EduReview- Let's Get Ready For Kindergarten

"Let's Get Ready for Kindergarten" is the first book in Stacey Kannensburg's "Let's Get Ready" series. If you have little ones getting ready for either Kindergarten or First Grade, you will love these two fabulous books by Cedar Valley Publishing - “Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten” and “Let’s Get Ready for First Grade.

“Let’s Get Ready For Kindergarten!” and “Let’s Get Ready For First Grade!” are both award winning books receiving national acclaim by winning the 2006 Best Educational Book of the Year Award by the AWA, a Silver Addy for illustrations from the American Advertising Awards and by being selected by Orca Communications as one of the top new products for kids in their Fall/Spring Media’s Best Guide. “Let’s Get Ready For First Grade” is the winner of the 2007 Teacher’s Choice Award for the Family.

The books are sturdy and made to use with Dry Erase Markers so your kids can practice in them over and over and you can use them for more than one of your children. (My son loves the dry erase marker feature - it makes completing the exercises more of a game to him and he just loves to use them!) These bright and colorful books will make getting ready for September fun for you and your kids.

I had a chance to speak with Stacey and find out how she came up with the idea for the Let's Get Ready books. Behind Cedar Valley Publishing are two stay-at-home moms - Stacey Kannenberg and Linda Desimowich - who wanted to help get their own kids ready for school. So in 2004, they set out to help parents get involved in the educational process for their kids.

Award winning author Stacey Kannenberg says, “I believe parents are responsible for getting their kids ready for that first day of school! It’s not just knowing your name, address, phone number, and tying your shoes, it’s about taking an active role in learning. These books are helping parents get involved in education at the core!! Never fear, it’s never to late to start. These books are working inside homes and schools across the nation.” And a great bonus - 10% of all profits are donated to literacy programs!

I liked the size, too - I was able to tuck it into my bag easily and tote it along on a few outings where I knew we'd have some time to kill and it was perfect. Each page has a separate activity, so you can touch on things fairly quickly and move onto the next thing.

Not only does each page have a different activity, but at the bottom you have "Mrs. Good", the teacher, who suggests other things you can do on the page - like "Can you name another pair of opposites?" I liked that feature a lot - not only did they have some creative ideas, but sometimes just a word of encouragement like "Magnificent!"

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.

ESRB Blog Tour

Okay first of all, send the kids out of the room because you do not want them to see this! They will seriously cut off your computer time if they know you are learning things like this.

Are they gone? Well okay, the baby can stay but that's it.

Thanks to the release of game systems such as Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and PSP3 most of our kids are putting video games at the top of their wish lists this holiday season right? Once upon a time you could pop just about any game into the console and not worry about whether or not your 5 year old should play it or if it was too violent even for your 15 year old son. The only violence you saw back then was Donkey Kong tossing barrels at Mario and Pitfall Harry falling in a pit. Even then though there was none of the realistic graphics, blood, foul language, or violence that video games today have.

How does a parent keep up with it all though? I mean, it’s not like we as parents have all day to sit around reading reviews on games and making sure that only the suitable ones make it into our house and even if we did, there is always that one neighbor who lets all the kids play the harsher games there. So what can we do?

The answer is so easy that if you’re like me you’re going to feel more embarrassed than the time your 5 year old kicked your butt at Finding Nemo. Seriously. All we have to do is know what tools there are out there to help us do a good job.

ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) ratings are those little boxes you see on the front of every game box. You know the ones- EC (Early Childhood 3+), T (Teen), 

and all the way up to AO (Adults Only) as well as RP (Rating Pending). I don’t know 

about you but that last one scares me a little. Just how bad does a game have to be to not be able to be rated? Ugh. Anyway- those little ratings are what tells you what is and isn’t appropriate for your children. Yes, they are right there on the front of the box (and I’ve seen them on the back as well with descriptions of the game content so you get two chances to find the rating and info!). Easy isn’t it?

Another big help is that newer video game consoles (Wii, PSP3, and Xbox 360) are beginning to have Parental Control features that will let us configure the system and decide what our kids can and can’t access on video games based on the ESRB ratings. Personally I like this because we can’t always be right there when our children are playing a video game so these Parental Controls are a little piece of mind when we’re not around. You’ll know your 5 year old isn’t playing Halo3 instead of Spiderman and no more of your teen’s ears being filled with cursing, shooting, and carjacking. Of course, if your kids are anything like mine it wouldn’t take them long to figure out how to change the settings. Haha.

As parents it is first and foremost up to us to actually sit down with our kids and explain what we feel is and isn’t appropriate. It also wouldn’t hurt us to play the games with them sometimes so that we can see for ourselves what they are really like. I know I’m not much into video games but if playing one with my children helps make sure they aren’t exposed to excessive shooting, blood, and gore then I have no problem giving it a go.

Check out ESRB's website which is seriously filled with lots of great ideas, advice, and resources. I thought I was pretty up to date on ratings and descriptions until I checked them out and now I see that I only knew about half of what there is. Okay, you can let the kids back in now but let's keep this just in the "Parent Circle" okay? *wink wink*

*This compensated review brought to you by ESRB ratings*