News, Reviews, and Recommendations!

Feed your mind

This week, my recommendation is a reading/writing/comprehension workbook series which I’ve discovered here at Brain Spice recently.

It’s not often I get excited about workbooks. They’re great, and they have their place, but “exciting” isn’t normally how I’d describe them. HOWEVER… this is a series that I was pleasantly surprised by - and I would definitely recommend! 

The name of the series is Reading For Me. It’s a fantastic and affordable open-and-go workbook for homeschoolers, or for parents wanting to help their kids with their reading/writing/comprehension skills.

It’s Wednesday! Which means if you’ve been wanting to learn more about homeschooling, today’s a great day to come visit Brain Spice! I thought I’d quickly also mention this cool new game which we’ve started stocking at Brain Spice. It’s such a clever way to help kids practice their reading. It’s great for homeschoolers, parents of school kids, teachers, and tutors!

Hi everyone! Janelle here again (the lucky homeschool Mum who gets to spend 11am-2pm each Wednesday at Brain Spice, chatting about all things education and homeschooling). Something I love about Brain Spice is that the store really encourages “Play is the brain's favourite way of learning”. So in that spirit, I thought I’d share an awesome little game we currently have in stock… 

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.

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!

Mums often spend so much time researching the perfect gift for those they love. They constantly research the perfect educational games and puzzles for their kids.

So much thought goes into everything they do.

So how do you even begin to say thank you, when they do so much?

Well, don’t forget that Mums likes puzzles, games, books, and challenges too! She’d likely love a fun and unique gift!