Steam Park Board Game

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

A new and unique board game is here for all game enthusiasts! Steam Park allows you to build your own coal-powered theme park. You get to build three dimensional rides to attract  your visitors, build stands to keep them interested, and work to keep your park clean.
Not only is your strategy important in this game, but making fast choices helps also! If you take too much time, you'll lose out.

What I enjoyed about this game was how different it was compared to other strategy games. Each turn is unique and with only 6 moves per game, it can go quickly.  It has good business concepts and can easily help in the learning process for business in a fun way. (as a homeschool mom, that was very important)
My son enjoyed the game and his friends saw it and want to play!
I think one of my favorite parts was the comical way some of the rules were laid out. For example, it gives you "boring and obvious" rules for the things that should be common sense. There are two versions, one has more strategy and is more difficult, the other is for those "not brave" enough. To see more entertaining comments throughout the booklet, you will have to buy the game! I'm not giving them all away:)

you can find the game for  yourself at http://www.iellogames.com/

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I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

"Mom Moments"

So this past week has been a week of "mom moments". I'm getting ready to start my son homeschooling for 11th grade. As much as I love how independent he is becoming and how he works on most of his school on his own, It really hits me this year how quickly it has gone. We no longer spend each day learning through games, and sitting on the couch together. Now he is in classes that fit more his interests and ones he needs my input less...which for some of them is great because I couldn't help much. For example, he is taking Chinese 1 this year through an online school. He's been working on it for 6 weeks. I can't help him at all on this! Thankfully he has a great teacher who will break stuff down and help him when needed. It's fun for me to watch him learn on his own and see the satisfaction of knowing what he has accomplished.

So after thinking on this, we spend Fri and Sat celebrating with a friend who graduated this past year and is now heading to college. Wow..this was a huge wake up call for me. It's a little scary to start seeing his friends leave home knowing it could happen with us in a couple years. I don't know what my son will do about college, work or wherever he is called to, but I know that he can't stay home forever:)
As much as I would love that.

I think as a homeschool mom it's even harder to let our kids grow up. They are with us 24 hrs a day, so we aren't as used to them being gone every day. I am thankful to have this time and to have the foundation for a lifelong friendship when my son grows up.

Magic School Bus Series

As a homeschool mom, I have always worked at finding curriculum which makes learning fun. When my son, who is now in high school, was in elementary school, he loved to watch the Magic School Bus videos. Every time we would go to the library our bag would undoubtedly end up with mostly the Magic School Bus videos and books.

When he was in first grade we were searching for a science program which would lend itself to his learning style. He enjoyed being able to be hands on and doing activities. What we found is that there was actually a science program through scholastic.com which allowed us to use Magic School Bus stories along with activity books, and extras which came in the package. One of his favorites was the book called Baked in a Cake where the kids were put into a cake at the bakery to see how Chemistry works in baking. The kit actually came not only with the book, but also activity book and muffin tins and recipes for baking at home. This actually spun into a love of cooking which lasted many years. At age 15 he still loves to bake pies(and is really good at it!).

Magic School Bus series is a collection of so many different scientific areas. It offers books on everything from chemistry to space, environment, human body and much more.

In our current homeschool co-op, I am teaching the elementary science class and I get to teach the Magic School Bus stories every week. You never really outgrow these and i've had so much fun re-reading the stories and re-watching the videos. The series has so much detail and great information. Kids learn in a way that gets them interested without it coming across as "school learning". I love it when they get excited about what we are going to study and beg for experiments and more for each subject! One week we read the book on volcanos, and then went outside and I helped the kids make their own volcano erupt. They had so much fun and wanted to do it over and over...which we did:).
This week is friction and force..and relating it to baseball....how could this not be fun?!

As Miss Frizzle says "Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy!"  What a great quote for kids. What kid wouldn't love to hear mom say that?! By doing this exact thing, you put all the ideas of  perfection out of your mind, and focus on the real learning, and enjoying it

check out the theme song preview of the videos!





Disclosure: I did not receive any compensation for this review. My opinions are honest and personal. They may differ from others.
you can find the books and videos at scholastic.com or www.amazon.com