Mom Central: GameStop

When the folks at GameStop and Mom Central asked if I would like to do a review for them my first thought was “How fun!” and my second thought was, “Heck yeah!”. Once that was out of the way I was ready to do business (or at least pretend I was).

When I received the GameStop gift card I decided that instead of dragging all three children out and listening to them fight, Hubby and I would just go looking for a new game together instead. To be honest, I’m glad I did it that way because it gave me a chance to focus on finding a game that everyone could enjoy.

As we walked into the store the manager greeted us and asked if we needed any help finding anything in particular. I told her “not at the moment but thank you” and we went to browse the shelves. There was a nice selection of games to choose from but I did notice that the prices are somewhat high for used games. Either that or I’m just becoming a major cheapskate in my old age. I do however like the fact that if you buy a used game from GameStop and decide it’s not really what you wanted, you can return it within a week for a refund.

So with my gift card in hand, I decided on Mario vs. Sonic at the Olympic Games because it was something the kids would have to get off their keisters to play. After I chose my game, I went to pay for it and had a nice conversation with the manager as she completed my purchase. I’ve been to this particular GameStop a few times and I will say that each time she tries to be very nice and helpful to people. The store itself is always kept clean and all the games are categorized in a way (by game system, accessory, etc) that makes finding things easy.

Much to my 17 year old’s chagrin, Mario vs. Sonic doesn’t include blowing anything up and my 13 year old doesn’t get to feed or raise animals but there are A LOT of games to choose from. You are sure to get a workout and build up a little muscle in your arms while playing this game so the heathens aren’t complaining too much. The five year old loves Sonic the Hedgehog so you’ll hear nothing negative from him at all.

Thank you GameStop and Mom Central for giving my family the opportunity to have more fun together.

MomCentral- Cranium Bloom

I'm always interested in finding new games and activities to use with my 5 year old during homeschooling so there was no way I could pass up MomCentral when they asked if we would like to give Cranium Bloom’s Let's Play Count & Cook Game and Let's Go To The Zoo Seek & Learn Puzzle a try. Both were a huge hit with my youngest son and I'm so glad we said "yes".

The Let's Go To The Zoo Seek & Learn Puzzle has large pieces that are easy to put together and a lot to look at once the puzzle is finished. That isn’t the coolest part though. This puzzle also comes with two sets of cards (Beginner and Advanced) and a dry erase marker that you can use for an awesome learning game. You show your child a card and ask them to find that number or kind of thing on the puzzle and circle them.

My son breezed through the Beginner cards and made short work of the Advanced as well because he was having so much fun! He especially loved the fact that he was allowed to draw on a puzzle without getting in trouble for it. This has become one of his new favorite learning games.

The Let's Play Count & Cook Game was equally as fun to play. This game comes with Little Chef shaped game pieces, a die, a “cookbook” with recipes that you have to make (plus there are great cooking tips and facts on each page), and round pieces that have different ingredients on them such as tomatoes, cheese, and chocolate chips. The object of the game is to choose a recipe, roll the die, and everytime you land on one of the needed ingredients you put that round piece on the recipe book. The person who collects the last ingredient is the Top Chef and gets to check out the “hidden secret” for the recipe. This game teaches kids turn taking, matching, counting, pretend play, how to work with others on things, and how to have a lot of fun.

My son absolutely loved the "cute" Little Chef game pieces as well as racing Mommy to try to get the last needed ingredient. He also liked knowing some of the ingredients in his favorite foods which led to some fun discussions about cooking.

Since I do so many reviews, my son has a lot of games to choose from but Let's Go To The Zoo Seek & Learn and Let's Play Count & Cook are definitely among his favorites. I can’t even count how many times we’ve played both games over the last two weeks and considering that he is learning and having fun, well you won’t hear me complaining.

Cranium has done a very good job with their Bloom series of products and I’m glad we had a chance to play with and review both games. Thank you Cranium and MomCentral.

Game Review: How Tall Am I?

The game "How Tall Am I?" by Jax Games is a great way to teach children both measuring and counting skills. Recommended for ages 3 through 8, the game consists of thirty character parts (HAT, HEAD, ARMS, BODY, and FEET), a special measuring ruler, and one die which has a picture of each part on it. The concept is to collect one of each part to try to build the tallest fun character. A cool twist is that you can choose any character part you want (meaning you can mix Fireman parts with Ballerina parts and so on) in order to achieve your winning character.

To play you mix up all of the character parts and then spread them out in the middle of your playing surface. The player who is the youngest begins the game and rolls the die first. Whatever character part the player rolls (say a BODY or HAT) is the part they get to choose. All other players do the same thing at each turn. If you roll a part that you already have then your turn is over and it moves on to the next player. If you roll "WILD" then you can select any character part you want which can be alot of help if you're missing only a few more parts and trying to get ahead. After each player has collected one head, one hat, one arms, one body, and one feet then it is time to measure your character. The player with the tallest character is then ruled the winner! What if there is a tie? Well then the player who completed their character first is the winner.

It might sound like a long process but the game goes really quickly and will have your kids giggling at some of the characters they make. You also have to watch out for the kiddos because they will catch on quite quickly and learn what parts will make their character the tallest. My youngest son was amazingly quick to figure this out and would grab the neccessary pieces every chance he had. It was alot of fun and laughter for the rest of us as well.

The best part besides playing the game itself? My youngest son now goes around the house announcing to us all, "Two? Two is not very tall. Where is something I can measure to 11?".

How Tall Am I? would make a great gift for the holiday season for the whole family to have fun with. It's a great addition to Family Game Night and gives the younger kids the chance to feel smarter than the grown-ups which once you see their eyes light up with that knowledge is totally worth it!

Review AND Giveaway- Little Adventures Dress Ups

Recently I had a chance to talk to one of the great folks from Little Adventures, a company started by two moms who had realized that there was a need for good quality dress up clothes at affordable prices people could afford. The rest as they say is history!

Little Adventures makes some of the best costumes I've seen in a long time so it only made sense for me to do a review for their little Fireman dress up right? I am so glad I did and I can only say that the quality of it is so awesome! Made of quality fabrics this dress up set came with a durable plastic hat, pants with elastic waistband, and a fireman's coat with shiny stripes and badge on it.

I also like how they use wide Velcro strips instead of little buttons or ties that are harder for little hands to fasten. MonkeyBoy can put his outfit on and take it off anytime he wants without having to wait for Mommy to help him. All of their sets are like this and that includes the ones for the little girl's as well.

Each dress up is completely machine washable and dryable. Trust me, these are not going to fall apart just because you wash them. MonkeyBoy's fireman set has already been washed twice and it isn't coming apart anytime soon.

Little Adventures makes capes, princess dress ups, accessories, fireman sets, and many many more! I would highly recommend contacting one of their online retailers (or maybe consider becoming one yourself) and getting one of their great dress up sets for your little boy or girl to use as a Halloween costume and then an ever after dress up.

Oh wait, you noticed the word "giveaway" in the title didn't you? You didn't think I was just posting a review here on LWH without reason did you?

Well since you patiently read the whole review (you did RIGHT??) AND Halloween is just around the corner, how would you like the fact that Little Adventures also gave me one of their Deluxe Cinderella Dress Ups (picture on the right) plus the Choker and Headband set (below on the left) for one of my lucky readers to win?!

The Deluxe Cinderella set is a little girl's dream come true when it comes to a Halloween costume AND Princess dress up! There are no itchy fabrics or underskirts to bother your sweety, each dress comes with completely finished seams and hems, and as I said before the whole thing is machine washable.

This giveaway will be for ONE Cinderella and Accessory Set size 5-7 years but you will have a chance on two of my blogs to win it.

So would you like to know how one of you lucky folks can win this set for your little princess? Well I am going to give you up to THREE chances here to win until October 10th when I will be randomly choosing a winner and then mailing the costume out Priority Mail -

1) Leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite all time dress up set/costume was as a kid.

2) You don’t need to be a blogger to enter, but if you are blog about the contest, and link to this contest post and Little Adventures. Then email me at sonacreidhereviewsATgmailDOTcom with the URL link to your post. The contest must be in it's own post not attached to the end of one.

3) Write about this contest in a MySpace bulletin telling all your friends about this contest then email me your username there to sonacreidhereviewsATgmailDOTcom

Sorry but this contest is only open to residents of the United States (unless my Canadian readers aren't worried about getting it by Halloween- let me know).

So what are you waiting for? Don't think you can hide the Cinderella pictures from your little princess by passing up my blog. Just won't happen and she will be mad at you for not trying to win! I'll tell on you, yes I will!

psstt head over to Life With Heathens for three more chances to win this!!

PLEASE LEAVE ME A WAY TO CONTACT YOU!! IF YOU DO NOT LEAVE AN EMAIL OR LINK TO YOUR BLOG I CAN NOT CONTACT YOU IF YOU WIN! (MD and AW ladies just leaving your username there is fine)

Card Game Review: Bella Sara

When it comes to trading cards my kids have been through most of them. Pokemon? Two boys hooked. Yu-Gi-Oh? All three kids are into those even now. Digimon cards? Yep, we’ve done that too. While my daughter goes with the flow and plays the cards with the boys, I’ve never really found any exciting girl's (or neutral gender yet including the girls more) trading card games. That is until now.

Bella Sara trading cards were created for a girl named Sara by her amazingly talented mother. How great is that? From what I’ve read, Sara, is a horse fanatic and this was her mother’s way of giving her something new and wonderful having to do with horses.

What impressed me almost as much though was this sentence from their About page, "Bella Sara is an imaginative, joyful world of horses, where every girl is special and uniquely beautiful"! WOW, that is so nice to hear in this day and age of BRATZ and ads that aren't exactly healthy for our girls.

Each pack of cards comes with 5 cards and 1 game card. Immediately after opening the card packs sent by Bella Sara they were gone. My daughter is that fast? No, actually it was her and my four year old son who came in and out like tornadoes grabbing the cards! Yes, the youngest boy is immensely hooked on the cards as well.

Bella Sara cards feature horses in all forms- regular horses, magical horses, winged, and even horse hybrids. Not only that but they actually learn about horses as they use the cards. Even better still is the fact that Bella Sara has incorporated their cards into their website in a really neat way!

After buying a pack of the cards (easy to find at Wal-Mart, Target, etc) you can go online to register your horse in your very own virtual stable. Each card has it’s very own authentication code at the bottom that you type in giving you access to the horse and it's fantastic stable. After registering the card you can go to your horse’s stable and do so many things like feed, water, groom, give an apple to, and change the hay for your horse which my kids found to be their favorite parts.

Once you have taken care of your horse it will be ready to play games and explore it’s world. You can play games, read the first chapter of the online Storybook, print Coloring Pages, and tons more! We still haven’t made it through everything on the site and every time we think we’re getting close they add something new!

Since receiving the Bella Sara cards to review I have had to buy four more packs for Sis and MonkeyBoy because they just couldn't wait to have more! Considering that the packs sell here for $1.89 per pack, I'm not complaining.

So if you have a little girl or even a little boy, visit Bella Sara's website and also look for their cards in stores. You won't be sorry and the sparkle these cards put in your child's eye is priceless.

*I have not been paid monetarily by Bella Sara to give this review. My only compensation is being allowed to keep the cards*

And The Winners Are....

Thank you to everyone who took part not only in my giveaways but the Dog Days of Summer giveaways in general. The number of participants was amazing and I think Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer started a very wonderful thing.

So. I bet you'd like to know who won wouldn't you? I'm kind of tired. Maybe I should take a nap and then tell you. No? Oh alright, I suppose you've waited long enough. ;)

Winners were chosen using the random generator at Random.Org because the kids wouldn't cut out all the pieces of paper for me. See? Heathens! Told ya!

Anywho- Here we go...

Winner of the blog design by Ro at The Blog Cafe is: KatieBug (ksl) from Bugs on a Blog (you can have either blog redesigned Katie)

Winner of the three books from me is: Jenny from Up The Hill Gang

Winner of the gift membership to EMealsForYou.com is: Doreen from Doreen's Scrap Wonderland

Winner of the surprise gift box from me is: Fiddle D. Dee from Seedlings to Sunflowers

Congratulations to everyone who won and I hope those who came for this giveaway will stick around and come back for my future book giveaways as well. ;) I will be contacting you by the end of the day with information on how to get your prizes!

Dog Days Of Summer Giveaways From ME!!!

*Sticky Post Please Scroll Down For New Posts*

MORE PRIZES ADDED!!! COME LOOK!
Read through to find out about all the great new prizes

that have been donated PLUS I've added to the ones I'm offering as well!

To really kick this new blog off I have joined the Dog Days of Summer giveaways hosted by Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer. What better way to say "hello" and thank those who have supported me than to give away free stuff?

Not only will I be giving away FOUR prizes here on Sona Creidhe Reviews but I will also be giving away four more at my site Onorach (foul language possible)!! That's right, a total of EIGHT prizes you can win.

The prizes I am offering here at SCR are:

-Your choice of any THREE books from this list. They will be sent media mail (unless regular postal is cheaper) along with a special treat from me.

- A special gift box put together by MOI (please let me know if you have any food allergies)! This will be a surprise box and will be made with whoever wins in mind (if a mama wins, if a gentleman wins, etc).

- A free blog design by Ro of The Blog Cafe for one lucky Blogspot or Wordpress blogger! Ro did my very first great design at my Life With Heathens blog (I still have it but am not techie enough to convert to new blogger. lol) and she is fantastic to work with. I also consider her a great friend and fantastic mother. Please be sure to check out all of the designs over at The Blog Cafe.

- EMealsForYou.com has donated a gift certificate to one lucky winner for a complimentary membership (prize worth $36)! EMealsForYou.com is a fantastic site and I am very glad they contacted me. Here is what they have to say "Stress relief is at hand. Are you tired of that age-old cry, “What’s for dinner?” We have the answer. We will provide the inspiration; choose from hundreds of easy recipes and meal plans. We’ll scale the recipes based on the number you are cooking for. We’ll prepare and print the shopping list. You get to enjoy a great meal with your family". Their site has meal plans, recipes, kitchen notes, and much much more. I am honored to be able to offer this great prize to one of you.

Also if you would like to go ahead and join EMealsForYou.com, Enter HOMSCL-38 as the Sponsoring Identifier when completing the registration form and receive $5 off the subscription price! If you would like to be an affiliate for them then please email me to find out how. I was offered this chance and as soon as these giveaways are over I believe I will take them up on it! :)

To enter just leave me a comment with your choice of which prize you would like if you win and I will choose two winners by random generator on Friday, July 27th, 2007. Please be sure to leave a URL or email address that I can reach you at in case you win. Good Luck!

To those who have already entered don't worry, you will be included in the drawing to win any new prizes I offer. The only difference will be that if you had specified books or gift box previously then I will give you priority of choice if you win either of those.

I will be holding more book giveaways in the near future so please be sure to bookmark this site for chances to win!

EduLinks 07/25/07

Boy has it been busy around here this week! This blog went from less than 10 visits a day to almost 200 a day thanks to the Dog Days of Summer Giveaways! If you haven't headed over there and entered the more than 450 fabulous giveaways then please do so now. Don't forget to sign up for the eight great prizes I'm giving away here and at Onorach as well!

Definately don't forget to attend the 8th Country Fair of Homeschooling put together this month by my wonderful friend, Meg from Get In Hang On. She put alot of thought into the theme for July and I think she did a fantastic job as did everyone who submitted something.

I hope you enjoy today's EduLinks and if you have any you would like to share please feel free to email me and let me know. :)

Alphabetical List of Educational Card Games- A collection of 132 card games for you to use and learn with. Please do not use for resale.

Butch’s Secular Homeschool Links- Doc/Butch has a great collection of links for just about every subject. She has been an unschooler for many years with wonderful and successful children to show for it.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art- Excellent art resource! You can download publications, check out online features that teach about the art of several different cultures and eras, browse themes and cultures that would be great to use with Unit Studies, and much more! I mean, this IS The Met we're talking about here!

Everyday Spelling- Awesome spelling site for "grades" 1-8. Enjoy the Workout Room, Reference Room, spelling lists for each grade and alot more! Lots of fun stuff to do.

Let's Play Math- Denise actually makes Math fun! Coming from me that is a huge compliment as I'm more of a History gal myself! Her series "Alexandria Jones" is too cool and my younger kids love it! Anytime my math hating daughter hits a brick wall I put her on Denise's site and it's like getting her second wind.

This week's Blog Of The Week belongs to my blogfriend Summer at Mom Is Teaching. Summer always has great posts and information to share with the homeschooling community and she is also alot of fun to know. If it wasn't for her I would probably miss out on well over half of the blogging carnivals that go on. Thank you Summer for all the time you put into your blog and for sharing with the rest of us. Now go get your award girl and you can display it on whichever blog you'd like (if ya wanna.). ;)