I was super-duper excited to have a chance to review The Story of Swan Lake from Maestro Classics with my oldest daughter (8).  Like many homeschooling moms I struggle to get music appreciation done, and since Swan Lake is pretty cannonical fare – particularly when it comes to ballets (and how many little girls can resist a ballerina?) I was excited to get started!

The Story of Swan Lake includes the main themes from the ballet along with narration that simply retells the story by Stephen Simon, conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (all the music is performed by them as well – really top notch stuff!)  There are also bonus tracks including a shred guitar rendition of the main Swan Lake song, a sing-along song that serves as a mnemonic to help children remember the main plot of the ballet set to the main theme, and an ‘empty’ sing-along song so your child can do their own performance (and oh boy, did mine ever!)

The CD also comes with a very well-designed booklet filled with a pictogram type overview of the plot of Swan Lake, a connect the dots, word puzzles, lyrics to the sing-along, biographies of the contributors and a lot more.  I’m not sure where ours is – my daughter made off with it and enthusiastically filled in every spot she could find to do an activity (it is consumable by the way).

The whole experience was incredible…except for one thing.  This CD uses the revised ending of Swan Lake..you know…the one where the prince and the swan maiden both die in the end?  Umm..recommended for ages 6-12, but if you have a sensitive little girl you MIGHT want to save this one for LATER.  Interestingly, Tchaikovsky’s original ending was a happy one where the lovers survived and conquered the evil magician.  Just saying.

With that being said, I am DEFINITELY interested in buying some of their downloads with less traumatic endings because they make music appreciation so easy.  Despite being disturbed by the ballet’s end she still had to memorize the sing-along to perform for her grandparents when they came to visit – so cute .

All of Maestro Classic’s music appreciation titles are available on CD for $16.98 or as MP3 downloads for $9.98 – you can find them all here and listen to free samples online too!  They even have free cross-curricular lesson plans you can use to take the earning even further!

If you’d like to read more reviews of The Story of Swan Lake from real homeschooling moms, visit the TOS Crew post here and dig in!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this CD for the purposes of this review.  All thoughts are genuine, and my own.

As part of my duties as a TOS Crew member this year I was given the oppotunity to review a volume of The World’s Greatest Stories.  Our family was sent a copy of Volume 1: The Prophets, a CD featuring dramatic Bible readings directly from the biblical text by George Sarris.

The readings included on this CD are:

• The Blazing Furnace – Daniel 3
• The Handwriting on the Wall – Daniel 5
• Daniel in the Lion’s Den – Daniel 6
• Elijah and the Prophets of Baal – 1 Kings 17-18
• The Prophecy of Jonah – Jonah

This is such a unique way to expose and familiarize children with God’s word!  Word for word readings (you can get the CDs in KJV or NIV, we chose KJV) full of drama and excitement.  George Sarris reads very dramatically with different voices, lisps, breathing, and much more.  Sometimes Sarris reading was a bit overenthusiastic and we had some giggles, but it certainly did enliven the readings!  There is also a dramatic sound track with music and sound effects that really captivate listeners.

My daughters asked me to, “Play another story Mommy!” when we would come to the end of one of the tracks on the CD.  This CD is 55 minutes in length with each of the stories around 8-15 minutes in length.  We like listening to them when the girls are coloring or playing quietly, but they’d also make great CDs for car trips – even quick errands because no individual story is too long.  They’d also make great, engaging listening for family devotions, particularly if you have audio learners in your home!

At only $7.95/CD I think these recordings straight from God’s word are an excellent value!  I hope that they will be available as MP3 downloads in the future!  There are currently six volumes, and if you buy any combination of six CDs you receive free shipping!

You can find a list of all the available recordings here, and also listen to some audio clips online to see if this series would be a good fit for your family.  I plan to buy Volume 2: The Life of Christ to enjoy with our girls because it has one of my daughter’s FAVORITE stories from John 9 on it!

Disclosure: I received a copy of this CD in order to review it, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

You can read reviews of the other CDs in the series here at the TOS Crew blog!

When I heard of Le Francaise Facile (The Easy French) from Great Commission Languages I was intrigued.  Not only does the
program include a variety of French accents as it progresses through the years and levels to help develop an international ear for French, but it also teaches French PHONETICALLY and from a Christian point of view.

Obviously, if there were ONE French program I was going to teach with my children, this would be my top pick!  I love phonics, and I love Jesus even more .  It is also designed by a native French speaker who is a homeschooler – I love programs made by REAL homeschooling moms!

There are a few different ways this program is presented; the Junior Level for K-3 is the one we will be trying because it is best for families with younger children.  Our oldest is 8, and I have a 5 and 3 year-old as well so I thought this would be best for us with so many littles tagging along!

There are 34 lessons in the text, with lots of stories and songs being included on the two audio CDs (they also have printables on them).  You can find the table of contents on the sample page here.

The classic-style The Easy French (Level I and Level II) is recommended for families with children of all ages.  Both the Junior and classic style levels are non-consumable (requiring printing from a CD).  There is a new format available that is consumable and designed for older students as well – IA, IB, IIA, and IIB.  If you’d like to read more about the different French programs they have for homeschoolers, you can see them all listed here.

I’m so excited that the Junior Level of Le Francaise Facile is waiting for me in the city to pick up on my next trip in!  I will update you when I’ve had a chance to try it for ourselves!

Until then – check out these samples of the program – they are what really convinced me of the value of the program – it is incredibly cute and smoothly integrates both French and English within the audio to ease children naturally into understanding French vocabulary and grammar without explicit drill-type instruction.  Very fun!  There are audio samples and pdf samples to learn more about the program.

The Easy French Junior Level or Le Francais Facile! Junior is available for $69.95 from Great Commission Languages.  It has

My children (like most) respond very well to game-based learning, so I was very excited to receive a subscription to review Ooka Island.

The 3-D computer-animated program features a compelling storyline – a villainous pig has taught his henchmen to read and used their increased mental prowess to capture the helpless (and illiterate) Ooka elves!  Your child’s mission is to free the Ooka elves by ‘reading’ books (not really reading them in the pre-levels but I’ll get to that later) – and along the way they’ll also have fun phonics lessons, alphabet lessons, phonological awareness games, and a whole lot more.  After the elves are freed, your child can play with them in the Pencil Playground – buy playground equipment, extra clothing, feed them snacks, and a lot more during their free play time (8 minutes that follows a 20 minute guided learning session).

My five-year-old has been using Ooka Island and she loves the fun games and the engaging storyline.  Your child gets to pick their own avatar who goes through all the on-screen activities, and can change her clothes during free play time, go on the play equipment etc. so it’s as if your child is really on the island having adventures.  The music is so catchy (we all get the theme song stuck in our heads), and she always ASKS to play Ooka Island – it’s really like a fun game for her, even though it includes very solid, comprehensive reading instruction.

She gets to earn stickers when she progresses through the activities (which are just plain fun in their own right), free Ooka elves, and unlock fun items for her Pencil Playground (even though the elves there are very hard to actually engage in play – some more work needed there).  It’s very motivating and fun.

From my point of view as a mom I love the phonological awareness activities that help to build blending skills, like the Clumsy Whacky moving factory game where there are a bunch of items floating in a river, a voice sounds out a word slowly, and your child needs to put the parts together and click the item that is being said.  There is also direct phonics teaching in the Cave of Sounds (although this doesn’t following a regular intensive phonics progression – they introduce two letter teams VERY early on, before even teaching all of the single letter sounds).  There is even a jet-ski game that uses microphone recognition to determine if your child is saying the displayed sound correctly.  There isn’t an easy way for me to skip ahead in the game and see how it works for older children, so I can only comment on the Pre-K levels that we’ve gone through ourselves.  In all there are 24 levels that go from Pre-K all the way to Grade 2.

For the most part, my five-year-old could complete the learning activities independently, but there was one section of the program that she struggled with, and that I, as a dedicated phonics-mommy wasn’t keen on either.

In the Popcorn Library, children ‘read’ books in the early levels, by watching a story being read to them on the screen with words that are highlighted as they go.  This is fine, my girls love digital ‘read to them’ stories, but what I DID NOT like was the emphasis on sight words that comes out of this reading activity.  There are some pictorial comprehension questions that were fine, but then comes the, “Click on the word that says _____.”  This frustrated my little five-year-old SO much, and it frustrated me too.  I don’t think the activity is developmentally appropriate, and I DO NOT want to teach her to just guess at words when she isn’t even really blending yet .

For the most part, I was happy with Ooka Island – it’s very comprehensive; all the skill building activities blend well together (except for those sight words in the Popcorn Library).  The phonological activities that lead to understanding of segmenting and blending are very promising, and I wish there was a way to do the program WITHOUT the sight word segments of the Popcorn Library.  It would be really awesome if that was the case.  As it is, I clearly have some mixed feelings about the program.

So, what does Ooka Island cost, and how does it work?  After signing up for a subscription you’ll need to download a BIG program – 2 GB, so make sure you’re ready for that!  It’s also a bit of a memory hog (and has some glitches and bugs that still need to be worked out, but there is supposed to be a patch coming for those soon), so close everything else before running it.  You’ll need an internet connection for logging in and keeping track of your child’s progress, but once you have the download, it really doesn’t take much bandwidth.

For one child the pricing is $12.95 for one month, $59.95 for six months, or $99.95 for a year.  For up to four children the price is $19.95 for one month, $99.95 for six months, or $129.95 for a year.  You can find all of the pricing details and sign-up information here.  There is even a 14-day free trial that you can sign up for to see if this program is a good fit for your family.  If you like it, you can use this code LAUNCHSPECIAL30 to save 30% on a monthly subscription!

Don’t forget!  You can also find many more TOS Crew reviews of Ooka Island Adventure here!

Disclosure: I received a 6 month subscription to Ooka Island for the purposes of this review.

I took a couple of years of Latin in high school and the instructor’s approach reminds me a lot of my high-school teacher’s.  Standing in front of a blackboard, teaching grammar, vocabulary, and sentences, Dwane makes it so much more engaging.  He’s a bit zany, his sentences are funny, and he gets students right into working with reading complete sentences and translations without bogging down in a LOT of grammar.

Each lesson is broken into three parts, the first teaches grammar, the second teaches sentences where you can see the grammar in action and develop translation skills, and the third teaches reading – this is sort of an immersive experience.  I’d have to summarize the program as more of a reading approach to Latin than an old school all grammar all the time approach; if you’re familiar with Cambridge, this is a bit similar.  So, there are 30 lessons per level, each level is a year’s worth of study (unless you are a high school student), so you can do one lesson each week, one part per day and one day of vocabulary review would make four days of Latin/week pretty easily – the lessons are short and easy to get done.

If you’re wondering about which pronunciation this program uses, there isn’t really an easy answer.  Dwane does his own Latin thing.  It’s a bit classical, a bit ecclesiastical, and a bit Dwane.  I love his approach (explained in the free lessons – see below), he’s pretty laid back about pronunciation approaches, his is a hybrid, but I love his accent.  My daughter is already mimicking his cadence and style of Latin speech.

Your child will need to be familiar with some basic grammatical concepts before diving in – verbs, nouns, and pronouns at this level.  My oldest daughter (8) is already pretty familiar with these ideas, and you need to make sure your child is comfortable with them, because the course dives right in and starts with the most important Latin verb ‘to be’ (sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt).  You can find the complete scope and sequence here as a pdf download.

Any beginning Latin student who can read English confidently and has basic grammatical knowledge can profit from this course regardless of age, though it is suggested that high school students supplement with further study using Lingua Latina Pars 1 and Lingua Latina Exercita 1 alongside level 1.

We purchased an iPad a couple of months ago and have been learning how to use it in our homeschool, and Latin on the iPad is amazing.  Visual Latin also has DVDs available to purchase, and the downloads can also be used on your computer, iPod or iPhone – there are two versions, high-resolution for the iPad and lower resolution for the iPhone/iPod.

My daughter has some sensory integration issues – especially when it comes to handling paper (that makes homeschooling fun).  I was so surprised when it was time to do the Latin worksheets – I had recently purchased PDF Expert which lets you write directly on pdfs, so I let her do her worksheet in that…and she had fun!

We did one part of a lesson a day, and there is one corresponding page for each part of the lesson.  When I said it was time to do her worksheet she said, “Woohoo!”  Okay, we study Latin and I have NEVER heard “Woohoo!” when it comes to doing a worksheet.  We’re in love with doing worksheets on the iPad now so I completely appreciate the all-digital option.  If you don’t have an iPad you can print the pdfs.

My daughter is literally BEGGING me to keep going with Visual Latin instead of our other program now, so we’re going to keep on with it and see how it progresses!  I can’t tell you how many times she’s told me how funny her Latin teacher is, she’s really enjoying the language now and actually starting to understand how to read it.  There is also Christian content that is very naturally presented within the course – double bonus!

Do you want to try Visual Latin out?  I recommend EVERYONE get the free introductory lessons if you are interested in learning Latin through ANY program.  The first four introductory sessions explain a bit about Latin as a language, and the many benefits to be had by learning Latin (there are MANY, trust me, Latin is worth it).  You also get two complete regular lessons to see how the course itself is structured and laid out.  And…they are free!

When you’re ready to purchase, you can buy lessons 1-10 as a download for a single family for $25, or get the DVD for $30.  If you buy the entire first level you can get lessons 1-30 (all of level one) for $80 on DVD – a bit of a discount on that.  Level 2 is also available and there are different prices if you want to show the recordings to a group or co-op.  There are also live online Latin courses for Lingua Latina available if you prefer to go that way.

You can find many more reviews of Visual Latin over at the TOS Crew blog here!

Disclosure: I received Visual Latin Lessons 1-10 Download for free to review this item.  All opinions are genuine and my own.

The teaching resources are really incredible and I can’t recommend this kit highly enough.  My children have greatly enjoyed the Canadian coloring pages (printable and electronic), the “Canada in My Pocket” cartoon that helps children learn a bit more about Canadian money through Mitchell’s beloved song of the same title, the interactive Canada puzzle, and more.  We have learned the national anthem using Mitchell’s recording of it, and been able to use the folk songs associated with different places in Canada as a supplement to our studies of the Canadian provinces this year.

There are also some French songs included in the collection and a recording of the French national anthem (and a bi-lingual one as well).  Lyrics to the national anthem can be printed off in either English or French.  When we studied Quebec we were sure to take advantage of the French audio resources Mitchell has provided, and he has a great French accent!

If our family was more musically inclined we could also benefit from the music charts for all 40 of the songs in the Canada is for Kids music collection that are also included in the Teachers Guide CD.  If you can’t play music but just want to sing along there is a lyric sheet that is easy to print off (6 pages for all the songs).   The only down side is you do need to have the CD in your computer in order to access the resources, there doesn’t seem to be a way to install them to your own machine.

If you haven’t enjoyed Mitchell’s Canadiana music before, you are missing out.  His voice is clear, rich, and smooth, so the lyrics are easy to understand for children and adults alike.  He is a very expressive vocalist who brings much enthusiasm to his recordings and many a day has found my children hopping around in the living room to some of his more upbeat tunes.

It has been a real blessing to have this easy to use collection available to us so that we can instill an appreciation of traditional Canadian music in our children – something that would have been hard for us on our own because of our own limited exposure to Canadian folk songs.

Thanks Michael Mitchell for all you have done to keep Canadian folk music alive!

We received the first edition CD version of the teaching kit to review, but it has been repackaged as a USB product with fewer songs (25 of the most popular), you can buy it from Michael Mitchell’s website here.  He also has a new teaching kit you can download for $4.00 that just contains his Canadian national anthem resources.  Good deal!  Whether you decide to buy the teaching kit or the CDs themselves (also available as physical copies or downloads) from this website, you won’t be disappointed.

Disclosure: I received a copy of  the Canada Is For Kids Teaching Kit by Michael Mitchell for review.  All opinions are honest and my own.

First, I’ll tell you about their free program.  Big IQ Kids has free programs for learning basic math facts, a wide variety of spelling and vocabulary words (these two work on conjunction with each other), and the states, capitals, and major points of interest about each U.S. state.

Each time a lesson is completed in one of these programs the child is awarded a game coin that can be redeemed to play one fun game in the games area.  These are fairly brief in comparison to the lessons, which are around 10 minutes long, but they serve to keep children VERY motivated to do their lessons on Big IQ Kids, particularly if you limit screen time and electronic games in your home.

The Premium subscription gives you access to the same programs that are available for free to the general public, but with less advertising (there is still some unfortunately), and with timed quizzes enabled, reporting capabilities and tracking of mastery and progress.  The premium programs only move on once the subject matter has been mastered and it keeps track of your child’s advancement.

Children can also create their own customized ‘buddies’ – which are an avatar that can be modified for one game coin.  Game coins can also be saved between sessions by premium members and your children can then have their names recorded if they achieve a high score – very motivating or many children!  A wider selection of reward games is available for Premium members.

My oldest daughter (8) was the child best suited to try out Big IQ Kids.  Children who are independent readers will have the easiest time navigating the site, though there is a Premium-based Spelling Junior program designed for younger children.

The math program is an effective, if basic review of the four basic operations, it isn’t a teaching tool but is designed to practice and master the math facts once they have already been taught conceptually.  I really like that it is easy to customize the difficulty level of the questions and the number of questions presented in each session.

The spelling and vocabulary program is fairly traditional – assigning spelling words and reviewing them using a number of techniques.  There are some phonics and spelling rules provided, but it is fairly basic.  The nice thing about this program is that you can either progress through the many spelling lists available or manually input your own practice list to match the spelling concepts you are working with in your main spelling program.  That being said, the Big IQ Kids spelling and vocabulary can easily stand alone for a natural speller.

The geography (learn the states) program is pretty neat because it teaches the state’s name, location, abbreviation, capital, landmarks, economy etc. in one program.  This is sort of lecture-style direct instruction – the facts are presented with graphics and at the end some questions are asked.  I did have some technical problems with the voice and presentation not lining up properly with each other and being ‘laggy’ or slow.

There are some things we didn’t like as well – there is still advertising on the site – some of it is rather inappropriate for our family (ads for psychics etc. in the sidebar).  The site could also use a major upgrade – the navigation is a bit confusing and hard to learn; it doesn’t all connect well together and the programs.  The site really needs to be updated as well.  The learning programs are all a bit dated – from the graphic style to the awkward computer generated voices.

My daughter didn’t notice though and she was willing to plow through almost any number of rather rote math drills and spelling lists in order to earn those game coins and go have some fun!  When I asked her what she thought of Big IQ Kids she said, “I really like it.  I like the games.  4.5 stars.” (That’s out of 5 by the way.)

So, what should you do if you think your family is interested in Big IQ Kids?  Try out their free programs to get a good feel for how they would work for your family, then try their 7-day free trial of the Premium programs so you can determine how valuable the tracking and other benefits are to you.  To be honest, I only like to use programs that lead my children towards mastery of content once they are in second grade and over so I really appreciate the tracking and progression that the Premium program at Big IQ Kids provides.

The Premium membership costs $9.99/month or $49.99/year, which is actually a pretty good price for subscription-based online learning.

Don’t forget that you can find more reviews of Big IQ Kids from other homeschooling moms at the TOS Crew blog here! 

Disclosure: I received a one-year membership to Big IQ Kids for the purposes of this review.  All opinions are genuine and my own.

I love that Time 4 Learning is flexible.  When you initially sign-up you place your child into a specific grade, but Time 4 Learning lets your children navigate between the grade above and the grade below in most cases.  You can take a look at their scope and sequence to see what is included for each grade – there is quite a bit there.  I placed Kaelynn into grade 2 because I wasn’t entirely sure where she’d fit into a traditional scope and sequence, but she had access to grade 1 and 3 activities and lessons as well.  Rose I placed into the Preschool lessons where she had access to Preschool 1 and 2.  If my children had progressed beyond these levels I could have emailed Time 4 Learning to have them moved ahead – easy peasy.

I also loved the detailed reporting available for the primary grades (not available in preschool).  This told me which lessons Kaelynn had completed as well as how she had done on the graded activities and online quizzes.  Though the ability to assign lessons within the program isn’t available (though it looks like it might be), it was fairly simple to just keep an eye on the progress and ask her to do more of one subject or another.

The user interface is very easy for children to navigate. The preschool level has thematically grouped activities under brightly colored icons that the child clicks and that open into five or so activities consisting of coloring pages, online storybooks, interactive reinforcement activities, and more.  Rose really loved these and had so much fun with them.

For Kaelynn she first selected the subject area she wanted (Language Arts, Language Arts Extensions, Science, History, Math) and then just moved through the lessons in a left to right manner.  Her lessons consisted of animated direct instruction followed by interactive learning activities and quizzes.  She really loved working with Time 4 Learning – even the reading fluency tests!  She had so much fun with the online story-creator that is great for reluctant writers because children can digitally illustrate their own creative writing.  One day she spontaneously explained to me, “Mom!  Now I finally understand life cycles!”  If you’d like to sample the interactive lessons you can sign up to access some free ones here.  We both liked the language arts lessons best – she because they were engaging, myself because they teach all those tricky little things busy moms sometimes forget – synonyms, homonyms etc.

Now, there is also a fun games area that you can decide when to allow your child to access.  You can choose how long you’d like them to spend on their lessons before entering the games area and then how long you will allow them to be there for before they are redirected to the lessons.  These are sort of fun, but you know what?  My children liked the lessons and activities so much that they rarely wanted to go to the online games!  I even used Time 4 Learning as a reward for doing their core schoolwork with me and then they would eagerly dig in for more online!

After looking through the grade 1 language arts (even though Kaelynn is past this stage and Rose isn’t yet there), I can say thatI’m particularly impressed with Time 4 Learning’s approach to phonics instruction, reading fluency, and language arts in general.  It is comprehensive while being both colorful and engaging, encouraging repeats of the lessons.  I think this screenshot is from the Kindergarten lessons, but you can see how colorful and engaging they are.

Although our family can’t afford to continue with Time 4 Learning for the long term (even though my children would like to), seeing the joy my children had in utilizing some computer-based learning in our homeschooling lessons, I have been inspired to work on including more directly educational and interactive activities into our school activities.

Time 4 Learning costs $19.95/month for your first child and $14.95/month for any subsequent children.  If you are using Time 4 Learning as a core program, this isn’t a bad price, but if you are using it as a supplement it can add to the homeschooling budget fairly quickly.

That being said, I think Time 4 Learning is perfectly suited for families in the middle of moving, restructuring (new babies, loss in the family, aging parents moving in etc.), or with a prolonged illness.  It can really be a God-send in such situations because it is very well balanced and gets the core subjects covered in a very thorough manner.  Additional drills might be needed for spelling and math and easy readers in the early grades – but Time 4 Learning has the direct instruction covered in a fun and interactive way with very little parental involvement.

Disclosure: A free one month subscription to Time 4 Learning was provided for two of my children the purposes of review for the TOS Crew.  All opinions and thoughts shared are genuine and my own.

Click here to read more reviews of Time 4 Learning from the TOS Crew mates.

There is something very special about playing games together as a family that helps to provide motivation for memorizing facts and details that would not necessarily be retained otherwise.  Our family is preparing to embark upon a one-year overview of world-history and we found that Civilize This! from Griddly Games was a perfect pre-study game to arouse interest in world history and the many unique peoples and cultures that populate it.

Civilize This! can be used as a stand-alone game (at home or for travel), or as an add-on to the original Wise Alec Trivia Game  (which comes with a game board and a base set of question cards).  Because our family doesn’t own the base game, we played it together as a stand-alone game.

First of all – this game comes with incredible packaging!  It comes in a compact, sturdy, brightly-colored box that closes with a flip over magnet strip along its long side.  Upon opening it, I found that the instructions are printed right on the interior flap of the game box.  All of the cards are provided with their own nesting slots in a plastic liner, and even the custom-dice comes with its own little cuby hole.  I was so impressed I have to say!  I don’t normally get excited about packaging, but this really WORKS for me as an organizationally challenged mom.  No rubber bands or ziploc baggies needed here ladies!

When you are ready to play you can actually just roll the die against the interior side of the box lid because the magnet strip stands up to form a barrier for the die.  When my daughter asked my husband to play this game with her the first time (yep, she went and got it, and ASKED him to play with her the second day the game was in the house) she said, “We can play it ANYWHERE Dad!  You just roll the die right here!”  And so they played it on the couch!  I really like how the travel game design allows for flexibility.  My daughter and I often play it on a tiny scrap of computer desk edge while I’m nursing the baby, it’s very compact, and very doable to get it set up, even one-handed.  The only extra you’ll need is a pencil and paper to keep score.

So, I have a question – have you ever been bored out of your tree when playing games with your children?  Maybe you already knew everything in them, or they were just SO repetitive you could barely stand to play?  Well, although Civilize This! can be played by children as young as eight-years-old (I think this is based upon reading ability), it is very flexible to allow older players like parents teenage siblings to join in.  2-6 players can join in the fun allowing for many different configurations of family members to enjoy this game together.  The game allows for both flexible scoring rules to make older players work harder as well as two levels of question difficulty, the easy level awards three points for each successfully answered trivia question, while the difficult level awards seven points.

The random roll of a color-coded die determines whether or not players get to answer a question drawn from the ‘Ancient Cultures’, ‘Medieval Cultures’, or ‘Modern Cultures’ trivia questions.  While this doesn’t QUITE fit into the popular neo-classical four-year history cycle, you have to admit that it does come fairly close!  The game includes fifty cards for each of the time periods included and 50 ‘Wise Alec’ cards that are essentially wild cards.  Together they provide 150 easy trivia questions and 150 difficult trivia questions, not including the bonus questions included on the Wise Alec cards.  I have found that the questions draw from cultures all around the world and are not restricted to items of interest in the study of Western civilization.  There are questions from Asia, the Americas, and others, along with ones from Europe, Rome, and Greece.

Special colors allow players to select their own category for the question, or at times for another player to select the category.  The purple dot means you get to choose a ‘Wise Alec’ card!  Ornamented with a wise owl wearing an ancient Egyptian headdress, this category is my oldest daughter’s favorite (age 8).  There are funny activities like speaking in another accent, doing dance moves, and many more, along with bonus points awarded for the proper etiquette point listed on the card, and penalty points detracted for poor behavior listed on the card.  There are also brainteasers, tongue twisters, and other fun points-earning activities to mix things up and provide fun bonding activities between family members.

I can see why Civilize This! is a Dr. Toy Winner (100 BEST Children’s Products), it is very well designed, educational, and keeps them coming back for more!  As an aside, Griddly Games the makers of the Wise Alec series of trivia games, is actually based in Canada, just like me.  Its always fun to find and support Canadian companies!  As a result, you can find this game not only online at places like Amazon.com for $14.99, but also at local retailers like Toys R Us – you can find the list of retailers here.

As our study of world history continues I hope that we can eventually move up to the 7-point ‘difficult’ questions as our knowledge base expands.  I have to admit that even my husband and I are sticking with the easy questions for now!  Once we are done with our overview of ancients I might start to bump up the difficulty level for myself, and again when we complete our medieval studies, in that category, and so on.  This flexible, compact, and versatile game has a lot of potential to not only add a fun ‘together’ activity to our homeschooling lifestyle, but also to cement key historical, geographical, and cultural facts in our minds.

Disclosure: A free physical copy of this game was provided for the purposes of review for the TOS Crew.  All opinions and thoughts shared are genuine and my own.

Click here to read more reviews of both Civilize This! and Nature Nuts (another Wise Alec travel game/expansion set from Griddly Games).

Unfortunately, the daughter I was hoping would use them (our 8-year-old iPod lover), found that the earbuds fell out of her ears.  I think that they must be too big for her.  The squishy pink plugs are meant to be compressed by the ear canal and hold the buds firmly in place but they didn’t work for her – she’s hard to please.  SO, guess who has a pair of sparkly pink Hello Kitty earbuds now?  Ahem.  Yes, we’ve traded, and she is now using my plain jane white earbuds.

That is okay by me.  I like the pink shimmery earbuds with rhinestone embellishments.  I appreciate the in-line volume control and silver clip that helps me snug up the earbud cords or loosen them off.  The cord itself is actually more of a fuschia than this picture shows, looks almost braided, and is coated with a transparent vinyl coating.  It adds a bit of contrast to the earbuds.

I haven’t had any problems with the earbuds falling out, and I’m pleased with them, but because of my daughter’s experience, I’ll have to recommend these to the teens and up crowd.  So, I’m 32, that’s okay – I think I look cool .

If you have a penchant for Hello Kitty accessories and electronics you can contribute to the conversation over at SparkleBee where they rely on reader feedback to develop new products.

I received a pair of earbuds in exchange for this review.

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