This is a sponsored post for Kids’ Academy apps.  Regardless I only post honest reviews. Any opinions expressed are my own.

My son started 4 year old Kindergarten this year.  He rides the bus to school, it’s an all day program, 5 days a week, it’s a part of the elementary school.  A lot of people I talk to assume it’s not really school since a lot of schools in our area don’t have a 4 year old kindergarten program even close to ours.  My son did 4 yr old preschool last year it was only 3 days a week for half a day at the local daycare. I try to reinforce the teaching of the 4 yr old kindergarten.  I also tried to do this when he was in 4 yr old preschool.

One fun and easy way to do this is to incorporate appropriate concepts in a fun way.  My son loves to play on my phone.  I use the apps from Kids Academy as one way to do this.

1.  BINGO ABC’s alphabet phonics song from Kid’s Academy has the familiar song we all know and love with fun colorful graphics.  There is a free version and a paid version.  I tried the free version first.  The free version only let’s you go so far until it prompts you to buy the full version.  The free version is a great way to test the apps though to see if it’s something that engages your child.

The little girl that’s sitting on the back of the truck is singing the song.  The characters are all moving and the scenes change as the song goes on. As she says each letter they appear on the screen reinforcing the letter recognition with your child.

2.  Kid’s Academy Alphabet Phonics Montessori app has 3 learning activities for kids.  One is a counting game with letter tracing, one is for learning the alphabet with letter recognition .  For instance, when they show the letter “A” there is an alligator. There are also things in the background your child can touch to light up like “anchor” and “apple” that reinforces the sounds of the letter.  This is also a letter tracing activity.  The only thing I don’t care for with the letter tracing activity is how spot on you have to be for it to recognize your child traced it.  If you venture even a little off the dotted line it makes your child start all over again.  Could be a little frustrating for a smaller child.

 

Again the free version that i tried only let’s you go so far with each learning activity until it prompts you to buy the full version.  This is a great way to see if these learning apps would be a good fit for your child though.  The activities offer bright colors, sound and letter/number reinforcement, and cool graphics for a preschool app.

3.  Kids’ Academy Preschool Kindergarten Learning app also offer 3 different learning activities.  An easy maze activity.  When the kids successfully complete the easy maze they are rewarded with a cute little animation.  A Rhyming words activity where you drag the dog ball to the object that rhymes shown in the dog’s thought bubble. In the example below, the dog is thinking of a pen so of course you drag the ball to the hen.  I do wish they would say the object in the thought bubble though.  There was one with a picture of what looked like a trophy.  None of the objects rhymed with trophy so you think “award” maybe?  So  my son dragged it to random objects until it matched the dog. It was supposed to be a cup that rhymes with pup.  I think saying the object would help my son problem solve and match it to the correct object.

I reviewed the free version that allowed my son to try a couple mazes, make it to the letter C in the tracing option, and try a few rhyming activities.  He probably liked this app the most out of the 3. Kids’ Academy does a great job with the colors and kid friendly characters.

 

 

I’m not a fan of the weather getting cooler but I do love fall activities. Almost every year we try to pay a visit to a local farm in our area. That farm is always Valewood Farms in Loretto, PA.  Honestly there are farms a bit closer to us but the affordability, the activities, and of course the dairy store is a big draw for us.

For the wee little ones they always love the corn box.  It’s basically a big sandbox type area filled with dried corn.  They have buckets and shovels there for the kids.  My kids could spend an hour in there if I let them.

 

They change it up a little each year.  Add things, take things away, tweek things a little. Keeps it interesting.  They have a hayride that’s just $2 per person and the hayride last for a little over half an hour.  They take you over the whole farm. Show you an original home built a century ago by the family that started the farm.  They talk to you about the area and where they supply their dairy products.  They take you to the area where they milk the cows and you get to see baby cows too.

They usually have a haymaze set up for the little ones.  This year they changed it up a bit and made a hay enclosure.  A sort of hay playground if you will. It had a slide, a game, a big tire to climb through and more.

 

The older boys loved climbing on the hay bales and I got this really cool picture too!

 

They had a corn maze too.  Normally the corn maze is fun.  It has fun farm trivia questions to help you find your way.  It has enough turns to make it interesting but not so many that the kids get scared or lost.  Unfortunately, the day we went it was extremely muddy.  A lot of the trail was up hill and I had the jogging stroller.  We were slipping and sliding in the mud. My youngest son did fall and land right on his but.  Our shoes and the bottom of our pants were a muddy mess.  We couldn’t even finish the maze because there was a BIG slope and I couldn’t get enough footing to push the stroller up so we had to turn around and go back out.  Oh well.  But I did get another cool pic of my middle son in the corn maze hamming it up. You can see how muddy the trail was in this pic too.

 

The 2nd to  last stop for us is the pumpkin patch.  I love the fresh selection and the prices are so reasonable.  This year they had white pumpkins and red pumpkins.

 

What I  like about Valewood farms is that you don’t pay for the pumpkins by weight.  They had a sign up, wish I would have took a picture, but orange carving pumpkins were $5-$7 depending on size.  All white and red pumpkins were $4. Sugar pumpkins were $3 and little pumpkins were $2.  My boys actually really liked the white pumpkins because they were huge. Both my older boys pick a white pumpkin, my youngest son got an orange pumpkin and we got my daughter a little pumpkin.  My son wanted to weigh his pumpkin when we got home.  51 lbs!! No joke and it cost us $4 for a big fresh white pumpkin.

If you notice the cages in the back, they have farm animals that the kids could see up close: goats, turkeys, and chickens.  They also had a special area for a very special cow this year.  Baby Ben was born on the farm this summer.  Of course this is Steeler’s country.  Big Ben the quarterback for the Steeler’s..his number is 7 and well…let’s see if you can guess why they call this little guy Baby Ben:

 

Do you see it? Do you see it?

We loaded the pumpkins into our vehicle after we paid for them then stopped in the ice cream shop.  We each got an ice cream cone with some fresh Valewood Farms ice cream.  My daughter got birthday cake, my youngest son and I chose the Rasberry Chocolate truffle, my middle son chose Teaberry, and My oldest son got Moose Tracks.

It was a chilly day but we enjoyed ourselves anyway.  We always love our trips to Valewood Farms. It’s become a yearly tradition.  Unfortunately their pumpkin patch is closed now with all the activities but they’ll do it again next year.  Hope to see you there!

For more reasons to visit your local farms, check out my guest  post 

 

 

 

I received this product through Bzzagent at no cost in order to complete an honest review.  Any opinions expressed are my own #GotitFree

I’ve tried all kinds of deodorant/anti-perspirants since my teens.  I’ve pretty much figured out which brands and forms work for me and which ones don’t.  I’ve stuck mostly to invisible solids.  They didn’t make my under arms feel yucky, they didn’t leave a mess on my clothes .  For whatever reason they always seemed to work better for me as far as the sweat and odor protection than gels, sprays, and clear sticks.

I was asked to try Secret Outlast from Bzzagent.  I said sure, I put that I preferred invisible solids.  When I opened my box I pulled out a Secret Outlast gel in completely clean clean scent.  You could have read the distaste on my face when I opened it.  Gel! I don’t like gels, they never work for me!

I’ve tried a number of other gel products in the past. They never seemed to hold their scent and I always would sweat anyway. I don’t sweat anywhere very easily but under my arms I do.  I was always self conscious to wear a gel because of my experiences.

I gave it a try anyway, felt like I had to right? I tried it on a weekend so when it failed I could wash and put on my regular deordorant.  BUT…it didn’t fail. There was that unpleasant gel feeling under my arm for about a minute.  I thought, well the weather is cooler and I didn’t work this weekend as I normally do so I bet I won’t get the same results when I wear it to work.  I was a little anxious about wearing it to work but figured I had to try.  So I did, two days in a row.  Two days of lifting people out of bed, crouching on floors to help people get their socks on, 2 days of working with my older patients that like to crank the heat up in their rooms to just below boiling point.  I didn’t sweat…it didn’t fail.  Over the last week I’ve found myself pushing my regular invisible solid to the side in favor of the Secret Outlast gel.  I might be a gel gal  now.  And the scent, the completely clean was a nice fresh scent.  Subtle, not over powering and it did stay with me longer than my experiences in the past.

GotitFree through Bzzagent!