Month: February 2014

February 24, 2014

Medieval Times: Thrilling and Educational Entertainment #Giveaway

Brave knights, mystical horses, a strong and fair King and a beautiful Princess. This is what awaited us at the incredible Medieval Times in Toronto, Ontario.

When I was chosen to be a #MedievalTimes Brand Ambassador, I can not even begin to explain how excited I was! Anyone who knows me knows what a huge history buff I am! I love the Middle Ages so this was a dream come true for me – not to mention for my boys! All those moments of playing knights at home were about to come true!

Walking into the castle is like walking through a piece of history. Medieval Times goes that extra mile to make you feel like you have stepped through time and arrived at an eleventh century castle for a tournament and feast. After thirty years of experience (yup thirty years!) they have perfected the tournament!

Surrounded by history we were able to teach our boys about the Middle Ages in a fun way that had them craving for more. For the past week following the tournament we have researched on the internet and visited our local library for books on the Middle Ages.

Here are a few of our favourite highlights from the night:

See those lovely bowls above? I did not realize we weren’t going to be using cutlery and waited five minutes for a spoon while my boys laughed hysterically at me! They have since decided that we need bowls like this at home.

Our eldest son and my husband cheering on our victors! It was so cool to watch him take out his iPod and take as many pictures as possible for his school’s Brag and Drag talk on the Monday following the tournament!

This was our youngest favourite part! This beautiful bird was flying high above the crowds!

Medieval Times runs weekday matinees (11AM and 1:30PM) for elementary aged students. This includes a thirty minute seminar, meet and greet with the birds of prey and demonstration. My youngest sister was able to participate in this when she was in elementary school and still brags about it to this day! You can find out more about their educational programs here.

Medieval Times and PTPA are proud to bring you a very special contest!

Medieval Times wants you to experience the magic and thrill of the Middle Ages for yourself and are hosting a giveaway that will see four winners win family pack tickets to Medieval Times! These tickets include both dinner and tournament! Pretty awesome right?!! You can enter via the Rafflecopter below! Good luck! This giveaway is only for tickets to the Medieval Times in Toronto, Ontario.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Make sure to follow Medieval Times on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date with great promotions and information!

Disclosure: As a Brand Ambassador with PTPA and Medieval Times, I received compensation for my participation. However, all opinions expressed on this blog are my very own.

February 21, 2014

Learning Languages with Langmobile #Review and #Giveaway

Learning a second language is a high priority to me for my children. It is a fantastic skill for them to carry forward into their school and later on their professional careers. For me knowing that language acquisition is easiest during the ages of zero to five, puts a little bit of pressure to get started early!. This is often called the “critical period”. Yet I still want them to have fun and enjoy learning a second language – not the second language classes I had where we had to memorize conjugating verbs but never learned to understand and speak Italian!

Langmobile is based out of Saint-Lambert, Quebec. They offer high quality workshops in music, yoga, English, Italian, French and Spanish, along with pre-school activities and camps. Langmobile has developed a program that helps parents bond and interact with their children while teaching a second language. Langmobile actively includes parents in the learning process to help learn and teach them at the same time. They have taken the research that they have put into their programs and developed an incredible app that assists parents in teaching children English, Spanish and French.

The Langmobile app incorporates new teaching methods that place the interaction between parent and child at the core of the learning process. The Langmobile app features fifty lessons in English, Spanish and French. Each lesson contains a video, song and printable materials (teaching sheets, colouring sheets and more!). The apps use adults to bring languages to life. The apps feature original music composed by Langmobile’s team of experts.

yoga , music workshops, English classes, Italian classes, French classes, Spanish classes, Saturday classes, after school activities, preschool activities, day camps and specialized services to CPE and private Daycares – See more at: http://www.langmobile.com/quality-workshops/#sthash.hbdLhMKb.dpuf

When I first download an app I like to spend a couple of hours looking through the app myself to allow myself to become familiar with the teaching aspect, how it works and so on. As soon as I opened the app up and let the first video play my children came running (both my two and nine year old!) at the energetic music and singing! They were engrossed in the app!

My favourite features of the app were:

easy and quick download
music was energetic and great at catching my children’s attention
repetitive; allowing the words to be easily learned
informative parent guide with instructions on how to use each word/video, including also colouring books, craft activities, activities on the go, lyrics, words to practice and cards to print out
the parent guide allows you to minimize the amount of time spent directly on the app itself for parents that are worried about too much screen time
loved that I was able to interact and be part of the learning process (versus just reading it aloud and hoping they absorb what you are reading to them)
incredibly fun way to learn a new language (all of us were dancing and singing along!)
even though it is designed for teaching children 0-5 years of age, my nine year old loved it as well!
easy to navigate between pages on the app
app is designed to be able to download onto Apple devices and Android

Langmobile is offering four individuals a chance to win their own copy of the app! US and CAN residents can enter via the Rafflecopter below.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I received a copy of this app in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

February 20, 2014

Dry Hair Relief with Garnier #DamageEraser

For the past two weeks I have been testing out Garnier’s new line of #DamageEraser products from Influenster. The Damage Eraser line is formulated for dry, damaged and distressed hair. It is designed to reconstruct and preserve hair strength by up to 90%

The formula contains Phyto-Keratin with plant based proteins and fruit concentrate, Cupuacu Butter and natural lipids. The entire line consists of shampoo, conditioner, reconstructing butter and split ends repair.

The product itself has a great smell to it. You can actually smell the Cupuacu Butter (I love body butters so I am so familiar with this smell!). The texture is quite rich and does not feel watered down. I was quite impressed with the results of the line! My hair has been through years of abuse from colouring my dark brown hair blonde to black along with over ten years in a pool daily (I still get comments when I get in the stylist chair about the green undertones in my hair from the chlorine!). I found the best results from the reconstructing butter (pictured below). It left my hair feeling smooth, silky and shiny after one application.

Rating: 4/5

You can find more about their products by visiting Garnier’s website here.

Disclosure: I received the above mentioned products for free from Influenster. All opinions expressed are my own.

February 20, 2014

Knights and Princesses: Crafts with Cathy ThinkingOutLoud

Sticking with our medieval theme this week, Cathy from Cathy Thinking Out Loud has brought us a fun craft to make with our little knights and princesses! Using the template ideas from below you can create stand up medieval characters for your children to play with.

You Will Need:

white blank paper
your choice of pencil crayons, crayons or paint
glue stick
Popsicle sticks (small ones)
scissors

Instructions

Print out or copy the figures at the beginning of the post.
Colour in the figure with your choice of crayons, markers or paint. Allow to dry.
Cut out the shape. Fold the base in half.
Attach two Popsicle sticks to the base and one along the middle pointing upwards.

Enjoy your Knight and Princess!

February 18, 2014

Save Money Renting Textbooks with #CampusBookRentals

Having just completed my undergraduate degree five years ago I can state that undeniably one of the greatest (and most difficult to budget for) are your textbooks. There is no way to get around this cost because textbooks are essential to each course. The most frustrating part is that even though they are essential you can go a whole semester with using them once a week or less. I have some textbooks that I had purchased six years ago that look brand new!

Campus Book Rentals is the perfect alternative choice when looking into purchasing textbooks. Instead of purchasing, you can rent the required textbook saving 40-90% off bookstore prices! Yup – 40-90% off of the bookstore prices. I am not sure about your courses but none of my textbooks were below $75! Imagine those savings?! Not only are you saving on the textbook price but the textbooks are shipped to you for free and returning is free as well. During the flexible renting period, you are also allowed to highlight the textbooks without fear of extra charges. Perfect for making important mental notes to come back to.

Campus Book Rentals also participates in donating a portion of each of textbook rental to Operation Smile. Operation Smile is a fantastic organization that works around the world to help provide safe, effective and free cleft lip and cleft palate reconstructive surgery. They work in over sixty countries raising awareness of this life threatening condition. Since 1982, they have provided over 200,000 free surgeries for children and young adults.

Campus Book Rentals also has a great new program called Rent Back where students can send their used textbooks to Campus Book Rentals, who rents them out to a student and you make money off of that rental. When it is returned they rent it out again and you also make money on that rental as well. This could make you as a student 2-4 times more then just selling your textbook! You can watch this video for more info.

Have you ever rented out textbooks? Were you also like me shocked at the prices of textbooks?