Wednesday 10 October 2018

Brinkman Adventures Season 6 {Review}

Audio drama's are one of the best additions to our homeschool that we have had. Our first audio drama was Season 2 from The Brinkman Adventures in 2014 it took one episode to hook us as a family. In fact we so enjoyed listening to the Brinkman adventures we were thrilled to review Season 3 in 2015.

We love listening to audio drama's and books whenever we travel and quite often when we are travelling around locally. We were thrilled to be given a digital copy of Brinkman Adventures Season 6 - Underground Rising to review.


The vision for Brinkman Adventures was birthed in 2009 by Ian Bultman to 'create a missionary radio show that will inspire future missionaries'. He penned the first three episodes and each of his children volunteered as voice actors (there are 9 children in his family). Each of the children's names have been changed in the production but they all play themselves. Over the years the show has grown and incorporates sound effects, foley, music and acting along with voice actors from the Milwaukee area and the rest of the world.

The goal of Brinkman Adventures is to reach people with the incredible life changing stories. Each episode tells a true, modern, missionary story. The aim of the series is changing lives and encouraging young people to become missionaries.

Brinkmand Adventures Season 6 - Underground Rising

Season 6 covers episodes 55 to 60. Each episode is around 25 minutes in length which can be used on short car trips, afternoon rest times for your family or family devotional times. Underground Rising is available for purchase as a physical or digital download. Brinkman Adventures have recently moved to a six episode release structure making this release approximately two hours in duration.

Episodes in Season 6
  • 55 - Dutch Underground Part 1 - Reng and Lynn VanKesteren are Ian Bultman’s (Jack Brinkman’s) grandparents. This episode is based on the true story of their experiences during World War 2. The details of the episode is drawn from Lyn's book: Great is Thy Faithfulness.
  • 56 - Dutch Underground Part 2 - This is part two of Reng's involvement with the Dutch Underground.
  • 57 - Twice Born Fly - This episode is based on a dream of Ian’s that occurred while serving at Alaska Bible Institute in Homer, Alaska. This episode took its name from a true story in Joey's life.
  • 58 - I Wonder Why? - the true story of the Wonder family (some names were changed for security),highlighting the experience of a girl leaving home and accompanying her parents to a foreign country to minister to different people groups, health and healing of hearts and bodies.
  • 59 - Free Burma Rangers Part 1 - This episode is based on the true story of Dave Eubank and his journey from boyhood into a career as a Green Beret in the Special Forces. It especially touched us as we (my husband and I) both grew up in military families during deployment in war zones.
  • 60 - Free Burma Rangers Part 2 - This episode is based upon the events in the life of Dave and Karen Eubank and their family in Burma bringing aid to people within the attack zones and sharing the love of Jesus with the Burmese nationals while working alongside them.


Each story has scripture and prayer in them and real every day life conversations. The family pray together and do bible studies together demonstrating how to apply christian principles in daily living.

Digital episodes may be played on portable devices (phones/tablets) but must first be downloaded onto computer, and then synced with device. (Portable devices are unable to extract zipped files). We burned them to CD's and listened to them in the car on our local journey's. Paul so enjoyed the stories we had to pause Free Burma Rangers and wait till he was in the car with us to continue the story!

The dramatisations are excellent and you feel as though you are actually in the country where the story is taking place. For example in episodes 55 and 56 due to the difficult nature of imitating the Dutch accent, God provided actors in the Netherlands to help portray members of the Dutch Underground from the Dekker family. By God's providence Omie's niece Hieke Hoekstra portrayed her aunt Lyn in the story.


Spoiler Alert! My favourite part about each of the episodes of the Brinkman Adventures are the real stories that each of the episodes are based on.You can find the background stories, photographs, podcasts of interviews with the missionaries, YouTube clips, maps and history for each season under the Real Stories tab (I suggest you listen to each episode before popping over to read more about the real stories, the people and the places.).

The stories have been designed for family or youth group listening.  Some of the stories are quite dramatic and may be a little frightening for younger audiences.  Should an episode be intense or have slightly more mature themes it will start with an introduction with a recommendation that younger children listen to the episode with their parents present.

If you are looking for family safe listening that is encouraging, inspiring and safe to listen to be sure to head on over to Brinkman Adventures and explore the seasons which have been thus far released.  Be warned though, once you start to listen to the Brinkman Family adventures you will not want to stop!

You can connect with the Brinkman Adventures team on Facebook.

70 other crew members reviewed Season 6: Underground Rising, visit the Homeschool Review Crew to read their reviews or click on the image below.


Tuesday 9 October 2018

Career Aptitude Test by CashCrunch Careers {Review}

Finding your vocational strengths can be a little bit of a challenge.  I remember years ago we were getting ready to choose our final subjects for the last three years of school and I still hadn't worked out what on earth I was going to pursue after school.  In much excitement I did an aptitude test and went to find my results out at the guidance councillor who turned around and said the results basically stated I could do anything I wanted.  Well that did not help me any.

I was therefore quite intrigued recently when I was given the opportunity by CashCrunch Games to do an aptitude test via their new on line aptitude test over at CashCrunch Careers.

What does CashCrunch Careers do?

  • Matches your personality attributes to specific jobs.
  • Presents careers and possibilities that would best suit you.
  • Gives a list of possible careers you would enjoy
  • Provides a list of careers you would probably excel in.
  • Provides insights in what paths need to be taken in order to achieve your career stream.
  • Possible roles to explore within career interests.

What is the process?

Once you have signed up and logged into CashCrunch Careers you will be taken to the Dashboard area where you can update your profile information and access the participant survey.


The survey consists of 75 pairs of words.    The participant needs to select the word that best describes them and who they REALLY are. It's important to not select words describing who you want to be or who you think others want you to be.


I confess I got stuck on a couple of the pairs of words because they were similar in nature.  I discovered that if you hover over the words with your mouse a mini pop up box appears with synonyms.  This was a tremendously helpful feature and helped me choose the appropriate word.


To the right of the list of survey questions is a tracking box.  Each of the numbers fills in green when you answer the question.  This make it easy to see if you have missed any questions, as in this case we had missed question 21 and were able to go back and select an appropriate answer.

The survey is not time consuming and is easy to complete.  It took each of us between ten and fifteen minutes to complete.

Careers Report

This report is automatically generated upon submitting your completed survey and can be accessed anytime you log in.

On page one there are five informative paragraphs sharing different aspects of your aptitude results:
  1. Career Work Style - Knowing what you can do, what you would like to do and how you are able to do it.
  2. Motivators and De-Motivators - Something the provides a reason or stimulates to do or don't do something.
  3. Career Attributes - The qualities or features regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of you.
  4. Career Match - Jobs that are most suitable for your career.
  5. Matching Jobs - a list of possible careers/jobs ranked in suitability based upon your test results.
Jane, Nathaniel and I all took the same aptitude test and I loved reading each of our individualised reports.  The best way for you to see how these work is to show you a few screen shots. I will show you randomised samples of our results.

Here are our Career Work Style reports.  I will be showing you all three so you can see how different each of us are. (To read them full screen please click on the graphic)


Motivators & De-motivators is a mini report helping you to define those things that stimulate you and provide a reason to do something along with a list of things that de-motivate you.


Career Attributes is a list and description of the top attributes which are considered to by your strengths in the workplace .


At the bottom of the page you will come across the matching Jobs area. There are twenty job areas which are ranked in order of suitability to you.  You will need to click on a career category to more fully explore the possibilities for you.


As mentioned above I had done one of these when I was in high school which proved to be a very disappointing experience however I was quite astounded reading through my jobs list because I had had various employment experiences in many of the areas that had been listed for me.

Career Drill Down pages


If you click on an area of interest for example General and Operations Managers it takes you to a summary page for that field.  On this page you will find a summary of the tasks for that position, activities performed in that role and personal attributes, abilities, work values and skills needed.


 
At the top there are three tabs: Course, Colleges and Video.


Under the Colleges tab there is a Google Map with pins to different campuses which provide eduction covering the particular field of employment.  Each campus  is listed in alphabetical order with an address, hyperlinked website and institution type as well as degree's offered.



Under the Video tab there is an embedded video showing a short introduction to the career and differing functions and daily tasks expected of the person in that role giving the student some insight into the future activities needed to be done within that specific career role. The videos are all close captioned.

I was a little perplexed when comparing my list with Jane and Nathaniel as the jobs listed were the same but in a different order.  Upon contacting CashCrunch Careers Paul was able to provide some valuable insights.

In each of the careers listed, the jobs can vary quite considerably. For example, in the publishing world you will need editors, writers and graphic designers. In the police force there are a number of different personalities required depending on their roles. Some will rise to the ranks in leadership, be detectives, others will follow a more scientific route into CSI and so on.

The purpose of the job list is to show that within career categories, there are a number of different roles for different personalities. The ranking is based purely on your inherent traits. You could work in the same career field but just do different jobs. This value in the individualised report is to create awareness and therefore unlock possibilities that you may have not even considered, which in turn allows you to research and possibly choose a new career path.

Careers Tab

At the top of the page is one of my favourite features of the site the Careers tab. The objective is to provide a place to explore and learn about careers and give you further insight and direction in your career journey.


The careers area is divided into sixteen different generalised career areas
  1. Agricultural, Food and Natural Resources - 38 Careers
  2. Architecture and Construction - 39 Careers
  3. Arts, Audio/Video Technology and Communications - 23 Careers
  4. Business, Management and Administration - 29 Careers
  5. Education and Training - 13 Careers
  6. Finance - 18 Careers
  7. Government and Public Administration - 12 Careers
  8. Health Science - 49 Careers
  9. Hospitality and Tourism - 39 Careers
  10. Human Services - 25 Careers
  11. Information Technology - 7 Careers
  12. Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security - 17 Careers
  13. Manufacturing - 38 Careers
  14. Marketing, Sales and Service - 19 Careers
  15. Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - 30 Careers
  16. Transportation, Distribution and Logistics - 31 careers
Transportation, Distribution and Logistics Career List Sample

When clicking on a career takes you to a full page with the three tabs: Course, Colleges and Video.  Each tab gives you the same information as listed above in the Career Drill Down explanation above.

Connect on Social Media with CashCrunch Careers

Closing Thoughts

Since we work an average of 50 years it makes sense to find out what we have an aptitude for and do something we enjoy! Using CashCrunch Careers has been a positive experience for all three of us.  We have found new career paths to explore and are looking forward to seeing where each of us will end up.

We enjoyed using it to discover our own personal strengths and weaknesses and to discover new career opportunities that we had not thought about pursuing before.  

I am one of 70 families who are reviewing CashCrunch Careers be sure to click on the banner below  to read what the crew members thought.

Saturday 6 October 2018

Introducing Floor of Your Core by The Tummy Team

Spring is a marvellous time of the year.  I love the deep blue skies and the warming weather I find it invigorates me and spurs me on to make some health changes.  A couple of years back I discovered Kelly Dean and The Tummy Team and was thinking about taking out my notes and doing a refresher to re-establish my core strength as I had noticed that I was not as strong in my daily life as I know I can be.   I still follow the team on Instagram and have seen some interesting posts relating to a new program they recently launched called:  Floor of Your Core.

Introducing Floor of Your Core 8 week online Rehabilitation Program by The Tummy Team


As I was reading the posts I thought yes I can identify with these myths and the ridiculous pelvic floor advice some people had been given (I had been given the same advice in the past). Kelly and her team were sharing and saying there is a better way. It is unrealistic to expect physicians to know everything, especially in this day and age where medical insights change on a daily basis however there needs to be a balance and it is not right to be careless with comments that are not truthful to patients.
Functional pelvic floor is about connection, coordination and consistency not tension, gripping and intensity - Kelly Dean, MPT

  Symptoms of Pelvic Floor weakness to be aware of

  • Urinary Incontinence - wetting yourself when laughing, jogging, sneezing or being unable to hold on to go to the bathroom.  While this is common to many woman it is not normal.
  • Pelvic Organ Prolapse - feeling pressure after intimacy, a feeling of heaviness down there, feeling a bulge when wiping.  
  • Intimacy Issues - pain during intimacy or a numbness is not normal and may be a symptom of weakness or injury.
  • Pelvic Pain - painful tailbone, pain in pelvis during your cycle, deep pelvic pain.
 Finding balanced helpful answers to these issues can be a challenge and I was so relieved to discover that The Tummy Team are committed to supplying woman with the correct information and dispelling the myths that surround pelvic floor issues and providing accurate medical advice and support.

After reading more about the pelvic floor on their blog and hearing Kelly explain how the pelvic floor is an important part of the core I contacted the team who have graciously gifted me a Floor of Your Core - 8 week Online Program to try in exchange for a review.

More Information on Pelvic Floor



How I found The Tummy Team

Two years ago I discovered The Tummy Team when in desperation I was searching for a solution to Paul's chronic back pain and annual winter trouble that he was experiencing as a result of a serious back injury which ended in surgery followed by more than six months of rehabilitation in New Zealand.

While researching the topic I was appalled to realise that most medical protocol is to manage pain with medication as there was no premise to fix the root cause as there was no known solution.  At that stage Paul would religiously do Pilates but he was still in constant pain.

 I was scrolling through Instagram and I was rather surprised at the info graphics explaining that PlankingCrunches and Cross-Over Crunches are really bad exercises for your core and your tummy and actually do not accomplish what we think they should. I was drawn to find out more about their program because Paul had been regularly exercising including doing planking exercises to strengthen his core but was still having pain issues and regular flare ups with his back.

We are so blessed to have our lives changed when The Tummy Team blessed me with their online Core Foundations Program. This program dramatically changed my life and my husbands. You can read my review on how the program works and how it can help you here:  The Tummy Team - Core Foundations Review.  

Learn More about The Tummy Team

Connect on Social Media
I would like to thank Kelly Dean and the Tummy Team for sponsoring me with Floor of Your Core I am looking forward to the next step in becoming Strong 4 Life and I look forward to sharing my journey and progress here on the Blog.