With the first month of school nearing an end, our family is finally back in the swing of things. Lunches, uniforms, new bus schedules... it's all a part of the back-to-school season, right? This year, we decided to take on the HP Brain Training Challenge in addition to the typical school preparations that we may (or may not) look forward to each year. For our first Creative IQ-inspired challenge, my daughter and I chose to re-design her bedroom and had a lot of fun doing so. For our second challenge, we worked on improving our science knowledge, teamwork and artistic skills by playing educational games using the Rove20’s 10-point multi-touch 20-inch screen. We explored the solar system and living cells, solved puzzles and much more. Finally, we completed a third challenge that was designed by the writers of Creative IQ to develop improvisation, planning and implementation skills. This activity included designing and printing our own restaurant menu with the ENVY 5530 e-All-in-One, including menu items with prices, setting a table, waiting on customers and then adding up the bill to figure out the total amount owed.


Using the Rove20, my daughter and I created a simple menu using Microsoft Word via SkyDrive. We were able to use the limited functions to create a table, edit the font and insert a clipart image.


In addition to the menu, we used the printables function on the HP Envy to print out some Disney colouring pages. There were many to choose from, including Disney Planes, Sofia the First and Phineas and Ferb.


After previewing the colouring page, you will have the option to print. Your printer needs to be connected to your Wi-Fi since it will need a couple of seconds to download the page. They were perfect for keeping the young kids busy while waiting for their 'meal' to arrive.


This is a great activity as it aims to develop writing, spelling and math skills. It is only one of several activity suggestions in Creative IQ, a truly handy resource that will be making its way into the Teacher Resource section of our school library.




And now, on to the news that I am sure many of you have been waiting for - the winner of the HP Canada Back-to-School Bundle! This was by far one of the most popular giveaways here on Toronto Teacher Mom and I really wish I could have selected more than just one winner. Without further ado, congratulations goes out to Shonna B. You should be receiving an email shortly.

Thank you to all who followed along in our HP Canada Brain Training Challenge and a big thank you to HP Canada and Creative IQ for supplying us with some really handy tools.

Disclosure: The products to complete the HP Canada Brain Training Challenge activities have been supplied by HP Canada and Creative IQ™. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own.