Brain Spice News, Reviews, and Recommendations.

Feed your mind.

We've dealt with many product suppliers over the years.  Nearly all of them have been a joy to work with (and we won't mention the others).  A handful have become something even more to us: an inspiration. 

These are suppliers who take such admirable pride in the quality of their products, in the promptness and honesty of the service they provide, in actually helping their customers rather than just making sales, that they've pushed us to do better ourselves.  One of these suppliers is Melbourne-based Kaiko Fidgets.

Our rolling ball machine was built in late 2014, by the uniquely talented David Morrell of Avid Creations.  Over the years it has brought joy to many thousands, but this year it was starting to struggle. After about 38,000 hours of runtime, things were wearing out. It has been silent for days at a time.

Then one of our regular visiting families saw the silent machine and heard about this, and Dad said, "I can help you there."

Japanese company Tenyo has been creating highly collectible pocket magic for almost 30 years!

Tenyo's founder, Akira Yamada, established the Tenyo Magic Research Institute back in 1953, following in the footsteps of his professional magician father.

If you were to ask me to choose just one recommendation for a gift for a child or teen, Jungle Hide & Seek would be at the very top of my list. I’m talking list point number one.

My reasons? Literally everything about this puzzle makes me want to recommend it. It’s one of those perfect puzzles which really does tick all the boxes. If you’ve played it, you’ll know what I mean.

To play, select a challenge from the challenge book. You must then work out where to place the four puzzle pieces so that the featured animals in that challenge are showing, while the rest of the animals are hidden.

The puzzle sounds simple, but the further into the challenge book you go, the more difficult it becomes.

A customer saw these on the shelf and said “Oh I used to love these! When I was at school, my teacher used to have one of these in his drawer. When a student was continually getting into trouble that day, he’d get them to sit aside for a little while and he’d hand them a puzzle like this to fidget with. It used to calm the student down and the student would sit there trying to solve it. He was one of my favourite teachers. I still remember those puzzles”. This customer then went on to buy one, and he left with a nostalgic smile.

The concept is simple. Can you separate the pieces? Can you put them back together again?

The Online Classroom is an educational resource which I’ve used in our homeschooling plan for years now. It’s a series which I highly recommend for both homeschooling and the classroom setting.

I’ll explain the History series in this post, however there’s also the Online Classroom Geography series and the Online Classroom Mammals series, which are both just as wonderful.

The Online Classroom series is incredibly easy to follow, allowing for open-and-go learning with little to no preparation needed, or alternatively you can use it as a base to plan a more elaborate program with excursions and further learning added.
Either way, the series is fully curriculum-linked.

Animal Upon Animal is a wonderful kids game which fosters hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills… and it’s fun for all ages!

Who is the most skillful at stacking? Who will be the first left without any animals?

Parents - this is a fantastic game to play with your kids. Another bonus is that kids will also be able to play this without your help! No reading ability necessary = Easy for kids of all ages to enjoy!

The Three Kingdoms is the most frustratingly wonderful, seemingly-impossible, love-it-hate-it-love-it, simple-but-difficult puzzle I have ever attempted.

It’s been 6 months since I bought this puzzle and I still haven’t solved it.

It’s by far the best $12 I’ve ever spent. I’ve definitely got my money’s worth, that's for sure!

Multispin is a fun maths game, designed specifically to help students practice their multiplication skills.

Multispin has been designed by Dr Paul Swan, who is fantastic at thoroughly teaching maths concepts by including as many games and hands on activities as possible. (And he’s from right here in Western Australia!)