Product Review: SimplyFun Games

My kids love board games. So do I, for that matter. But so many of them require so much work and/or setup (counting money, sometimes even building the game board, designating a “banker,” separating pieces, and so on) that it feels like it’s barely worth it most of the time. So I questioned the wisdom of requesting a new board game to review, but now that we’ve played it, I’m so glad we got this game!

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Expanders is a game from SimplyFun, a company dedicated to producing educational games for children and adults from “3 to 103.” Their games help children of all ages develop their communication, math, science, and critical thinking skills, all while having loads of fun. They have over 90 products, many of which have won them multiple awards – and for good reason. If our experience with Expanders is any indication, all of the games from SimplyFun are sure to be winners.

expandersExpanders is a game that emphasizes simple math skills – addition to 12. Besides the adding, children work on their spatial reasoning and critical thinking through the play of this game. I’ll explain that a bit as I describe game play.

So, what’s in the box? There are six numbered strips (explanation on those to follow), two plain strips, a game board frame, a cloth bag containing four small plastic bags of colored tokens (I love that there’s a cloth bag included to keep everything organized!), and game instructions.

Game board setup for 3 players

Game board setup for 3 players

The first thing you have to do is build the board. I know, I know – I mentioned that as something I prefer not to do in games just a few paragraphs ago. But with Expanders, it’s really quick and easy. You simply open the frame and place numbered or plain strips (no more than six – the other two are left in the box for another time) inside the frame. The number of players (from 2-4) determines how many numbered strips versus blank filler strips you use. For four players, you use all six numbered strips. For three players, use five, and for two players, use only four. Simply place the strips in the frame, and you’re ready to play. The numbered strips are two-sided. One side is for easier game play, and the numbers stop at 8; the other side is for more advanced players, and those numbers go up to 12. You choose which side to use. (Play is identical regardless of which side of the board you choose to implement.)

Now that your game board is built, each player chooses a color – blue, orange, pink, or purple. The frame is comprised of these colors, so each player sits next to their chosen color and selects the bag of tokens (32 of each color) that matches their color. The tokens are see-through, which allows you to see the numbers even after you’ve placed your tokens on the board. So, now that the board is built and each player has their colored tokens, play begins.

There are three actions that players can choose from on their turn – excluding the opening three moves of the game. The first player must use exactly one token, and he can place it on any number on “his side” of the game board. This is defined as any of the numbers closest to his color in the frame. The second player must use no more than two tokens, and he can place one token on one number, like player one, or place two tokens on two identical numbers within his side of the board. The third player must use no more than three tokens, and he has the most options. He can make the same play as players one or two, or he can build an addition problem. This is done by selecting one number on his side of the board and saying it aloud. Then he finds two more numbers that are either touching the first number or made a chain starting at that number, and he says the math problem aloud. (Three is two plus one.) Starting with the fourth turn, players may make any of the three moves, with one exception: after the opening turns, any number of tokens may be played in a single turn using the “addition action.” (12 is 5+3+2+1+1 would use six tokens, for example.) The goal of the game is to be the first player to use all of his/her tokens. The main rule to keep in mind is that when building an expanded number, your numbers must all be in a chain and the first number (the sum) must be either on your row or touching one or more of the tokens (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) you’ve already played. When using one of the other playing options, the same rule for placement.

We played this game three times within just the first two days we had it. I’d say that makes it a winner! The kids love that it’s fun, and I love that they’re working on math skills while we play. It’s easy to set up and easy to put away. Play is really fun and simple, and it’s a good mental workout, especially as you try to play more than three tokens per turn (it’s easy to come up with a x+y=z math problem, but much harder to come up with a+b+c+d=e one). Spatial reasoning is practiced as you expand your tokens – children must figure out where acceptable places to make plays are. Critical thinking is learned and practiced as children are careful not to allow themselves to be boxed in by their opponents – or try to do just that to another player! (If you don’t have anywhere to place a token, you’re out of the game.)

The only thing we didn’t like about the game was the required first three turns. Once we got the hang of it, there was always an argument over who “had to” go first (the way of determining based on the instructions – whoever was the most recent person to download an app – doesn’t work for our family since the children don’t have access to smart phones or tablets). It became clear very quickly that the first player was at a severe disadvantage over the third player.

Expanders sells for $34, and if you act quickly, you can use coupon code SHREVIEW to get 15% off your first purchase (of any game in their catalog) through July 31st. It’s recommended for ages 7 and up, and I think that’s pretty accurate; students need to have a fairly strong understanding of addition to play the game successfully. Our family highly recommends this Simply Fun game!

Blessings,

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As always with Crew reviews, I’m not the only person writing about SimplyFun games this week. Members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew received either Expanders or Shape Whiz (a math game for older kids) to review. Click the banner below to read more reviews on both of these games!

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Homeschool Curriculum Review: Home School in the Woods

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across a type of homeschooling called Unit Studies. We did a few of those when the boys were younger (all of which I “wrote” myself), and my kids really loved that way of learning. Through our relationship with the Schoolhouse Review Crew, we’ve kind of gotten away from that style because we’re always getting the opportunity to try out a huge variety of different curricula in various subjects. Well, for our “taking the summer easy, not off” goal, we received two unit study programs, one of which I want to talk to you about today.

Home School in the Woods is a family run company. Everyone listed on the “about” page of their website is a member of their nucleus family. Amy Pak homeschooled her children, and now that they’re all adults, they run the business together, including creating (writing and illustrating) the history curriculum they sell. They offer a huge variety of products for teaching your children history from simple timelines and lapbooks all the way to more complex items like full on unit studies. For the purposes of this review, I received a copy of their Project Passport: World History Study: The Middle Ages. There are currently three units in the Project Passport series, and all three are represented by the Crew reviews (more on that with a link to additional reviews later).

What It Is

The Project Passport series is a history curriculum that takes you back in time to the period of history you’re studying (in our case, the Middle Ages). Each lesson is called a “stop.” This keeps the illusion of physically traveling back in time alive. The stops start with “preparing for your trip.” This first lesson has your students get their scrapbook ready, prepare their passports, and create the suitcase folder, which will hold the final assessment of all of the assignments they complete during their travels. Other things that happen during various stops are adding to the timeline (which is created at the first stop), writing newspaper articles, creating and writing postcards to “send home,” making a lapbook (which is done a little bit at a time throughout the course of the study), as well as more hands-on activities like cooking recipes from the time period. Also included in the unit is a series of mp3 files to listen to at various points along the journey.

Our Use

I was really torn on how to use this at first. I initially wanted to use it with both boys, but then when I saw the amount of printing required and other supplies needed (more on that in a minute), I realized that it might not be feasible to do so. So then I was going to use it just with Seahawk as something he could do for his summer reading requirements through the library. Well, then he went off to church camp before I’d had a chance to figure out my thoughts on how we were going to start, so in the end Munchkin (age 8) got the most use from this product. I expect we’ll start over in the fall, when school starts up again full time, with both boys. When that time comes, I’ll need to spend more time going over all the different options and figuring out which kid will benefit the most from each activity.

With Seahawk away at camp for a week, Munchkin and I had plenty of time to work together on the individual stops. Because it wasn’t possible for us to get all the printing done that the program required, we went “old school” and I hand drew a lot of the elements just so we could get the review done. Due to the time requirement to do things this way, we haven’t finished the entire study yet (which is why I mentioned that we’ll be doing it again in the fall – hopefully then, we’ll be able to get the pages printed for real and we’ll have a more positive experience with the study).

Opinion

I really like the idea of this unit study. The concept is really cool – traveling to different eras.

But.

I was really frustrated with the amount of printing required. When I requested to review this product, it was mentioned that there would be “some printing required.” Some. Okay, cool. I can handle some. What I didn’t expect was that there would be hundreds of pages to print over the course of the study (and nearly 50 pages just for the first stop). Per student. For a family that doesn’t have a home printer – or even one that does have a home printer, but not an office-quality laser printer and is therefore paying 7-10 cents per page to print – this might not be the best fit. That was certainly the case for us.

If printing isn’t a problem for you, then this product is one I can highly recommend. If getting access to printed pages is harder for you, like it is for me, then  you might want to look for something else to meet that history requirement.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned before, there are currently three unit studies in the Project Passport series: Ancient Egypt, The Middle Ages, and Renaissance and Reformation. Home School in the Woods has plans to continue to add to this series in the future. Each study can be purchased for $33.95 for the download version (which is what I received) or $34.95 for a physical CD mailed to you with all the files on it.

Members of the Schoolhouse Review Crew are exploring all three of these units, so if the Middle Ages isn’t your cup of tea, make sure to click the banner below to find more reviews on the other eras.

Blessings,

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22 Weeks ~ An Announcement and a Party

Well, here we are, another month down. Only 18 weeks to go!

I had what’s called an “anatomy scan” for baby on July 6th. This is where the doctor (in my case; sometimes it’s an ultrasound technician, who then sends the results to the doctor) performs an ultrasound, the main point of which is to measure baby’s internal organs and overall size to make sure everything is going as it should. It’s during this scan that a lot of parents find out the gender of their little one, as well. (With Seahawk and Munchkin, we opted not to find out gender. With Small Fry, we decided at the last second to find out. This time, we’d decided well in advance that we wanted to find out.)

The ultrasound went very well. We were able to see a wiggly baby whose body was developing perfectly. There were two clearly visible hemispheres of the brain, and four fully-functioning heart chambers. Also, the doctor said she was able to make out perfectly working kidneys – I couldn’t really see those, but she assured me that “if you can’t see them, that’s a good thing.” We were told that baby weighs about 10 ounces at this point (well, probably more now since this was a week and a half ago). I’m not 100% sure, but I think that’s on the small end of normal, which would be about right for me. All three boys have been fairly small at birth – Seahawk was the biggest at 7 lbs, 10 oz (the exact same weight as both my brother and me), Munchkin was the smallest at 6 lbs, 3 oz (he was an emergency c-section 11 days early), and Small Fry was 6 lbs, 8 ounces (a repeat c-section one week early).

Once all the important measurements were taken, the doctor looked for the gender. It took her a long time to see – baby was being pretty stubborn. None of that wiggling going on was in the “hey, let me show you my gender” kind of moving. After several minutes of looking and pressing on my tummy to get baby to move, she was finally able to see “the goods.”

We’re having boy number 4.

We’ve already chosen his name, but I won’t be sharing that here on the blog for security reasons (just like I haven’t ever shared the older boys’ names, lest you think we’ve given our children crazy names like Seahawk, Munchkin, and Small Fry). So if any of you have ideas for a “blog name” for our new addition, I’m happy to hear it!

Once we knew that baby was healthy, and the gender, it was time to tell all of our extended family. We’d decided to buddy up the announcement with Small Fry’s birthday party since everyone would be around anyway. For his birthday party (which was Saturday the 11th, one day before his actual birthday), we had a bbq for the grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins, and a few other extended family members. Once everyone had eaten, we did a pinata. Small Fry was so excited for this!

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We let him choose the pinata he wanted from the store earlier that week (he chose a donkey), and Munchkin and I filled it with candy and blue confetti. At pinata time during the party, I was so proud of Seahawk. He volunteered to run the pinata instead of hitting it since he was so much older than all of the other children who would be playing the game (the oldest cousin is 6, almost 7, and she’s very tiny).

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It took about twice through the line (six kids played) before the pinata broke open and the candy and confetti rained out. Everyone was very excited – the children for the candy, the adults for the “it’s a boy” announcement.

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Once the pinata was done, we did Small Fry’s birthday gifts and cupcakes. Overall, it was a very successful party.

Blessings,

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Pictures of the Week: Picking Berries

 

Berry picking no. 2

A photo posted by Wendy (@ladybugdaydreams) on

I posted these pictures on Instagram earlier in the week, but I want to put them up here as well. Last week (or maybe it was the week before…) I took the boys berry picking. The last time we’d gone was in 2013, and while we were successful in bringing berries home on that trip, the boys didn’t enjoy the experience. It was really hot, and they were too young (at 6 and 9) to do very well at it. It took us hours to bring home just a few pounds of berries.

 

Berry picking no. 3

A photo posted by Wendy (@ladybugdaydreams) on

Fast forward to this year. Now that they’re 8 and 11 – and Small Fry is almost 3, so old enough to help instead of just sleep the entire time – we had a much more positive experience. Small Fry and I shared one bucket, and Seahawk and Munchkin shared another one. Within half an hour or so, we’d nearly filled both buckets, putting us about $4 over what I’d budgeted for the trip. But that’s okay; who can say no to additional fresh marionberries?!

 

A photo posted by Wendy (@ladybugdaydreams) on

Blessings,

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July Blogging Challenge, Day 2: Quote

Today’s challenge is to share a favorite quote. One comes to mind immediately, so I’ll share that one first. Then I’ll share a few others afterward that I also really like.

Blogging Challenge Day 2 Quote Colossians 323

Start by doing what’s necessary; then what’s possible; and suddenly, you are doing the impossible.
~St. Francis of Assisi

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
~Wallace Stevens

Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.
~Maya Angelou

Adopt the pace of nature. Her secret is patience.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

To the artist, there is nothing ugly in nature.
~Auguste Rodin

The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts, but of values.
~William Ralph Inge

I am always ready to learn, though I do always like being taught.
~Winston Churchill

Have a great day!

Blessings,

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Who

For the month of July, some friends of mine on the Schoolhouse Review Crew are hosting a 31-day posting challenge, and I thought it might be fun to join in. There are a couple of days where I have specific things to write about already, so I won’t be doing the challenge on those days, but my goal is to do them the rest of the days. Hopefully it all works out!

The first day, the theme is “Who.” That means it’s just a basic introductory post about me. Rather than write it all out here, I’m going to offer a few highlights and then give you a couple of quick links if you want more information.

First off, I’m Wendy. I’ve been married to Will since 2001; we got married when we just 19 (me) and 20 (him). Our birthdays are only two days apart – mine’s this coming Friday and his is Sunday – although he’s a year (minus two days) older. I’m a stay at home mom of three boys, expecting one more child in mid-November. We’ll find out gender next week. I’m super excited about that! I homeschool my children with the help of the Schoolhouse Review Crew (yay for free curriculum in exchange for writing a review). We live in a fairly small town (population approximately 20,000) in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve lived here my entire life – the general area always, and this town all but 3 years. All three of my children were born at the same hospital as I was. Seahawk, my oldest, was born in the same physical location, and the other two, Munchkin and Small Fry, were born after the new hospital was built, but I still count it as the same because it’s the same “company,” just a new facility. (And for those of you thinking I don’t know how to name children, those aren’t their real names. We gave them nicknames to use here on the blog to help maintain their safety.)

So there’s us in a nutshell. For more, be sure to click on my about page. That covers info on all 5 members of my family. For more on just me, I did a special birthday post in 2013 and another in 2014 that was chalk full of random facts about me.

Blessings,

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Make sure and visit Lynn at This Day Has Great Potential and Jennifer at A Glimpse of Our Life; they’re the hosts of this month’s challenge. There’s a linkup at each of their blogs where I’m connecting with other bloggers working through their challenge. If you blog and want to join in, one of those blogs is the place to go.

 


5 Random Things ~ June 26

5 random things

Things have been a little quiet again, since the kids finished up VBS last week. But there are still some exciting things to mention, just not enough about each one to get its own blog post. So here’s a little bit of randomness from our family!

1. We finished up school for the summer – for the most part. There are a couple of unit studies we’re working on (the whole “taking the summer easy, not off” that we did last year). One is from Home School in the Woods, and we’re working on the Middle Ages study. The other is all about science! Funtastic Unit Studies has a great science book we received earlier this week, so we’ll be diving into one of those studies next week (once I decide which unit study to do first and make sure we have all the necessary supplies). Reviews for both of those will be up on the blog in the coming weeks.

2. Munchkin has decided he’d like to play baseball. Since the baseball season for this year has already begun, we bought a family bat and a package of wiffle balls (for training purposes) to help him develop his skills. We’ve been heading out to the park in the evenings, when it starts to cool down, and just practicing hitting. It’s been a lot of fun.

3. How do you succeed at the summer reading program when it’s not all about reading? That’s been our quandary with Seahawk. The teen summer reading program at the library is more about “doing” than about “reading,” so it’s been tricky to figure out what that needs to look like for him. The goal is to have the kids do an activity that somehow relates to a book at the library (or the library itself). For every 5 activities, they get an entry into the drawing that’s held at the end of the summer. So far, he’s read a book about simple magic tricks and done a small show for Will and me. That’s his first activity. Other activities I’m thinking of for him include researching the different varieties of blackberries and writing a short report to go along with the berry-picking we did earlier this week and drawing his own comic book adventure to match up with the Spider-Man comics he’s been devouring so far this summer. If you have other ideas that might fit the bill, let me know in the comments!

4. My birthday is next Friday. In the past, I’ve done big lists that are things you might not know about me just from reading my blog. (I did that in 2013 and 2014.) If you’d like to see something like that again, let me know. If you’d like to see some other sort of specialty post for that day, let me know that, too. I’m willing to consider just about anything.

5. Small Fry is as cute as ever. He’s all about the “new baby,” and talks about him/her a lot. I can only imagine his excitement when we can start feeling movement on the outside. That’ll blow his mind.

So that’s a pretty good summary of things around here this week. What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

Blessings,

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A Visit to the Fire Station

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Last week, the big kids were at VBS (Munchkin as an attendee, Seahawk as a helper with the other members of the youth group). Small Fry was too young to attend, so we had him at home with us each day (Will worked from home most of the days last week). We did our best to make sure he had fun things to do so he wasn’t feeling too left out from going to church – which is one of his favorite things to do. Every single morning, he says to me, “Go church?” because he loves attending Sunday school and children’s church classes so much.

One of the things on the list that we wanted to do with him was attend Public Works Day at the library. Each June, the city brings several of their big machines (bulldozers, front end loaders, dump trucks, cherry pickers, etc) to the library parking lot for kids to climb around in and on and learn all about. I thought Small Fry would really enjoy this; I know the big boys did when they were younger. So I looked at the calendar and saw that Public Works Day was scheduled for Thursday, so we made plans to do that with him.

So, Thursday morning arrived, and we took him to the library. There were no machines in the parking lot. We thought maybe they were just running late or something, so we went inside to ask about it and were told that it had happened the day before.

Oh, no!

So we explained to Small Fry (as much as you can explain things to an almost-3-year-old) that we’d missed it, but we would find something else fun for him to do. As we were walking to the car, Will had a great idea: we’d go to the fire station and see if they would be willing to give him/us a tour. So that’s just what we did.

There was a very nice firefighter (whose name I didn’t get, unfortunately) who was more than happy to show us around the fire truck.

By the time we got there, we only had about half an hour before we had to pick up the big kids from VBS, so it was a quick tour, but Small Fry really enjoyed himself. He had one-on-one attention from a firefighter, which I think was even better than the none-on-one attention he would have gotten at Public Works Day (there aren’t really any workers around at that, except to make sure the kids don’t accidentally release the parking brakes or something similar).

The firefighter showed us the inside of the fire truck – and let Small Fry sit in there, including running the siren and beeping the horn. We got to see the front seat of the truck as well as the back seat, and he got to use the walkie-talkie radio to talk to Will. (The firefighter gave Will the second radio and had him go to the back of the truck so Small Fry could talk to him through the walkie-talkie.)

Fire Truck inside

When we’d finished the truck tour, we went out into the training area where our firefighter hooked up a fire hose to the faucet on the building. Before he turned it on, another firefighter was pulling one of the other trucks out of the garage, so we got to watch that one move. Then it was time to spray the hose!

This was definitely the highlight of the trip for Small Fry. The firefighter let him hold the hose – actually, there’s an apparatus that hooks onto the hose that’s kind of a cross between a nozzle and a squirt gun, so that’s what he held – and spray the training area. He showed us how they have different spray options, much like a bottle of window cleaner. It could “stream” or “spray.” The firefighter was even a bit of a jokester and had Small Fry aim the water at one of his colleagues across the training area.

fire hose 1We took plenty of pictures, of course, and had them printed out for Small Fry. He’s been showing anyone who will look at them (so far, his two “Papas” – my dad and Will’s dad – and “Lala” which is how he pronounces Will’s stepmom’s name). It’s adorable how proud he is of his pictures. And now, he’s asking nearly every morning, “One-a more whooooo?” Meaning, “Can I go on the fire truck again?” (Literally, “One more time on the {insert siren sound here}?”)

Blessings,

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