I got the Fun with Hieroglyphs Stamp Kit
The kit is pretty cool, I was surprised that the ink was not dried after so many years. The images are not perfectly clear (specially using their ink), but they are understandable enough. Pretty much the whole basic alphabet is included, though I would have liked other common stamps as well (the ones of a man and a woman and the ankh one, for example). Still, it’s quite nice.
My biggest complain is with the sounds they assign to some hieroglyphs, in particular to the bowels. I did not like arguing with Mika about how the vulture hieroglyph, equivalent to a glottal stop, is transliterated as an “a” and not an “e” or “o” – and that we should probably use the chick hieroglyph (a “w”) to render “o”.
For some reason they assign the sound “th” (as in thin) to the animal belly and “th” (as in “the”) to the placenta, but those have been usually understood to be hard “h” sounds (as in the German “ich”). Now their assigment may be because, as far as I know, there are not “th” sounds in ancient Egyptian – but really, why not just convert them into “s” and “d” – as those of us who are native Spanish speakers do before we learn the correct pronunciation of these sounds?
Of course, perhaps my knowledge of Middle Egyptian sounds is out of date, but I don’t think that’s the case.
The booklet that comes with the kit has some interesting information and activities, but I think they are beyond my 8 year old, at least she hasn’t seem interested in them.
This kit is out of print right now, but you still can find them through Amazon.com sellers
As a final note I should say that while the booklet provides information about basic information about hieroglyphs, it does not teach how to read more than a few Egyptian words. So don’t buy the kit hoping to learn ancient Egyptian. If you buy it, just buy it for fun.
As for us, Mika used the stamp kit to stamp paper bags (which we’ll use as goody bags) with the names of her friends. We will also use them for the kids to make bookmarks (with the papyrus paper I bought) – though I would like to get more colorful ink, as the black ink is quite boring. All in all, I think it’s a fun kit and I’m glad we have it.
Mika & Camila’s name written in hieroglyphs. The color in the picture is somewhat off – the top row should be black.
Category: Products & Services (Page 11 of 24)
Update: After writing this post I continued using listia for quite a while. My original experiences as a buyer weren’t bad, which led me to the post listia reconsidered. To get more credit to buy stuff I had to sell things, however, and soon found out that for seller’s listia is a losing proposition. I still use listia, but mainly to get rid of Coke Rewards points.
Someone on a craigslist forum I frequent mentioned listia.comas a good place to get free craft material (or really, anything). I decided to give it a chance, but quickly realized that, unlike with freecycle, you can’t really get anything for free at listia. I’m not really surprised, but a bit disappointed.
Listia works as e-bay, except that you bid with “credits”, and you can earn credits by giving away stuff. They do give you a small amount of credits when you sign up and list something (I got 165 credits), but that’s basically a one-time deal. Listia gives you the choice of having the winners of your bids pick up the stuff, you mail it for a price or you provide free shipping. The problem is that listia has a limited membership, specially in smaller cities, so it’s not that likely that you’ll find bidders that want to pick up your stuff (compare that with freecycle, which has much greater and only local memberships). If you charge for shipping, then chances are people will bid less on what you are offering (and remember, you are only getting credits) – and you have to go through the hassle of mailing it. If you provide free shipping, you have to pay for it.
If you don’t have enough credits, listia does allow you to buy them at the outrageous price of 10c each. It’s outrageous because listia things do cost a lot of credits. For example, a set of 10 paper cut-outs, with free shipping, is listed at 100 credits – or $10!!!!!. With the credits I got for free, I won an auction for a few charms (for bracelets). It “cost” me 150 credits, or the equivalent of $15. I probably could buy the charms for a couple of dollars.
As for me, I listed 6 items, including books and clothing. They are “pick up in San Leandro” only, and I think it’s unlikely anyone will bid on them. After the auction is over (they are open for 7 days), I’ll put them up on Freecycle or take them to the thrift store.
If despite what I said, you do want to join Listia – please do it through this link. This will allow me to get some free credits, and perhaps get something else for free š
We got the Cranium Big Book of Outrageous Fun!: The Write-It, Draw-It, Sculpt-It, Act-It Game-in-a-Book-in-a-Game!
For one reason or another we hadn’t opened it until yesterday, and I was surprised at how fun the book was. It has a bunch of activities for reading-age kids as well as a game than anyone can play. Mika had a great time with a pizza challenge: unscrambling words, putting them in a crossword matrix and then making the objects out of clay. Camila and I played the game, in which we had to act up words, make each other guess or make figures out of clay, and she loved it too. There are many more activities, and you write on the book with an erasable marker, so more than one child can use it.
The only minus, for me, is that the book, game pieces and game board are all attached, which makes it quite a bit clumsy to use. Perhaps for that reason it didn’t sell well (it’s not available from Amazon.com itself, so I assume that it’s out of print). On the plus side, you can get it new fromAmazon.com venderos
As I mentioned in my last post, today I bought a Girl Gourmet Cupcake Maker
The concept is pretty easy – you mix cupcake mix with a little bit of water, put it in a lined cupcake mold, put it in the steamer and microwave for 30 seconds – then let cool for one. Meanwhile you fill the frosting tube with frosting, put it in the stand, put the cupcake below it and push the arm: the frosting comes down while the cupcake spins around, making a twirl. The kids thought it was quite fun – though it’s messy to fill.
What the kids (in particular Mika) enjoyed the most is being able to 1) do it by themselves (though I was there helping) and 2) have cupcakes in a couple of minutes.
We tried the two mixes we got with the kit. One did not come out but the other one did. They both tasted quite good. We then proceeded to make a few more cupcakes with angel food cake mix. To make them, we mixed well the mix with water. I started with 3 Tbsp. mix to 1 Tbsp. butter but it was too thick so I added more water until it had a thick but runny consistency. Then we microwaved for 35 seconds and, voila, the cupcakes were ready. They came out very well – though we found the angel food cake too sour for our taste. Tomorrow we’ll use regular cake mix. The disadvantage of that is that regular cake mix requires eggs and oil, so rather than doing it by the spoon we’ll probably have to make 1/3 of the package (given that it calls for 3 eggs). Not too big a deal, though. I’m pretty sure that any cupcake recipe would work, btw.
Our kit didn’t come with the frosting, but given the reviews of the frosting at Amazon I wasn’t too heartbroken. Instead we got some whipped frosting at the supermarket (I know, the stuff is nasty). I think the consistency was just right, not too runny that it would leak out of the frosting tube, but soft enough that it easily came out, but the hole on the tip is too wide so too much frosting comes out – and you end up with half as much frosting as cupcakes. I probably should make our own frosting instead.
What I would never do is buy their refills
Now, would I buy the kit again? Definitely for $4 – even if the kids don’t use it again (and Mika says she totally want to), it was worth the fun we had with it tonight. I would not pay $20 for it – but if you could get it for half that it wouldn’t be a bad deal (if for no other reason than the price of the refills).
Update: We tried it today with regular yellow cake mix (cake mix + eggs + butter + water), mixed in the mixer and then cooked for 35 – and the results are great! Much better than either the mixtures that came with the set or the angel food cake. The cake rises very nicely and it’s fluffy, the kids love it. We did make the whole package of mix, I refrigerated the leftovers in a lidded bowl and they worked just as well the next day.
We have given up on using the froster, however, as fun as it is. It’s too much trouble to fill it up each time. Instead the kids are just frosting them with a knife.
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