April 25, 2014

Brinkman Adventures (a product review)

We love adventures and we love homeschooling...so we were pleased to be able to receive The Brinkman Adventures audio-drama about a homeschooling family and some adventures they experienced. We were able to review The Brinkman Adventures Season 2: Episodes 13-24.

What is The Brinkman Adventures?

The Brinkman Adventures is an audiodrama series that follows a family of missionaries on their journey's around the world. The family homeschool their many children--8 with one on the way--and the oldest daughters blog about their escapades. All of their journey's and many of the people they meet are based on real life experiences by Christian missionaries and modern day heroes. The Brinkman family is even based on a real family who do the voices of all the children. Throughout their adventures, the family learns more about how God loves them and how He can use them preach the gospel!

The Brinkman Adventures Season 2: Episdoes 13-24 can be purchased as a 4 cd set for a suggested donation of $25.00. You can also purchase it as an mp3 album for a suggested donation of $17.00.

How Did We Use It?

We made The Brinkman Adventures our special treat for lunch. The set came in a DVD package with all 4 cds inside. There were 3 episodes per CD and each episode is about 25 minutes long, which makes it the perfect story for our lunch break. I chose to listen to it using my laptop and I had no problems getting it started. We began with the first CD in the set and just kept working our way through them. We listened to 1-2 per week.

Many of the episodes were connected to the others in some way...a few were Part 1/Part 2. I think that our favorite ones were tracks #1-5 as they were all tied together as part of the story of how the Brinkman Family drives a new bus to Belize, Mexico to deliver it to a school there. The boys and I got quite a few chuckles out of the adventures with the chickens. 

What Were Our Thoughts on The Brinkman Adventures?

When I asked Little Britches which episode was his favorite, he just said "I don't know. I liked them all the same!" At first he wasn't very interested, but as they played out he did enjoy them and would ask if we were going to listen to the next one. He likes them but he's not in any hurry to listen to them again.

I thought they were well done and interesting. I enjoyed hearing the stories about the Brinkman family and how it included little parts of what it's like in a large family. I liked the role of the pregnant mother and how she reacts during their adventures. I found it interesting that there was quite a bit of history included in the audiodramas. If they mentioned a historical character, there was then a little bit of information about that person included. If they were visiting a landmark, they characters "discussed" the history of it. 

I also appreciated that there were lessons to be learned in the stories. In one of the story's, one of the older Brinkman daughters is saving money for a new fancy camera. She's always working hard and usually working with her brother Ian. Well it seems to always be that Ian gets to quit working and go do something "fun" while she has to say behind or take the lesser jobs. Through the course of the story the reward of one of Ian's jobs is the VERY camera that the sister wants. And she decides it's not fair. So it's nice to see how the mom handles the situation and how she helps the daughter to learn some lessons.

There were really only two small cons...
Our religious beliefs didn't always match the doctrines that The Brinkman Adventures included in their stories. So we spent a lot of time just talking about what we believed and how it was either the same or different...so really I wouldn't truly consider it a "con" in that it makes us talk about our faith. But it sometimes got annoying to hear things we didn't believe in when they were said all the time. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a relatively small con!

Volume. This is really more of just a personal con. We discovered that the volume was very weak when we played it on our laptop. At first this was frustrating, but we got used to it. We just had to listen carefully when the women spoke as their voices seemed to be the weakest. We didn't have any other way to play it if we wanted it portable. I tested it on our main entertainment center and the volume was loud and fine. So it was definitely just my laptop.

Would I Recommend The Brinkman Adventures?


It really is a well done product. I think that any Christian family would enjoy having it in their collection, especially since it is appropriate for the whole family. Would I buy more? I don't know. I might. Like I said. My boys didn't love it, so it's not something that I think we have to have, but I know we'd enjoy if we did get more as I don't think we'd listen to it over and over and over.

You can find The Brinkman Adventures on Facebook to stay in touch with their next adventures!

Well you've heard what we think about this product, why not visit some of my fellow crew members to see how their families liked it!

Click to read Crew Reviews
Crew Disclaimer

Have a most excellent Friday! I'm at the Great Homeschool Convention in Cincinnati, OH today and I can't wait to share with you my adventure when I get home!
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