USAopoly Review

Vendor: USAopoly

Product: Wonky: The Crazy Cubes Card Game

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Tapple: Fast Word Fun for Everyone

Age: 8+

Price: $19.95 each

About: Wonky: The Crazy Cubes Card Game is a card game using cards to give your moved to stacking wobbly and uneven blocks. This game is for 2 or more players. The object of the game is build the tower with out it falling over. The first person to use all of their cards with out the tower falling over wins. This isn't easy when your friends give you a small cube on the bottom. 


Tapple: Fast Word Fun for Everyone is a word game geared towards speed. There are cards that give you topics that you pick from. The game is for 2 or more players. You start by picking your topic and then you start the timer. You then have to say a word about your topic that starts with a letter on the wheel. You push the letter down then tap the red circle in the center before time runs out. Last one to answer without the buzzer going off wins.
How we used: We played this game as a family. From 7 years old up to the adults. Wonky is so much fun. You can try to work together in order to keep the game going longer. Or you can be sneaky and give small cubes at the end so the next player has a hard time stacking them and knocks them over. It was so much fun to see how tricky everyone else was going to be. The cubes are curved and some parts are flat, you never know which side someone is going to leave you with.
Tapple: Fast Word Fun for Everyone is a game that can make or break you. It is fun and makes you want to scream at the same time. All in good fun of course. This game not only helps with beginning letters but also speed reactions on coming up with answers. This helps you gain the skills to work under pressure for other speed drills, like in math. The game is rated for 2-8 players. We also played this one as a family. It was fun even for my 7 year old that is still trying to learn beginning letters and not very quick. We usually gave him the chance to go through 2 buzzers instead of 1 like the rest of us. You can also make your own topics if you find them to hard for your kids at different levels. The possibilities are endless with this game.
The box that Wonky came in was even a funky shape. It was a nice sturdy box though and the blocks have a nice cloth bag to go in to keep them all together. I was very impressed in the storage for this game. Around here storage is key so things do not get lost. Tapple has a little slot under the game to store the cards in so they can be kept together. My only complaint with the packing is it isn't really easy to get it back into the box. The plastic part that goes over it has to go just right or it won't fit. Which means the kids do not take the time to put it back in the box. I think a solid box would be more practical to store it back in, like the Wonky box. I fear the letters around the game might be broke off if we don't put it in a box while it is being stored. Plus it isn't a great shape to store without one anyways. However packaging is my only complaint with the game. It is worth it to have it even if you have to get your own box. I really like that both games are family friendly and we play them every night just about. It is something to get the kids into and they do not even realize they are learning at the same time.

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YWAM Publishing Review

Vendor: YWAM Publishing

Product:  HEROES OF HISTORY Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life

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Unit Study Guide

About: YWAM Publishing presents a wonderful Unit Study Guide for the HEROES OF HISTORY Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Storybook Life. The book is a paperback book with a nice glossy colorful front. The book goes over all the adventures and moving that Laura Ingalls Wilder did growing up. This book gave some more details than other books that I have read about Laura and her family. Then there was the study guide to go with it. The study guide is broken down into sections. The first part of it is an overall introduction that goes over how to use the study guide.  You then have some key quotes from the book. Then you get into chapter questions. There is an area for student explorations that has hands on projects and more writing. Community links that give some field trip ideas. The final sections are social studies, related themes, culminating event and appendixes. These sections give further studies you can do for other subjects as well as reviewing.
This book was read by my oldest daughter who is ten. We started out having her read a chapter then go over the questions in the study guide. Once we got through a couple chapters and got the hang of the book we started looking into the other sections and working on them. We worked on some of the arts and crafts as well as some of the cooking projects. We made butter which we have done many times before, but it never gets to old to do again. We also planned a field trip to visit the Laura Ingles Wilder homestead since they had a wonderful Wilder Days on the 19th. We had so much fun looking at the homestead as well as watching the Laura look a like contest.  They also had an amazing fiddle off. It was so much fun getting to tie the book and our lessons into something in real life and the kids seeing where she actually lived at one point.  I think fun stories of real people interest my children more than fairy tale books. My oldest is a thinker and she does not have a great imagination so she can relate to real life books versus those that are full of untrue things. She will question them and then not be able to understand the book. I think this book as well as the others would be great for those that have children like mine, that thrive for real life reading. It is also great if you need a spin on history lessons or want a unit study since this can fit into so many sections with the options that the study guide gives you, even science! You can not go wrong with these books. Also check out what my fellow reviewers said about the other books in the series, maybe you will want the whole set!
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Super Teacher Worksheets Review

Vendor: Super Teacher Worksheets

Product: Individual Membership

Price: $19.95

Super Teacher Worksheets is a website that contains the following subjects:

Math

Reading & Writing

Phonics & Early Literacy

Handwriting

Grammar

Spellings Lists & Worksheets (Gr. 1-5)

Science

Social Studies

Holiday

Puzzles & Brain Teasers

Teacher Helpers

Pre-K and Kindergarten

Make Your Own Worksheets

About: With worksheets suitable for children from Pre-K to 5th grade, or if any child needs extra practice on those times. This works well for homeschoolers and public schoolers to get some supplemental work to go along with your current curriculum. Everything is sorted out by the subject and then the grade level with in that subject. Like Math is listed then you can pick what kind of math you want to do; decimals, fractions, addition, etc. Then when you click on the kind of math you are looking for it will give you the approximate age/grade level for the worksheet. It made it super easy to find what you are wanting and quickly.

How we used: Since we do not use one set curriculum we loved this. We like to just pick topics we are trying to master and get as much work on those as we can. This site made it easy for me to go straight to what we wanted and to use it. I was able to print different things for all of my children that we wanted to do. There are fun worksheets and games as well as regular worksheets. There is also some fun Halloween worksheets for this coming month you want to check out! For my dyslexic daughter I was able to find some cut and paste types of work. The type that you have your question and you cut the answer from the bottom and past it to where it goes. This made this go really smooth with her since she hates to write. They should make a whole category of cut and paste work. I was also able to see the topics under each subject to give me direction on what I wanted to use next. We really used a lot of the Math and Science worksheets. I also liked that I could get every one something on one site versus looking through different sites for different age groups.  The sight word books her much different than others we have seen. They were a bit more fun and we were able to color them and have fun working on reading them as well.
There is also an option for adding it to "My File Cabinet". This allowed me save all the worksheets I wanted to do instead of printing them right away. I liked to save some that I had found even though we were not ready to do it right away. You can also make your own worksheets. Things like word searches and crossword puzzles are always fun. The worksheets all have a answer page after the work page. These were nice to have just in case but I never did print them. If we needed to we would just log back on to see what the answer was. This would be nice if you wanted your child to do self grading.
The only issue I could see with the site is that most of it is Common Core, while we didn't do anything to in depth to really notice I am sure some other things would be obvious and I don't really support the common core ways. 
Be sure to check them out on social media as well:

https://www.facebook.com/superteacherworksheets

https://twitter.com/superteacherwks

https://instagram.com/superteacherworksheets/

https://www.pinterest.com/superteacherwks/

Minbie Bottles

Minbie's significant breakthroughs:

Minbie nurtures a newborn's ability to breastfeed by allowing newborns to bottle-feed with the instinctive feeding technique that they are born with.
Minbie supports a newborn's digestion by helping to release natural digestive enzymes. This supports a baby's sleep too.
Minbie matches breast and bottle feeding techniques.

We passionately believe that you should be able to breastfeed and bottle-feed your baby.

To help you, we have created Minbie which is a teat designed to support your newborn's instinctive breastfeeding technique. This means that when newborns feed from Minbie they practice the instinctive latch and feeding-action for nurturing breastfeeding. This is a significant breakthrough in matching breast and bottle-feeding techniques and preventing feeding-confusion*.

For newborns who can not be breastfed, we created Minbie to allow them to bottle-feed with the instinctive breastfeeding technique that they are born with because why shouldn't they be able to feed intuitively with the technique that is developmentally right for them and that helps release digestive enzymes for proper digestion of the milk.

How is Minbie different than other teats?


Our research has found that generic and orthodontic bottle-teats can quickly teach newborns a different latch and feeding-action to the newborn's natural instinctive breastfeeding technique. This may be sufficient for bottle feeding, but it can cause feeding confusion and problems such as a 'weak latch' and 'lazy feeding' when the baby is breastfeeding.

If your newborn has become used to other bottle-teats, he or she may have difficulty feeding from a Minbie teat. This may be an indication that your baby's instinctive feeding technique has been damaged.
Every feed counts ...

Use Minbie as the first and only bottle teat for your baby to help maintain and strengthen your baby's instinctive breastfeeding technique, the way nature intended. Link to our website, mentioning that we subsidise shipping to the US only charging $7.95AUD ($6.20USD) https://minbie.com

Sky Zone Kansas City Discount

Sky Zone is the world's first indoor trampoline park. We're the inventors of "fun fitness" and the makers of trampolines as far as the eye can see. We give you one of the greatest workouts ever combined with awesome, healthy fun. We've been voted the number one "out of the box" workout and the "best party ever." Experience WOW - the weightlessness of bouncing, flipping and landing in a pit filled with 10,000 foam cubes. 

We are dedicated to providing you with the pure joy that comes with flying. We are sky lovers, thrill seekers and people who believe that jumping is freedom. We believe fitness can be fun and play can be smart. We are healthy and bursting with energy. We fly high and keep it safe. We are Sky Zone. 

My Readers Save $3 Off Open Jump at Sky Zone and 10% Off a Supreme Birthday Party. Click on the Sky Zone coupon below for more information and to redeem.
http://kansascitykidsguide.com/coupon.php?regionid=31&bid=11879&dealid=1838

Missouri Institute of Natural Science

The other day I took the kids to the Missouri Institute of Natural Science. I had never been and really knew nothing about it. It's a little museum type of place back outside of town in Springfield, MO.

We learned that on 9/11 a cave was found. This cave has been dated back to being an ice age cave. Since 2005 they have been slowly scraping the cave and finding little treasures, mostly shark teeth and sea fossils. Apparently at one time even Springfield, MO was under the ocean. This was something we had no clue of at all. They also have been able to use specialized equipment to see that there is mammoth bone under all the silt and they are hoping to eventually get to it as well. They think it either entered the cave and got lost trying to get out or was drug in to be ate by a dinosaur.

So amazing to think of all the possibilities on something that was found on a whim.