A new toy my kids have been enjoying and the neighbor kids have been itching to try. A Labyrinth Balance Board. It is a wood disc with a maze or labyrinth and it has wooden balls that you can nagivate through the maze by shifting your weight using your feet which are perched on each side of the disc.

I like that it is wood and therefore sustainable but I really like that it gets kids up and moving and working on their balance, agility, and problem solving.

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I have posted about cardboard toys a couple times before.. I just love em! In addition to being fun they are essentially an eco friendly arts and crafts project as well as a toy. We recently got to review some of the cardboard play houses from the Imagination Box Company and while they aren't as original as say the cardboard tree house or the castle we got this year… I am liking these better.

For one thing they keep it simple! The instructions on some of these cardboard toys can be very hard to decipher but these were assembled very easily. They are also throwbacks to more simple times. The cottage has a lovely ethereal, old fashioned feel to it with the cobble stone, wood framed door ways and windows, climbing vines, etc. It is exactly the kind of house a fairy (or me) would choose, so it made the perfect house for my daughter's wooden fairy dolls.

Other cardboard toys we got came with markers and these toys came with watercolors paints. I love that. It made the decoration phase just a bit easier for the kids, cause who can stand to color with markers for 4-5 hours BEFORE you start playing with your new toy? My daughter spent about 2 hours painting her cottage and it was dry enough to play with immediately. Whereas my daughter colored only what was "in the lines", she let her older brother do a little freehand flower on the roof of her house. If it were HIS house that blank space would be utilized in full. 

We also got a one room schoolhouse which is another clever throwback. I often take my kids to historic schoolhouses for fun so I like this one a lot. But it has some modern touches that eco parents will love, solar panels and a recycling center.

As the company name suggests these are little units of imagination in a box. You get the basic framework and the kids (along with a parent) put it together, and then they can get to work decorating and designing. Then it can take them wherever their imagination wants to go. It has no doorbell that rings, it has no mechanical doors… the kids have to do the mental work and that makes these a couple of excellent toys in my opinion. Plus when they get trashed or tossed aside they can be recycled.

We give Imagination Box two thumbs up.. special thanks to them for sending us these great toys to play with! 

Just had to share this bit of news. The game I raved about last week (read my review) is on sale for 3 days. Half price! Wildcraft would make an awesome, eco friendly, fun, and yet educational gift for children and adults like.

My daughter is going to be just like me I suspect when it comes to reading and writing… very passionate about both. Learning to read was her idea and every day she works on building her list of words she can spell, write, and read. In the car she spells random words, in the grocery store she tells the clerk about her spelling homework. She takes advantage of every opportunity she has to learn this whole reading and spelling thing and she finds it very fun to do. I wish it were that way for all my kids, but so far it is just her that finds excitement in writing and spelling.

I have reviewed a couple Natural Toys from Down to Earth Toys over the past year and when they contacted me to see what I might be interested in reviewing for the Fall, it was easy to choose the Spellmaster. It is a very unique educational toy that I knew my daughter would enjoy and I was not disappointed. She pulls her Spellmaster out 2-3 times daily to work with it for 30-60 minutes at a time and it has really helped her reach her learning goals.

Basically it is a platform for developing sequential memory skills, increasing memory span, improving letter recognition, and spelling simple to complex words.

When she uses her Spellmaster, she chooses a flash card with a word and picture first. She works through the word phonetically to find out what it is as the picture isn’t always a dead giveaway. Then she selects all the wooden letter tiles she needs, saying the letters out loud. Next she spells the word on the chalkboard panel below the tiles and then says the letters aloud again after she has written them, followed by the word. She also usually covers the tiles with the wooden flaps so that she can try to write the word from memory. Afterwards she moves on to the next card and she usually doesn’t stop until she has completed them all. It came with eight recommended steps in the instructions but she developed her own system of steps so we go with that. I knew she would like it but just how much she would like it surprised even me.

My nine year old son likes to use it for his spelling words as well and it is a fun, visual way to work on them rather than just having him write them over and over like the school suggests. Going through all the words on his spelling list 2-3 times is not to repetitive for him and using the Spellmaster makes it just a bit more interesting. The fact that they can hide the tiles and work from memory means they are more likely to learn from mistakes as well.

My three year old has taken a liking to the flashcards so we use those for some speech therapy at home. He was recently “upgraded” by his preschool teachers and therapists from a mere speech delay to a developmental delay. After going through the IEP with them I have to agree with much of their assessment so I am doing more to help him at home. I will have to write up a post about that whole issue later.

Anyway… I love that the Spellmaster is something my kids can pull out and use on their own or work through with me if they want. We make it a bit more challenging at times when I come up with a word there is no card for. You can use many variations to make it harder or easier depending on their spelling prowess. All the letter tiles are capital letters but you can order lowercase letters as well. You could probably come up with some small sentences if you had more tiles… aka See Jane Run. I looked for info on ordering different flash cards but didn’t see that info. I guess any flash cards would work though. There was no eraser for the chalkboard so my kids just grab a sherpa cloth to clean up with, easy peasy.

The actual unit is made of wood so it is MUCH more sustainable than comparable plastic toys and it is made by TAG and is just one of many Toys Made in the USA. It gets two enthusiastic thumbs up here.

Thanks Carrin and Down to Earth Toys for sending the Spellmaster our way!!

We love to  play games in this house or uh… couldn’t tell ya by this post on educational games, or this post on eco theme board games? Until my kids can give me a run at Gin Rummy, Hearts, or Bonco then board games do the trick.

For MANY months now the favorite for my kids has been The Farming Game. Mom was getting mighty board with it and I thought they might never find a new favorite. I hate to even say that since it is an awesome game that teaches the concepts of farming, farmer’s markets, and food value and it is great for teaching math at many levels. But playing it over, over, and over… can wear on you.

But no worries, they have found a new favorite and this one I can see us playing for a very long time. No doubt the weekend tradition that will be with us all winter will be a couple rousing games of Wildcraft and I am THRILLED because I love this game as much as they do. In fact I am thoroughly convinced this is the coolest game ever… no seriously… coolest EVER. This purchase was well worth the money, even if it was a hair pricier than CandyLand.

It is a gorgeous game that teaches the players all about herbs and how useful they are. The players are on a mission from grandma to go and pick wild Huckleberries. They have to go up and down a long mountain path to get them and along the way they find herbs (plants cards) and they they even run into some trouble (trouble cards). Some of the trouble you find would include sore muscles, an earache, a toothache, a hornet sting, diarrhea, splinters, and much more. But thanks to the herbs you have been collecting you may just have an herbal remedy to help you.

On the trouble cards it has little pictures of herbs and you must identify what they are. I love that it doesn’t just give you the name of the plant, it makes you look closely at the leaves and flowers so you can visually indentify the plant. That feature makes it easy for non readers to play and it ensures that older players are really learning these herbs and their uses. If you get a hornet sting you look in your collection of plant cards to see if you have the herbal remedy and if you don’t you must wait until you do before you can discard that trouble card.

Another cool feature is that there are cooperation cards, yes the entire game is cooperative instead of competitive. The whole mood that it created was wonderful. I admit I went overboard with the imitations of pain and anguish when I got a sunburn or a toothache but it was still lovely to see my kids so worried about getting to their turn so they could help me (or another player) out with an herbal remedy they had in their own stash that I did not.

As you play you risk backsliding down streams or landing on “moon” spaces. The moons then have to cover the suns at the top of the board game, giving you less time to finish the game. Everyone has to get back to grandma’s house with two buckets of Huckleberries each before nightfall. The cooperation cards (or rainbow cards as my kids call them) can also be used to move a player that is far behind forward so that the game can be completed on time… its all about cooperation!

I love that we learn about the medicinal uses of plants as we play and learn to identify them by eye. Hearing my kids talk about how they can use St. John’s Wart for this and Dandelions for that is just amazing. So many kids grow up thinking over the counter medicines are required for healing and soothing but it just isn’t so. And for all of us to learn to identify edible plants that can be eaten when hungry is incredibly useful. The earth has always provided what we need if we care to educate ourselves and look. I love that this game was invented by a Dad who just wanted his kids to play something more valuable than Candyland.

This game is also eco friendly! Box/board made with 100% recycled chipboard, printed with vegetable oil based inks, water based coating on paper, no varnish. Forest Stewardship Council certified paper. All material is 100% recyclable.

Wildcraft is a real gem and one that I think every natural, holistic, green, family is going to want to play.

Also available at Amazon