Win newest word game Typecrush made in the USA

My kids were jumping off of the walls with excitement when the box arrived that had the newest word game, Typecrush, in it for me to review. I was sent samples of the game only in exchange for a review, to enjoy and to offer as a giveaway for my readers. Though, I must admit I was thrilled to get a chance to see how it plays.

My kids couldn’t wait to review it. It arrived in a really attractive canister that is made with 100% recycled materials and in the US. Quite impressive right there in an economy where most toys and games seem to be made overseas.  But, it gets even better...

The game is basically a tube filled with cut-out circles with letters printed on them. They are categorized by color coding based upon the most used letters in the alphabet. Two color-coded charts are included for reference while playing the game.

It is recommended for children age 7+, but we played it with my newly-turned 6 year old. Though, I will say her spelling skills made for a slightly more challenging game than necessary. However, it did add to the fun. For instance, she spelled the word “Jump” but left out the “M” leaving us all guessing as to what her 3-letter word must be. Still I did find a helpful use for the game for her alone: Spelling out her spelling word lists as well as spelling out her name.

The game comes with only one rule: The first person to guess the word goes next to choose a word. The pictures and game suggestion included on the canister is similar to a Hangman style word guessing game or a living room rendition of Wheel of Fortune, which my kids have always loved by the way. But, you can make up your own rules of play that suit your family best.

We came up with the idea to turn words into a crossword puzzle:

To spell our names:

To help with our spelling lists:

And to just have fun guessing words, some bigger than others:

This game would make a fantastic Christmas gift, or for one of the eight days of Hanukkah. They sell for $36 at Typecrush.com.

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* ~ * ~ GIVEAWAY TIME ~ * ~ *

In the meantime, I have one to give away as well. All you have to do is comment below with your very best vocabulary word.

Make it a challenging word that no one truly knows the meaning to, make it a fun word, or a word that you think makes you sound smart. Just get creative, and please by all means keep it clean, and comment below.

A winner will be chosen, most likely through a random drawing but if there is a particularly impressive word I may just have to select that person and declare him or her as the winner. And, please leave an email address where you can be contacted if you win as I will need a shipping address to send you the Typecrush game. Hurry, because the contest will only be open till Monday, December 10 at midnight!

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Going Green with Back Yard Kids Garden Saving Money on the Food Budget

Last year we started a project at our house: A Kids' garden. We thought it would be a great project to not only save money on vegetable expense eventually but also a great Science lesson and learning experience for the kids. We began by painting a fence to go around the garden.

But, last year brought tons and tons of rainy days making it very difficult to get this accomplished let alone get any seedlings into the ground.

We ended up planting our seedlings in containers and watching them grow on our deck. We even managed to get a little corn on the cob out of those containers.


As amazing as this was to watch grow and to even eat a small portion of what was edible, we still wanted to have an actual plot of ground set aside for the kids to have their own piece of the earth to plant things and watch them grow. This year, we started our seedlings which are flourishing in the house by a window and ready to put in the ground.



Meanwhile, we've managed to get the garden almost completely ready for their new plant residence.




We've painted the garden fence and added a screen to, hopefully, keep out rabbits and such.

We also plan on going green completely as we do not plan on using pesticides or weed killers, and we plan on planting specific herbs and flowers to keep away pests such as marigolds to keep dogs away & basil to assist in the growth of our tomatoes. Our hopes is that our children will enjoy this and actually want to eat their green veggies by the end of the season.