Children - Faith and Family Reviews

Tag Archive for Children

Up in a Tree Book Review

Posted by html404 on July 25, 2010
in Books

I received the following book in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the book.

i'mupinatreebook

I received this book for review and our children really enjoyed it! The lyrical rhyming style Mark Alden Johnson used to write this book, as well as the colorful illustrations made it fun for them to read!. They were eager to turn the pages and to see how the boy would get down.

Mark Alden Johnson recognizes that children face choices every day, “I think there is a misconception that peer pressure is reserved for teens dealing with drugs and alcohol, but we shouldn’t overlook the younger children. They too face bad influences and if we teach them how to make good choices at a young age, they are more likely to continue doing so as teens.”

Mr. Johnson hopes the story will teach kids that others will sometimes tell them to do things that are not always in their best interest and they will learn how to make their own choices or wait for an adult to consult with.

I’m Up in a Tree is available for purchase at Amazon and other major bookstores for about $14.95 (hardcover).

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Light Up Marble Cars Review

Posted by html404 on July 19, 2010
in Kids Toys

I received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

Light Up Marble Cars

About a week ago we received a six pack of Light Up Marble Cars to review. We have not done too many toy reviews, but these Marble Racers were an instant hit among our children. These little cars enabled me to get a bunch of work done with minor interruptions of excited exclamations over their new cars. I am sure it kept them busy for an hour or more. Seriously. By the time they put the decals on, which the older girls helped the younger two and the rest were able to put the decals on pretty much unassisted, but once that was done they played with them and raced their toy cars on the floor. They loved the fact that they lit up and said they could use them as their flashlights! 🙂

These little toy cars have held up well under the wear and tear of six little pairs of hands racing and zooming them across the floor.

My husband is in a buyer in the hobby industry and thought the Marble Cars were pretty neat. He thinks they’d sell at the shop he works at and plans to ask his distributor to carry them, as they do not currently do so. That’s 30 years of experience talking, so I am excited that he is able to get the word out about these cool little toy cars.

About Marble Cars

Light Up Marble Racers combine the racing excitement of mini-toy sports cars and the classic amusement of marbles to create a fun new toy for boys and girls 3 years of age and older. Kids customize their Marble Racers with themed, easy to use, crack & peel racing decals, race their creations on standard tracks, and then watch as the flashing LED marble rolls to keep pace with their speeding car. Light Up Marble Racers are the anti-video game: an old fashioned-type toy that gets kids away from the catatonic video game state, piques their creativity, and helps them to interact with other children.

There is nothing like it on the market. There are racing cars. There are marbles. But nothing else that combines these 2 classic stand-bys into 1 unique, fun “do it yourself” toy. Available in 6 electrifying styles – Police Racer, Fire Racer, Cats’ Eye Racer, Cyclone Racer, Confetti Racer, and Volcano Racer – this unique, colorful, new toy makes a great birthday gift or party favor. They retail for $4.99 to $6.99. Click here for more information about Light Up Marble Racers and to find a list of retailers where they are sold.

Here’s a little video MarbleRacers.com has on their website:

Made in The OC: Marble Racers from Marcy Massura on Vimeo.

http://www.marbleracers.com/

Stay tuned because we are offering a 6 pack Marble Racer giveaway on Friday once our Bebe-O Prenatal Vitamin giveaway is over!

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Wordless Wednesday – Cat in the Hat? No…..

Posted by html404 on June 16, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Family Stuff, Wordless Wednesday

MayJune 2010 081

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Reviewing My Focus

Posted by html404 on June 12, 2010
in Family Stuff

I can’t believe the week has gone by with me only posting on Friday and then today I managed to get posts ready thru Monday. Thank you God for the rain today! I have had a hard time focusing this past week. I have had so much on my mind that the energy to write other than what I have to write for work.

Gotta love this inner head shot below to show how the wheels churn in our minds and that is what my problem has been – thinking about too much!

Head

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the beginning of the week, I really wasn’t feeling well at all. This pregnancy has been a roller coaster as far as how I feel from day to day. Very weird. Tiredness, nausea, sciatic nerve acting up which affects my hips and movement (I’ve had this in every pregnancy, it is only exacerbated in this one!)

I have also been very farm focused. Researching about what we are going to do after this summer, reading books about farming – I don’t know many more books I need to get through, plus my normal work load in addition to the garden. Let’s just say that this might be the first summer that we take off from homeschooling in many years. Although, the girls are trying to keep up with their math and I am trying to get our middle son through his reading lessons, but that’s about all we have time for between keeping up the house and garden. We always seem to be on the go. Some work, like their math is easy to do in the van. Other things like hand-writing, no, definitely not!

A great thing that happened this past week is that we were able to give the farmer whose land we are renting/using our first little bundle of harvest. We gave her two different kinds of kale, swiss chard, green onions and a bunch of small radishes. The kale and radishes taste yummy, as the children have brought me a little of each to try. It is neat to see the younger ones reaction to picking the veggies. Our little blondie said, “We grew that?” to the radishes we pulled from the row. It was pretty cute.

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Wordless Wednesday – Piano Recital

Posted by html404 on June 2, 2010
in Family Stuff, Wordless Wednesday

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Download N Go Davy Crockett Blog Tour

Posted by html404 on May 27, 2010
in Downloads

I received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

DC_header

Davy Crockett was another hit with our children. They have seen a movie about Davy Crockett and knew quite about him already, but we still enjoyed doing the review of Download N Go’s Davy Crockett as there was still much more to learn in this 5-day unit study.

Again, this unit study is set up much like the Wale Tales one that I just posted a review about earlier this morning. It utilizes a lapbook to keep all the information and activities in one place. The unit study itself contains activities for the children to do, links to online activities/articles, as well as a list of suggested books to read to learn more about Davy Crockett. It covered Davy Crockett’s life on the frontier, history of Texas, patriotism, geography, vocabulary and more!

This was another positive lapbooking experience for our family. Our children had fun doing the activities and using their creativity to create their own unique lapbook. They were asking to do more each day so that shows you how much of a hit it really was!

As much as the Download N Go products were made for homeschooling families, they would be a great supplement for families using alterative schooling methods. Such as summer enrichment or just a fun learning activity to do with your children.

Don’t forget about Download N Go’s special offer to you below:

DNG has decided to offer a coupon code for 20% off multiple packs of the DNG units! The code is: DNG20PKS – just use that code at check out and receive 20% off any multiple pack purchase.

Purchase now at for only $7.95 plus your 20% off! AND another contest for you to enter…

THE PRIZE:

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine and Amanda Bennett Unit Studies have teamed up to celebrate the successful launch of Download N Go™ with a Sweet Treat Prize Package in The Adventure Begins … Giveaway!

They’re offering one lucky winner the SWEET chance to go EXPLORING this FALL!

The entire FALL curriculum lineup of Download N Go™ (Wow! That’s 19 studies!).
A $25 gift certificate to Baskin-Robbins (yummy ice cream).
A $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com (for those back-to-school supplies).
A $15 gift certificate to Starbucks Coffee (a special treat just for the teacher).
A full year’s subscription to The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine (encouragement and resources all year long).
A “sweet” blue and brown Homeschooling With Heart tote bag (THE must-have accessory for FALL!).
ENTER HERE!

For more information just click on the icon above! Contest will run May 24 and through June 12!

http://www.facebook.com/DownloadNGo

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Wordless Wednesday – Little Helpers

Posted by html404 on May 26, 2010
in Wordless Wednesday

Planting Growing Field May 2010 015

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Glittery Shoe Art

Posted by html404 on April 22, 2010
in Family Stuff

Don’t children do the darndest things? Some of those things are pretty creative. Take the “shoe art” from our Wordless Wednesday photo. Our daughter thought her army green tennis shoes (keds, sneakers, whatever word you use to describe this kind of shoe) looked too boyish, so she took some glitter glue and applied some shoe art and voila! She now has girlish looking shoes. The shoes were given to us and were not a good pair of shoes, so when some of the children came to me to “tell” they did not get the reaction they were expecting. Quite frankly, I thought she was ingenius and was proud of her ability to create the kind of shoe she desired without grumbling about wanting another pair of shoes.

Now, if they had of been a new pair of church shoes or something, I might have had a negative reaction. But her glittery shoes are very attractive on a young girl’s feet.

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Spring is Here!

Posted by html404 on April 6, 2010
in Free Stuff

I have several reviews to get posted, but am finding it hard to get them written up amidst everything else we are currently involved in! We have been having gorgeous weather – 70-80 degrees most of last week. This week we were expecting some of the same this week, but it’s been raining with thunderstorms most of the time.

April 2009 002

We had an “episode” last week, our two year old son gave us a scare with DeCon. My husband had brought home his mom’s shop vac, which she keeps in her garage where she puts down DeCon to control the mice population. There happened to be some on the shop vac and my husband found the DeCon on our floor beside Noah after bringing the shop vac into the house. It was a scary few days, but we are thankful to report that he is just fine. Whew. My poor husband was kicking himself, but it is one of those things that happened…and put our hearts in our throats and our emotions on our sleeves just thinking about losing Noah.

Then we were fortunate to come across a free upright freezer, which my husband and his brother picked up and got set up in record time in our garage. Now we have two upright freezers to help store food for our growing family.

We also came across some farm property for rent. Just land for rent, no house as it is already rented out, but if we were to rent a couple of acres we’d be able to put up a huge family vegetable garden to help feed this crew of ours. We are going to see the property tomorrow, which is fairly close to our house. So I am in “farm mode” again as I try to finish up our online farminars with PracticalFarmers.org, set up our mentorship through our Farm Beginnings facilitator (for those of you unaware, this past winter we won a full scholarship to Stateline Farm Beginnings for beginning farmers and those interested in farming). April 2009 023

So, if I you are wondering why I haven’t posted, you now know why, as this is all in addition to what I do at home for our homeschool and for our clients! Plus, we began our deep cleaning of our garage which desperately needs finishing so we can make room for this new little person growing inside my womb – he or she has begun to make more movements that are more noticeable to me! It is such a wonderful feeling! The weather and my husband’s health has not been very cooperative this week to get the garage done. 🙁

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Did You Participate in Earth Hour?

Posted by html404 on March 30, 2010
in Uncategorized

World Wildlife Fund poster:Layout 1 Just wondering if anyone participated in Earth Hour on Saturday night? We did, but we were late starting because we were watching the movie, Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog, and with only 15 minutes left we opted to do our hour from 8:45pm-9:45pm. By the way, good movie!

I had grandoise plans for our family, but I guess I should have shared them with everyone before hand because while Earth Hour was spent in the dark, it wasn’t anything like I was expecting!

First, Robert was not feeling well. Second, I had pictured all of us crowded in our bedroom with perhaps the flashlight, (I considered candles but with so many bodies in one room decided for the safety reasons the flashlight was enough) and we’d get some discussions going.

Well, when you put a sick husband, seven children and a wife/mom who wants to talk in a dark room for an hour what do you get? Giddy children, grumpy husband and a disappointed wife/mom!

I am sure our children will have fond memories of our hour of darkness because they played and goofed around, while my husband asked them to tone it down because he had a headache and I bemoaned that this is just not what I pictured us doing.

Result? Happy children, tired, sick husband and disappointed wife/mom. But we did conserve energy.

How was your Earth Hour?

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