Blue Ribbon Awards – Best Products from the Homeschool Review Crew

I can’t believe the year is coming to a close! I’ll be sharing my final review very soon, and then it’s Christmas and the new year! I’ve reviewed over 25 products this year, and found at least a dozen great gems for homeschooling (and life) that I’m so glad I had the chance to try! I can’t wait to see what awesomeness awaits me in the Crew next year! We had a chance to vote last week on our favorites from the year. You can check out the results here:

Our favorite products from the 2016 Homeschool Review Crew - everything from best math and reading programs to art, foreign languages, and non-school related products that have made my life easier! | Running With Spears #bestof2016 #hsreviews #homeschool

I wanted to share with you guys my personal picks for the different categories that products I reviewed this year fell into. It was seriously soooo hard to pick a favorite for most of the categories. Especially the overall favorite. There are a couple products that I really enjoyed that didn’t make any of the categories. I added my own “honorable mention” at the end, but even so, there are more products we enjoyed than just these. I’m linking each of the products to my reviews so you can read more about what I had to say about them, and you can follow links in those posts to the actual vendors. 🙂

Favorite Reading Curriculum – MaxScholar *Since the time of my review, Boo has continued using this and made really great progress with reading!!!

Favorite Spelling Program – Essential Skills Adavantage

Favorite Math Curriculum – CTC Math

Favorite Science Supplement – NotebookingPages.com 

Favorite Science Curriculum – Apologia Educational Ministries: Exploring Creation with Astronomy, 2nd Edition. 

Favorite Christian Education Product – Chara Games: Commissioned and  3 Seeds

Favorite Fine Arts Product/Curriculum – ArtAchieve

Favorite Foreign Language Curriculum –  Elementary French 1: Grades 3-5 course from Middlebury Interactive Languages

Favorite Parent Product – GREEMU by Devonian *I need to update my post, this was the ONLY thing that healed my baby’s diaper rash!

Favorite Elementary Product – ArtAchieve

Best Resource I Didn’t Know I Needed – MyFreezEasy

Best Online Resource – MaxScholar

Favorite Book, Novel, Audio Book, or Audio Drama – Faith Builders Bible from Zonderkidz

Just for Fun! –  Kwik Stix 12 pk from The Pencil Grip, Inc.

Kids’ Choice (Ages 0-12) – Boo: ArtAchieve, Artist:  Rainforest Journey by EdTechLens

All Around Crew Favorite – CTCMath

Honorable Mention – KidsEmail.org (Didn’t win any of the categories above, but we love it).  

homeschool-review-crew-favorites-for-2016_zpsgp6ffythOf course coffee is on my list of favorite things for the year…and every year, but I didn’t get to review any (that would be such a fun review – can somebody make that happen for me?).  What where your favorite things in 2016? I’d love to hear!  Hop over to  the 2016 Homeschool Review Crew Blue Ribbon Awards post to find out who the official winners were, and check out the link-up to   hear from some of my fellow Crew bloggers about what their favorites were. 😀

Family Fun Friday – 3 Seeds

Today’s fun family game is 3 Seeds by Chara Games.

I was excited to receive it to review after we discovered how much we love, Commissioned, which is also published by Chara Games. (I shared my review of it earlier this week). 🙂

3-seeds-reap-where-you-sow-3_zpswpje7juh3 Seeds is a light-strategy card game that we were able to learn how to play in a matter of minutes, yet is complex enough to be fun and engaging. It’s completely different than Commissioned, with pretty much the only similarity being that they are both fun family games with a Christian theme.

In 3 Seeds, you have seed cards that are divided into time, money and labor. You play these on crop cards and receive a harvest once the crop has received the necessary seeds. You can also play event cards, peek at the hidden value of harvest cards once per turn, or switch your harvest card with another, and play your seed cards on another player’s crop to get some points when it is scored (and get yourself an event card). It sounds pretty simple, but we discovered that there’s a good amount of strategy involved.

The game can be played in about half an hour, sometimes a bit more, and is for two to five players.

3 seeds card game - fun light strategy card game for ages 8 and up! | Running With Spears #familyfun #gamenight

I first pulled out 3 Seeds with Artist, my nine year old, so we could learn to play. She insisted on being the one to read the instructions and manage the set up. It took us maybe about ten minutes or so to be ready to dive into the game, and then the first ten minutes of playing were spent re-checking various things in the instructions. From then on the game was smooth sailing, and we had a blast. (Side note, I took the picture right after setting up the game and before Artist told me I dealt the cards wrong and each person was supposed to have all six of their color seeds, not a mix of colors…oops.)

3 Seeds is such a fun game, Artist has been begging me to play with her every day. It’s a nice balance between intensive strategy games (that are also typically rather time intensive) and quick and easy games that don’t have much to them. Artist says, “I love it.” (She also claims that she’s the all time winner, so apparently I need to go play again with her asap and beat her so I can knock that chip off her shoulder.) 😉

Because it’s a competitive game. not cooperative, Boo can’t really play this one quite yet. The recommended age for it is 12+ but I think many kids 8 and up could have a blast with it, especially if playing with an adult or older sibling. It’s nice that this game is truly enjoyable by just two players. I feel like we don’t really have that many games that are fully enjoyable when you don’t have at least three playing, and Artist really loves it when I play a game with just her.

I expect that we’ll be playing 3 Seeds quite a bit…especially if Artist has anything to say about it. I can’t wait for it to be available to everyone so you guys can all snatch up a copy for yourselves.  Be sure to follow Chara Games on Facebook and Twitter so you can be in the loop when 3 Seeds hits retailers! 😀

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Gift Ideas for Baby’s First Christmas

For our first baby’s first Christmas, we went ridiculously overboard. It was crazy. Now that we’re on kid number four, I feel like I’m finally getting the hang of baby’s first Christmas. Here are my top ten ideas.

Top ten ideas for Baby's first Christmas from a mom of four. | Running With Spears #1stChristmas #giftideas

1. An adorable 1st Christmas ornament! Yes this one is more for you, but 1st Christmas is barely  actually about your baby at this point anyway. 😉

2. A cute Christmas headband or hat that your baby will look adorable in for pictures.

3. A really nice teether. (Yes, it’s ridiculously expensive for a teether, but I think the Fanfan the Fawn teether is just about the cutest thing ever!

4. A set of My First Holiday stickers like these (if your baby’s first Christmas is also her first holiday). 

5. Muslin blankets. These are just the best. Soft, and thin, and big enough for swaddling. They fold up nice and small to fit in your diaper bag. And most importantly, there are lots of adorable options like woodland creatures, oh my goodness, so cute, or you could get a red one that would be super cute in Christmas pics.

6. Baby Bandanas like these. So much cuter than regular bibs, and great for drooling babies! 🙂

7. Sippie cups. Who says gifts can’t just also be practical? BTW, we’ve tried a million sippies and these are by far our faves!

8. Yogurt melts like these. Since your baby can’t really eat candy yet at her first Christmas, these are pretty much the next best thing (if she’s old enough to eat some solids, of course).

9. Snuggly jammies. Babies are just so darn adorable in footed pajamas.

10. A sweet little stuffed animal. Maybe your baby will love it, and maybe not. Either way you can try to hold on to it for them as their “special lovey” keepsake. Or not. Either way I love giving an adorable little stuffie as a first Christmas gift, cause it’s just so cute. 🙂

OK, so there you go! Do yourself a favor and get yourself some coffee for Christmas, too. Cause when you have a baby, you definitely need coffee. And no, I’m not getting anything for recommending these items, just brainstorming for Apple’s first Christmas, taking into account what has and hasn’t worked well in the past, and figured I’d share my ideas with you all. What are your favorite gift ideas for baby’s first Christmas?

Family Fun Monday – Commissioned Board Game Review!

Guess what?!? It’s time for Family Fun Friday – on a Monday! I was thrilled to receive Commissioned from Chara Games so I could play it with my family and tell you guys all about it!

If you’ve been around here awhile, you know we’re a family of gamers, and one of our favorite ways to spend quality time together is by playing table top games! When I first saw that a game with a Christian theme was coming up to review, I honestly thought I would pass on it. We love complex, strategy filled, modern board games. We haven’t played Monopoly or Uno in years, and the last thing I wanted was a campy Christian game that would bore me to death. But then I saw the games sitting on the shelf behind Patrick & Katherine Lysaght, the founders of Chara Games, in the “About Us” video on their site and I thought, “These are my people.” So I decided to give Commissioned a try.

Fun family game with a Christian theme - Commissioned, tabletop, strategy, cooperative historical game! Great for using with your homeschool study of the early church! | Running With Spears #ChristianBoardGames #StrategyGamesI’m so glad I did, because this game is right up our alley. Commissioned is a cooperative board game for 2-6 players. We only have a few other cooperative games, and we love them because otherwise Artist gets super competitive, while Boo wants to be kind and help everyone win, so she has a hard time with games that expect you to sometimes be pretty cutthroat in order to win.

The recommended age for Commissioned  is 14 years and up, but Artist, who is nine and used to playing strategy games with us, picked it up no problem and even Boo, who just turned seven, was able to play together with us just fine once we helped her get the hang of it. I’m not going to really get into the mechanics of how to play because Patrick has created a great video explaining it better than I ever could.

The concept of the game is that you are each playing as one of the early Apostles and you get to play through five different scenarios (each with two levels of difficulty) inspired by the first 150 years of the early church. The first scenario is “Acts of the Apostles” which overviews the spread of Christianity from 33 to the mid 90s AD. You have to work together to plant churches, grow them, and build your  individual faith decks, all while facing trials such as persecution, grain shortage, and flood.  To win the first scenario, you have to plant a church in every city and collect all the books of the New Testament. There’s also an optional Theme Appendix that explains some of the historical background of the game. If you’re wanting to study the early church, playing through the game while reading the information in the appendix would be a really fun way to get your feet wet!

Fun, engaging strategy tabletop game to play with your family -- with a CHRISTIAN theme! :) | Running With Spears #familyfun #boardgame

The game itself has exceptional artwork, and high quality construction. It offers a ton of replayability as you can not only work through the different scenarios but also choose different Apostles to play as who each bring a different special skill to the table.  You have the option to add in new, more challenging trials once you’ve mastered the first level of difficulty, and there are two different sides of the board that you utilize for different scenarios.

Mike and I played Commissioned together without kids the first time through because we knew from our experience with more involved games like this that we should expect there to be a bit of a learning curve. As sometimes happens in you vs. the mechanics of the game  situations, we lost. Before we played again, we talked about different strategies we could employ, and went into our second attempt with a plan. This time, we included Artist and Boo in the game and with the four of us working together we won by the skin of our teeth, which was very intense and our victory felt well earned and satisfying!

All in all, we love Commissioned and recommend it to anyone looking for a fun family game that will keep you far more engaged than most of the games we played growing up. It’s also an excellent choice for anyone looking to find a game with a Christian  theme that can actually stand on its own two feet as a great game and the fact that it’s a Christian game isn’t the only thing it has going for it. 😉

"3 Seeds is a 30-45 minute, 2-5 Player, Light Strategic Card Game. Players use seed cards (Time, Money, & Labor) to complete crops, employ special event cards to gain bonuses, and uncover hidden harvest cards to maximize their points. Remember it isn't just what you sow, its WHERE you sow!" I also just received another game from Chara Games called 3 Seeds.  It’s a light-strategy card game that’s simple to learn, but fun and interesting to play. It’s completely different than Commissioned, but still an engaging family game with a Christian theme. I’ll be sharing my full review of it with you guys, soon! {Edited to add…you can now check out my review here}


Be sure to hop over to the Homeschool Review Crew link-up to see what others are saying about Commissioned! 

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