Review of Gifts - Beat the Parents

(I figured out how to put in a picture for this one.)

Beat the Parents was one of my gifts that I received.

There are questions that kids ask parents and questions that parents ask kids. You move across the board in opposite directions. If you land on the same space, you can move your opponent back. (Instead of Battle of the Sexes, it's parents versus kids.) The box says ages 6+.

We've played this game a couple of times. It's not a good fit for our family. Our kids trounce on on the parents. When our kids can win the game and we are virtually at the starting line, it's not a ton of fun.

Why is it not a good fit for our family? The parents in our family are not familiar with all of the teeny-bopper shows on Disney Channel, we do not know much about Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and our repertoire of pre-teen music is limited. In our opinion, the kids questions are pretty easy general trivia and the parents questions are pop culture for children and pre-teens from the 2000's. With our family, it makes for a very one-sided game. The kids are good generalists on things like primary colors, names of continents, identification of mammal, reptile or fish, etc. The parents don't watch the Disney Channel or listen to teeny-bopper music.

This game will be for sale or donated soon. If your family is somewhat like ours, I do not recommend this game. Let me know if you would like to buy it from us!

Reviews of gifts - Rory's Story Cubes

We received Rory's Story Cubes as a gift this year. We already had these, but I wanted to sing their praises and will be happily re-gifting these!

The story cubes are a set of 9 six-sides cubes with different pictures.

You roll the cubes and then tell a story based on what you see. There aren't really rules, the cubes are just a "help" in being imaginative.

We've played where the cubes are rolled and each person works on a story one cube at a time alternating with each cube. We've also played where a person has to tell part of the story with everything that they rolled and the next person rolls all of the cubes again and continues with the story.

Most recently, we had a Benjamin Franklin themed time with the cubes. Each one of us rolled and we had to talk about Benjamin Franklin based on the cubes that came up. (I knew that there was a picture of a key and a picture of a lightening bolt so those were easy. A turtle kept coming up during this session and we were concluding that he did not study sea turtles, but you never know.)

I would like to incorporate these more into my homeschool writing assignments. We struggle with writing, and I hope that we can maybe use the story cubes to get some more creative writing done!

They come in a fun package too which is always good for containment and transport! The box says 8+ for ages. Adults can even have fun with this one!

If you are in Rolla, these were at Rolla Toy and Book and here's the link to Amazon. (I do not get any commission from this link.)

Compost!

So life has been so full of adventure blogging hasn't been a big priority!

A few weekends ago it was time to work on the garden and prepare for winter. It was time to take down the compost pile and rebuild it. I hoped there was some good stuff in the bottom and there were some big holes between layers of bigger stuff.

As I took it apart, I started to be sad that I didn't have something that looked like beautiful compost that you see from Martha Stewart or other gardening guru. Then I realized, that I was messing with dirt that was not identifiable beyond dirt.

Really, how cool is it that we throw carrot peels, potato peels, pepper innards, apple cores, cantaloupes rinds and other fruit and vegetable scraps in the garden every few days. Then, on an October day I dump out the pile and almost nothing is recognizable except some egg shells and avocado pits. So, my compost is not perfect looking, but I do have something to amend my soil with! I transported at least 15 gallons of stuff to other parts of the garden. That's 15 gallons of stuff that I didn't have to buy!

As a kid my mom composted and I thought it was pretty silly, but I do appreciate it so much more now. My husband is always looking for some type of gadget to make compost faster but I tend to be pretty content with my round mesh bin and dumping it in the spring and fall to get the good stuff from the bottom. The automatic composter died and was taken apart the same day that I pulled the compost bin apart.

As an aside, I found lots of little pieces of concrete in my compost pile. I was perplexed about where those came from...we finally determined that they were from fireworks. We burned all of the cardboard from our 4th of July fireworks and put the ashes in the compost. I guess they put some small plugs in fireworks to keep them weighted so the bases stay put!

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Starting School Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning, we are starting school for the year! I still need to figure out exactly what we are going to do tomorrow, but we are going to make a start :)

I will be placing an order for curriculum tonight. I've known what we were planning to use for awhile, but just haven't placed an order yet. I have quite a few of the books already so I needed to go through those and we did that last week.

Our school rule for this year: Boys have to be out of bed by 7:15 and ready for school at 8:30. To be ready for school, they need to get dressed, pick up their room, eat breakfast, clean-up breakfast and brush teeth!

I think we'll start with prayer and writing a grandparent letter tomorrow and we'll see what else we can muster up to get us going!

Spring Update!

No pictures, but the peas are coming up nicely! I did get some radishes and lettuce and black beans in the ground on Sunday afternoon. The gladiolas are coming up! I'm excited about that since it's the first time that I've tried to dig those up in the fall and plant in the spring. Tomorrow I think we'll get some flowers and other vegetable plants! The phlox on the front walk looks beautiful! The stone edging looks really great! The Grape Hyacinth looks very pretty with it's border too! Daffodils are done, but the iris are coming up lovely! We have a little bit of lilac blooming...I need to bring some of that in the house tomorrow! Yea spring!

How Big of Bargain is it really?

It's fun to come home from a store with a big bag full of stuff and tout how little you paid for it. As I read blogs about people who are always out for the deal, I'm challenged to follow the money or lack there of and think about how I would like to keep my country afloat and have jobs created for people here and not sent overseas. If I go to the grocery store and pick out $100 worth of items from the shelf and in the end my total goes down to $50 because of coupons and deals, what has just happened? What would be the affect if I somehow got the total down under $5? Are the prices higher so the store can still make money on people like me who use coupons? Are those who don't use coupons then paying even more to cover my cost? The store will get reimbursed for the coupons, but how long do they have to float the money before they see reimbursement? What does that do to their bottom line? If I get the total down so low, who is actually paying for the food? Who is paying for the transportation costs? Who is paying for the laborer who harvested the food or butchered the animal? Is it more important for me to temporarily get a "great deal" where the money doesn't go out of my pocket right now? or is better for me to support local business and actually use my money wisely so living wages can be paid to everyone involved in the food chain and keep as many jobs in our country as possible?