Homeschool Crew: Maverick Books ~ Hank the Cowdog

 Hank the Cowdog ~ your relationship with Hank is truly love/hate - you either love Hank the Cowdog and he is a common character around your house OR you don't like him and he is not allowed.  Around here, we LOVE Hank, but I do know some folks that don't care for him.  Hank is, well, he is a cowdog, on a ranch, and let's just say Miss Manners has NO competition with Hank.  Wait, I know the best way to describe Hank - do you have a 9 year old boy?  That pretty much covers that!!  The reason that dome folks don't care for Hank is because he is a little rough around the edges.  He has been know to call the word Dummy or maybe even say stupid, and some folks don't go for that.  Now, before you get me wrong - stupid is NOT allowed to come from mouths at my house, along with many other things that Hank comes up with, but my kiddos know that those words are not allowed, and we can read, listen to and play Hank games without any issue.

NOW, onto all the goodies that came in this box from Maverick Books:
Tornado: really cool game!  Bonus*  It is self contained and travel size* This game plays similar to TROUBLE or SORRY, but has it's on special spaces that are not on the others.  We have played this several times as a family, the kiddos played it a few times on their own, and we even took it to a semi-adult party that I knew a few kiddos were going to be at and this game entertained the 5 of them the entire 3 hours!!!  WOW!!  This one will go down in the books as a favorite family game!  Oh, and did I mention it was self contained ~ and travel size!?!  There was also a cassette with the game that has some excerpts from the book The Case of the Swirling Killer Tornado.  The kiddos have listened to it, but it is not as big of a hit as the CD. (ADD ON: This is a bonus from me to you: There was a one page of directions that came with this game.  Once we started playing, it may not really be necessary, but JUST IN CASE, what I did was copy the main points into the game.  It is in a plastic case that holds the pieces.  When it opens up, there is a colored side and then what is actually on the inside of the case, was blank, so that was where I copied the highlights of the rules.)

Tales and Tunes from Hank CD: Kiddos LOVE it; me, not so much.  They each have a CD player in their room and I have had to put this CD on odd/even restriction - meaning that one child can listen to it in their room on the odd days and the other on the even (we do this with many things and it always works).  Not to say they can't go in the other's room when it is playing, but they get the TOTAL CONTROL for the day.  For me, the songs are all really cute, but I am not crazy about the way that it is set up - it sings a song or two and then reads a quip from one of the stories.  I don't care for the back and forth.
And lastly, our very own Hank book!  We have read a few, but we have just checked them all out at the library, we have never purchased them.  This is book number 8 The Case of the One-Eyed Killer Stud Horse.  They have requested that we take that book with us on vacation and read it at bed time while we are out of town, so we haven't read it yet... but I bet it will be a good one!!

 To see what other members of the crew have to say about Hand and Maverick Books, please click the banner at the top of the page to visit the Crew Blog.