I shared 5 game companies you should check out. Here’s the link in case you didn’t get a chance to check out that list. Today, I’m back to share 5 more companies with you.

I’ve been impressed with the quality of games from these companies. The games I’m sharing with you I’ve either personally played or I’ve researched and they are now on my family’s wish list.

6. Mindware-“Brainy toys for kids of all ages.”  

Mindshift (Wish List) By moving a jewel, rotating a tile or shifting the board, you work to navigate your jewels through the mind shaft maze.

Qwirkle (Wish List) – This is a many-time award winning game that looks really fun! Using one of the 108 different wooden blocks with six different shapes and colors, players score the most points by building lines that share the same shape or color.

 Equate (Wish List) – I don’t think we’ll be playing this for a little while, but when we do I think it will be a different way to think about math. The game is basically like Scrabble except with numbers and math symbols. You put down up to 9 tiles on the board and earn points by correctly completing simple equations.

Q-bitz (Wish List) – Players recreate patterns on game cards using their set of 16 cubes.

 Bananagrams (Wish List) – I know so many people who own this game, but we haven’t gotten around to buying it yet. It looks like a great game, though! It’s an anagram game where players race against each other to build crossword grids and use all their letter tiles first.

7. University Games Their philosophy is to offer games that encourage social interaction and imagination through game play.

Abalone (Wish List) – This looks like an interesting strategy game. Players compete to be the first to push six of their opponent’s marbles off the board.

 Game of Knowledge (Have Played) – This is a trivia-type game that Alexa loved when we went to Maine this summer. It was one of the games at the home we rented. The six categories include: Our World, Science, Nature, Sports, Media and Fame.

 Totally Gross The Game (Wish List) – My kids are going to love this game! You basically have to complete science experiments to win the game. All experiments are based on based on science facts about “gross” things. You even used a blob of slime as a game marker.

8. Family Games- A company that used recycled materials for all their games, it has a wide range of really fun, unique games.

Katamino (Wish List) This is a game similar to Tetris and can be played singly and in pairs. Players have to build polygons in different configurations.

 Cathedral – (Wish List) This looks like a challenging logic puzzle. The board is a medieval walled city where players battle to gain land space by repositioning their building pieces back on the board.

 Marrakech (Wish List) – It really caught my attention at how different this game is. Each player is a salesperson who tried to outwit the other players. From Amazon: In turn each player rolls the dice and then moves Assam, the market organizer. If Assam stops on an opponent’s rug, the player must make a payment to its owner before putting one of their own rugs on an adjacent space. When the last rug has been laid, the total number of visible rugs and the number owned by each salesperson are added up. The best player wins.

 Stratum (Wish List ) This game was a Mensa Select winner. Playing pieces are tiles of 4 connected hexagons. You have to layer the hexagons, trying to cover your opponent’s tiles while leaving your tiles open.

Sprocket (Wish List) Another building type game that Jared’s sure to like. In the game, players create gears with rotor pieces. When a gear is formed, a lug is added to the game. The first player to add all their lugs into the game is the winner.

9. Out of the Box Publishing – They specialize in games that are easy to learn and can be played in under an hour. I’ve found them to be one of the most creative game manufacturers out there.

Word on the Street (Wish List) – Team members choose a category card and brainstorm words that fit that category while the opposite team tries to sidetrack them. The team has to agree on a word and pull each letter of that word one lane closer to their side of the street.

 10 Days in Africa (Europe, Asia, ect.) (Own) I bought this game since we have been reading dozens of pictures books about Africa this past year, but we haven’t played it yet. I was sooooo excited to get this game! Players have to make connections by plane, car and foot for a 10 day journey through Africa using transportation and destination cards.

Pirate vs. Pirate (Wish List) – I think Jared will like this one. From Amazon: Three bands of pirates have discovered an island brimming with treasure. Conquer the island by capturing the gold and silver, or by eliminating the enemy pirates. Position your pirates carefully, enemies are all around and they are hungry for treasure.

 Snake Oil (Wish List) What a unique word game! I’m really looking forward to playing this. Players invent their own crazy two-word products and try to sell them to customers.

 Ninja vs. Ninja (Wish List) A two person strategy game. You Ninja must defend their dojo against a rival dojo and also work on infiltrating the rival dojo. The deeper you can penetrate the rival dojo the more points you earn. Jared loves anything ninja so this looks like a great game for him.

10. Gryphon/Eagle Games- This game company specializes in strategy games. The Eagle games tend to be heavy strategy, while the Gryphon games are lighter to medium. They put a high value on the artwork and production value of their games.

BuyWord (Wish List) – This looks like a fun word game that also combines money skills, too. The letter tiles in the game have dots on them. The amount of dots in a collection of times determines its buying and selling price. You must first buy tiles and then sell them at a profit by making large words with lots of dots.

Botswana (Wish List) – I’m especially excited to buy this game in the next few months since we’ve been reading lots of picture books about Africa and Alexa loves animals. It’s a card game with six cards in five suits of corresponding animals. Each player plays a card and takes an animal. You keep playing until one animal has all six cards played.

Bazaar (Wish List) – A good game to learn more about money, trading and the value of exchange. From Amazon: Through skillful trading and re-trading, each player attempts to gain the right combination of colored stones from the Bank to purchase the wares displayed in the Bazaar. Values of the various wares are determined by the number of stones the purchaser holds following his transaction. Trading is governed by the current rates posted at the Exchange. When all the wares from two of the stalls have been sold, the Bazaar is closed, the game ends, and the player with the highest score wins.

 Masters Gallery (Wish List) – I love studying art history and introducing my kids to artists, so this game looks like a great fit for us. Each player is an art critic and gallery owner. The game features 30 cards depicting famous works of art. Players use the cards to determine the relative value of each artist’s body of work. There’s some luck with this game but also a lot of strategy, too.

 Roll Through the Ages (Wish List) – I would love to play this strategy board game, but I think my kids won’t appreciate it until they are a bit older. In the game, players roll seven dice to collect workers and commodities to build their civilizations. The goal of the game is to score the most points by becoming the most advanced and prestigious civilization by acquiring cities, monuments, and developments while at the same time avoiding disasters.

Whenever I come across a new game company, I always look for ways to stay in contact with them. I know that if I’m not subscribed to their newsletter or have liked their Facebook page I might forget about them. Other things you can do to keep in contact with favorite companies are: order their catalog, and follow them through e-mail or RSS feed.

I also love Pinterest for keeping in contact with keeping track of games I run across when reading favorite blogs. I can immediately pin the post or website where I’ve found the game to the right board and I never have to worry about forgetting it.

The last thing I’d like to share with you is a list (with links) to some of the major game awards given out each year. This is an excellent way to find out about new games.

A game doesn’t have to win an award to be good, but scanning through a list of award winners is a great way to be introduced to new games that many people consider to be excellent.

1.International Gamers Awards

2. Mensa Select Award

3. Dr. Toy’s 100 Best Toys of the Year

4.Yearly Creative Toy Guide Best of Awards

5.Game Magazine Game of the Year Awards

6.Speil des Jahres

7.Golden Geek Award

8. Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Awards

9. Parent’s Choice

10. Gamer’s Choice Awards

Photo Credit: Hanna IrAYlinger Fotografie

What is your family’s favorite board or card games? Do you have a favorite game company?

Travel, both near and far, is our favorite way to learn about new things.

But playing games is probably our favorite way to learn new skills, get creative, stretch our minds and have lots and lots of fun!

We love all types of games- everything from pretend, made-up games and traditional board games to computer and video games.

Over the past few months, I’ve been collecting board and card game ideas on some of my Pinterest boards. In my hours of research, along with cataloging the games we already own, I’ve come up with a list of my favorite game manufacturers or companies. Usually, if there are at least two or three games that we love by the same company, it’s almost a sure thing that they’ll have others we’ll like, too.

Here’s a list of my 5 favorite board/card game companies or manufacturers. I’m also sharing a list of the games we either own or are on my wish list and giving you a brief description of each game in case you’d like to check it out, too.

* When I first wrote this post, I had 5 more companies and 23 more games to share with you, plus a list of 10 Game Award lists, but that post grew to over 3,500 words and I thought that would be a lot to give to you at one time! So I’m splitting the list into two posts.

Don’t forget to come back next week where I‘ll share more game suggestions and award lists to check out!  

1. Gamewright – You gotta love this company’s slogan: Games for the Infinitely Imaginative. Most of the games are card games involving a strategy and memory.

-Loot (Wish List) A strategy card game where you storm your opponent’s merchant ship and try to steal their treasure.

Rat-a-Tat Cat- (Own) – We just got this game this week.  This is a really, really fun game! It’s a card game where to win you need to have the lowest possible points. For most of the game the cards are face down in front of you, so you need to keep track of how many points you have, the value of each card, and the value of the other player’s cards, too. A great game for learning strategy, too.

 Iota (Wish List) – A puzzle/memory game where you have to add cards to a grid, making sure that color, shape and size are either all the same or all different across the rows.

Forbidden Island (Wish List) – Lots of great review and awards for this game – It’s a cooperative game where your mission is to keep the Forbidden Island from sinking as you seek the four treasures hidden within.

Scrambled States of America (Own) – I picked this up at a thrift store. Based on the book, The Scrambled States of America players learn names, capitals, nicknames, positions and shapes of the states while solving riddles and challenges.

Rory’s Story Cubes (Own) – These little story cubes are great to bring with on a trip. Who would think that 9 cubes with 54 images could spark so many different story ideas? I love to use them myself when I’m brainstorming story ideas. It’s a great way to make up a group story out loud, as a way to start a scene, to do a character sketch. And….there’s now an iPhone Story Cubes app… Interesting!

2. Learning Resources – While this company is a more overtly “educational” company, don’t let that keep you away from checking out their games. Yes, the games do have a more educational feel to them, but I’ve found most of them really fun to play, too.

Totally Tut –(Own)  This is such a great game for learning to look at numbers from many different angles. Players have to fill their “pyramids” with numbers by creating two, three, and four digit equations that equal a target number which rests at the top of the pyramid. Players can use addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in the same row to come up with the desired number. It’s a little difficult for my kids right now, but we play in teams which makes it doable.

 Sum Swamp Addition and Subtraction Game-(Own)  This is a fun little game for kids first learning adding and subtracting up to two digit numbers. You add and subtract as you move your way around the board. Also introduces the concept of even and odd numbers.

 Go to Press: a Grammar and Editing Game (Wish List) This game looks great for learning writing mechanics. Players pretend they work at a newspaper and go from department to department correcting headlines. If anyone else knows of more proofreading games, please let me know!

 The Allowance Game (Wish List) – I’ve heard a lot of great things about this game. Players race around the board doing chores for allowance and then save their money or spend it on things they want. Great for practicing money values and making change. Of course, I’ll always think learning about money is best done by being in charge of real money, but as a game, this is fun and great practice, too.

 Step Right Up: Estimation Game (Own)-I picked this up at a thrift store a few years ago, but I think the kids are still not quite ready for it yet. You guess the size and value of things while you attend a carnival.

3. Ravensburger – Known best for their superior quality of 2 and 3D puzzles, this company also puts out many creative and unique games, too.

Make and Break (Own)-If you have a builder in the family, he or she will love this game! You have three levels of difficulty. You roll the dice to see how much time you have on the timer. Then, when the timer is going, you draw cards and complete the designs on the cards until you run out of time.

 Rivers, Roads and Rails (Own)-It’s hard to describe this game, but it’s much more than a straight matching game. Each player receives ten tiles with pictures of railroads, roads or rivers – sometimes just one of them, two or all three. You have to keep matching the cards until you have no more cards left to match. Jared and I enjoy playing this with each other a lot.

 Indigo (Wish List)- The game is played on a hexagon board where players lay pathways across the board to transport gems to their exits. There is also a cooperative aspect to the game, too.

 Casa Grande (Wish List)-I’m really excited about this game! It’s a strategic construction game where players are building contractors who compete to build the longest, tallest building in order to become a master builder. You get paid for each completed building, and payment is calculated by multiplying the area by the height of each building or combination of buildings.

 Labyrinth (Wish List) – Also looks like a really exciting game. Each player has to collect seven treasures. Before each turn, a maze card is pushed into the maze, helping the player reach her way to the prize, so the entire maze shifts and changes with each person’s turn.

4. ThinkFun –Their motto is Ignite Your Mind! Their mission is to build reasoning and creative thinking skills through play.

Math Dice Jr.  (Own) We just played this game this month. This is similar to Totally Tut in that you have a target number to reach in order to score points. You roll a 12 sided die to reach a target number. Then you roll five sixed-sized dice, using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division to reach the target die number. You move one space along the scoring track for every die you use.

Rush Hour (Wish List)- I’m really eager to buy this game. It’s a Mesa Select winner and has received high ratings. To play you select one of 40 challenge cards, then set up cars and buses in a specific pattern on the 6 inch square road grid.  You move the vehicles one by one until the red car can escape the traffic jam.

 Subtrax (Wish List) This is a solitaire type game for one person. You place pegs on a game board to match the illustrations on various challenge cards.

Turnstile (Wish List) – This is another solo game where you work your way through a logic maze. The goal is to move colored tokens through the maze to their respective corners. Along the way, you must pass through turnstiles, shifting walls to form new pathways and barriers.

 Swish (Wish List)- A game designed to strengthen spatial skills. Players examine 16 cards laid out on the table and try to create more matches than the other players.

5. Fundex- I think this company creates such unique games- mostly strategy. Probably more for older children.

Quoridor (Wish List) – It’s a strategy board game similar to chess where you have to move pawn-shaped pieces around the board. The difference is that you construct wooden fences to block your opponent.

Quarto (Wish List) –There are 16 pieces, each having four attributes: color, height, shape and consistency. The object is to place the fourth piece in a row where all four pieces have at least one attribute in common.

The Storybook Game  (Wish List) – I’m pretty excited about this game! The first player flips over a card and starts a story based on the picture that appears. The second person has to summarize the first players story to that point, flip over another card and add to the story. Then the third player has to summarize the first two players’ stories and then draw a third card to add to the story.

Pylos – The object of the game is to save your marbles so that you can be the one to place a marble at the top of the pyramid.

Photo Credit: osde8info

What are some of your family’s favorite games?