Chaos Theory Reviews

I was recently contacted to see if I was interested in trying out some customized labels from Lovable Labels. Here’s where I confess that - like so many people - I am a huge office supply fan. Shopping for back to school supplies fills me with happiness and I can browse notebooks, pens, and agendas for a ridiculous amount of time. Because of that, I was more than just a little curious about checking out some labels for my daughter’s return to school.

The labels come in a variety of colors; I chose to test drive the Mixed Berry which included shades of pink, purple, and red. Not only do you get to specify your child’s name on the labels, you can also choose an icon to go on them with choices ranging from a maple leaf to a teddy bear to a soccer ball and much more. I asked my daughter to take a look and choose the one she wanted and she immediately picked the cute dinosaur.

We were ordering the Back to School Mega Pack which includes binder stickers, clothing dots for identifying shirts and shorts (handy for gym clothes, and the labels are waterproof to stand up to your washing machine), shoe stickers with protective plastic, labels for tupperware that can hold strong in the microwave and dishwasher, and a couple of “dog tags” that you can attach to lunch bags and school bags (I make sure ours are always on the inside for safety).

After placing my order, it took about a week for the labels to arrive and I wasn’t disappointed at all. The labels are cute, printed with vivid colors, and the name is easy to read. After we purchased everything on our back-to-school list, I sat and attached all the labels; they stick easily and hold well. I tried to pull one off to see if they would come loose with a bit of wear and tear and they didn’t budge so I’m confident they’ll stick to all our surfaces for the whole school year.

My daughter was thrilled too and liked having a personalized label with her dinosaur icon to identify all of her belongings. She told me that she showed them to all her friends when she got to class - word of mouth at its finest!

This week only if you go to their website and place an order you can get a 10% discount on your price by entering in the special code chaos.

Courtesy of Parent Bloggers Network, I was given a chance to test out and review Jump Start World, which is a learning video game for kids in the kindergarten through grad two age groups. I knew I had to give it a try because 1) I love things that are fun but help my kids learn at the same time without drilling information into them and 2) Hayley loves to play around on the computer. She often uses George’s computer and loves to play games on various kid-friendly sites.

Installing the game wasn’t exactly the simplest process in the world but after some persistence, she was set up and ready to go. The game covers reading (Reading Arcade), math (Math Arcade), and an area for calendars and graphs and more (My Cabin). The reading area is particularly helpful for Hayley right now because although she’s been writing and recognizing capital letters for quite some time now, she has more trouble with lower case. Playing the game has really helped her in combination with the work she’s doing at school.

As for the math, Hayley loves math challenges (she doesn’t get that from me!) and has recently started practicing basic addition, so the game couldn’t have come at a better time.

The whole thing is laid out in a fun and entertaining kid-intuitive way, but it’s more than a game, it’s educational too and you can’t beat that. Every time they learn something new they earn little gems which they can use in the game’s store, they get to explore new worlds. She’s having such a good time that she barely even notices that she’s still learning. You can test it out yourself with a free trial download from the JumpStart website, and if you and your kids like it, you can purchase it for $19.95.

When the Parent Bloggers Network sent out an offer for bloggers to review the Spark Talking Telescope from the Discovery Channel Store, I think it took me approximately 3 seconds to reply with a very big YES PLEASE, of course I would love a complimentary telescope to review!

This is a space family. I’ve been interested in astronomy since I was a young girl, and unlike other childhood interests, this one stuck around for good (note the domain name - andromeda? That’s not for the lame TV show, I chose my domain based on my favorite galaxy. Yes, I have a favorite galaxy. Hush.). George enjoys watching space shows on Discovery and follows NASA launches. It was pretty inevitable that at least one of our kids would have an interest as well. Hayley is fascinated by anything to do with space (and Breanna’s not too far behind, at least based on how often she screams, “MOON!” from the window and how many times I saw her steal this telescope when Hayley wasn’t looking).

Hayley nearly burst when I showed her the telescope. We got it out and set it up as soon as it arrived. It comes with a drawer full of slides that contain beautiful images of space objects directly from NASA. It includes things in our own solar system (all the planets, the sun, and the moon, as well as the asteroid belt) as well as other further deep space items like comets, a nebula, and galaxies.

Hayley caught on quickly to how it worked; you simply insert a slide of your choice, turn the telescope on, enter in the three-letter code on the slide, and the telescope narrates short blurbs of information. What I liked about it is that it doesn’t overwhelm you with five minutes of chattering details. You get a couple of sentences and then it asks you if you want to continue before sharing another piece of trivia about the slide you’re viewing. When you’re done, you can play a quiz game that asks you questions based on what you’ve learned.

Right now, Hayley isn’t that interested in the quiz part but she loves looking at the pictures and listening to the narration. It always surprises me how much she takes in because she has regularly thrown out information to me about what she has learned from the telescope. There’s nothing like sitting at the dinner table and having your four-year-old randomly blurt out that “comets are made of ice, and can I have some more juice please?”

The telescope is really perfect for introducing young kids to outer space. There’s just the right amount of detail - enough to keep them interested but not so much that their eyes glaze over and they end up tuning out. In Hayley’s case, it also leads to further learning because she ends up asking me questions that go a bit beyond what is covered with the telescope - in which case I’m glad I AM a space fanatic so that I can answer them! We’ve also spent a bit of time on Nasa’s website lately because of interests sparked by using the telescope. Once she sees the images on the slides, she wants to see even more. Anything that promotes this much curiosity and learning is wonderful.

Frankly, the excellent nature of this toy (and I use the word “toy” loosely and only because it’s fun - it’s really so much more than just a toy what with all the learning going on) is not a surprise. Remember where it comes from - Discovery is one of our favorite channels in this household, and so it’s really to be expected that of course the Spark Talking Telescope would be awesome. In fact, the only downfall I was able to think of was that it came with a catalog of other great Discovery Store toys you can buy and now I want to buy at least half of them!

Definitely a good purchase for anyone with a kid who has ever asked how many stars are in the sky or who looks up automatically to find the moon at night!

Back in March, I got to review a set of introductory DVDs from the learning colletcion, Your Baby Can Read. Breanna isn’t particularly interested in anything that doesn’t involve Dora, Diego, or Caillou, but Hayley loves the idea of learning to read so she’s all over the DVDs. When I got a chance, via the Parent Bloggers Network, to review volume 2, I didn’t hesitate because I knew she would be into it.

It’s surprising to see her pick up words and to know she actually knows what they spell. The second volume of DVDs is just as good as the first round. She’s not doing what I would call reading yet, she’s just reading words here and there but the reason I like the DVD is that it keeps it interesting to her. She constantly asks me what letters spell when she sees them in books, on boxes, on signs, on TV, so having the Your Baby Can Read DVDs only encourages that.

Perhaps the biggest irony involves the flash cards that come with this set (as they did in the first one too). I always said I wouldn’t be the mom with the flash cards, thinking it was a little too much, a little too rigid. Right. Never say never, because Hayley loves the flash cards even more than the DVDs. She continuously asks me if we can go through some of them and she enjoys trying to figure out what they say before I show her the corresponding picture.

Meanwhile, although Breanna isn’t as keen yet, she does occasionally watch them in between playing and if she sees a picture she recognizes, she’ll shout it out. She’s not learning to read, but she does enjoy the bright pictures, the other kids, and the bouncy kid-friendly music.

Since Hayley is starting Kindergarten in just a few short weeks (ack!), having something besides just my own enthusiasm to encourage her desire to read is wonderful.