PLA 2012 will provide opportunities to learn new ideas, share success stores, hear best practices, and meet colleagues from across the county and around the world. There are nearly 200 useful and entertaining sessions on the PLA program are loaded with both practice and policy.

And, of course, there are great exhibits, like the educational You’ve been Sentenced! word game — the perfect game for all word enthusiasts. Visit us at Booth #2311.

Want to learn more about McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds award-winning games like You’ve been Sentenced!, Twisted Fish and more? Visit McNeill Designs for game rules, printable score sheets, or even order online!

Need more fun and games? Find You’ve been Sentenced! on TWITTER and Like us on FACEBOOK  for special offers, coupons, and insider gaming news!

In addition to It’s how you play the game!  Susan Conforte McNeill also writes for the fashion site Susan Said What?! and is the co-founder of the literacy organization Success Won’t Wait!

We like to think of ourselves as a pretty fun and funny bunch (after all, we play games for a living and our tagline is Seriously Hilarious!) but we’ve got nothing on the stellar talent showcased at the LA Comedy Awards.

This year’s nominees and recipients are a distinguished group (usually!) and some of the most sought-after comedic talent in the world. Nominees and award recipients were carefully selected by the community and industry producers on the merits of commercial success, talent, and popularity, plus the potential for commercial success of new faces.

MOST HILARIOUS VOICE OVER IN A SERIES
Davide Ruben & Greg Broadmore for Dr. Grordborts – RECIPIENT
Robert Burton
Steven Alan Green
Rob Little

MOST HILARIOUS ACTOR IN A COMEDY
Rick Overton
Brett Walkow
Elvis Winterbottom for Dick and Jane Show – RECPIENT

MOST HILARIOUS ACTRESS IN A COMEDY
Rebecca Whitmann – RECIPIENT
Lisa Nova
Ashley Hugtime
Erica Rhodes

MOST HILARIOUS VOICE OVER TELEVISION
Rob Little
David Ruben
Robert Burton – RECIPIENT

MOST HILARIOUS WEBISODE
Just Getting By – RECIPIENT
Busted Reality
Dr. Grordbots
Dick and Jane Show

MOST HILARIOUS VARIETY ACT COMEDIAN
David Deeble
Jeff Bornstien
Scot Nery
Paul Venier – RECIPIENT

MALE STAND UP COMEDIAN
Dakota Younger
PJ Walsh
Al Del Bene – RECIPIENT
Frazer Smith
Rick Shapiro

TELEVISION SHOW HOST
S. Scott Conner
Gabrielle Birchack
Tamara Henry – RECIPIENT
Brett Walkow

FEMALE STAND UP
Tara Egnasios
Rosie Tran – RECIPIENT
Melinda Hill
Gayla Johnson

The LA Comedy Awards are produced by Max Worthington. For more information, please visit LA Comedy Awards.

In addition to It’s how you play the game!  Susan Conforte McNeill also writes for the fashion site Susan Said What?! and is the co-founder of the literacy organization Success Won’t Wait!

Preshias Harris (left) pictured here with award-winning country music singer/songwriter Deborah Allen at the 2012 Country Radio Seminar.

Music News Nashville, the online magazine for the country music industry, contains all the news you need to know about Nashville and beyond. So, we were thrilled at the magazine’s recent profile of Preshias Harris, McNeill Designs’ Production Advisor and Artist & Industry Relations Representative.

Here’s just a little of what they had to say:

“Preshias Harris, endearingly referred to ‘round “The Row” as the “Queen of Networking,” has announced her departure from PCG-Nashville as VP of Artist & Industry Relations. She has accepted the invitation to devote her time and talents on a full-time basis as a representative of McNeill Designs. Working alongside the brand as they unveil a Country Music Edition of the award-winning game You’ve been Sentenced!, Harris will act as Production Advisor and Artist & Industry Relations Representative.

Created to go above and beyond family fun, You’ve been Sentenced! has become an educational tool that is garnering rave reviews in homes, classrooms and educational facilities around the world and is now staged to reach a brand new audience. McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds, the game manufacturer, is set to introduce the You’ve been Sentenced! Country Music Edition to entertain the country music fan. Harris will work in alliance with McNeill Designs to elevate industry awareness and to produce and promote the new Country Music Edition…

“You’ve been Sentenced! is a fun-filled, educational game that can be played by one and all and it is a natural fit for the country music format,” said Preshias Harris. “The response we all received playing with artists–sharing the literacy movement–during CRS was overwhelming and early proof that the Country Music Edition will be a winner! We’re excited to see what fun is in store for us.”

To read the article in its entirety, please visit Music News Nashville.

Preshias Harris can be reached at preshiasharris@hotmail.com or 615-482-5823.

Want to learn more about McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds award-winning games like You’ve been Sentenced!, Twisted Fish and more? Visit McNeill Designs for game rules, printable score sheets, or even order online!

Need more fun and games? Find You’ve been Sentenced! on TWITTER and Like us on FACEBOOK  for special offers, coupons, and insider gaming news!

In addition to It’s how you play the game!  Susan Conforte McNeill also writes for the fashion site Susan Said What?! and is the co-founder of the literacy organization Success Won’t Wait!

Products are chosen on the basis of Play on Words’ experts’ practical child development experience, and are complemented by thoughtful reviews, showing parents how to best use each toy, game or book to build language.

For more than 35 years, Play on Words founder Sherry Artemenko has worked with children to improve their speech and language, serving as a speech language pathologist in both the public and private school systems and private practice. Sherry started Play on Words to advise parents, companies and authors on the attributes of the best toys, games and media to build language.

Here’s a little bit of what Sherry had to say regarding the merits of the You’ve been Sentenced! word game:

“As speech therapists, we spend a lot of time helping kids put together a good sentence and eventually a story. “You’ve Been Sentenced!” can help such language learning and provide a lot of fun in the process. Racing against a timer and your fellow players, one must construct a meaningful sentence from a random set of words. So many skills are tapped it is hard to list them–grammar, parts of speech, meaning, word order etc. I guarantee a laugh!  Check out their website for Lesson Plans and suggested variations on the game…

Do you want to get friends and family together and have an educational challenge, quick game and loads of laughs? Check out “You’ve Been Sentenced!” and get ready to put a silly sentence together.

Flip over your 10 cards, each with 5 word options to start building your sentence. Themes start swirling in your head as you try to link words in a grammatically correct sentence.

How do I combine spill, sliding, fish and lunch? Oh yes, I have 6 more cards to use. The fastest player to complete their sentence turns over the timer as the rest of the players race to finish theirs and hope that the first contestant gets his entry voted down.

Our testers found that there is a balance between throwing a sentence together fast and taking too much time to think. The cards offer 5 clever variations of a root word such as rusher, rushed, rush, rushes, and rushed.

An incredible language learning game, “You’ve Been Sentenced!” calls on players to know their parts of speech, draft a theme, and use correct grammar. Players act as members of the jury, deciding the fate of proposed sentences adding a social language component to this game also. Add-on decks like their newest “NASA Space Terminology” continue to expand the vocabulary kids and adults can learn. Get sentenced at home or the classroom!”

To read the full review of find more PAL winners, visit Play on Words.

Want to learn more about McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds award-winning games like You’ve been Sentenced!, Twisted Fish and more? Visit McNeill Designs for game rules, printable score sheets, or even order online!

Need more fun and games? Find You’ve been Sentenced! on TWITTER and Like us on FACEBOOK  for special offers, coupons, and insider gaming news!

In addition to It’s how you play the game!  Susan Conforte McNeill also writes for the fashion site Susan Said What?! and is the co-founder of the literacy organization Success Won’t Wait!

Total cards used: 9/10

Total Points: 50 points

My explanation? I guess Sally Jesse Raphael makes old Bill a little bit crazy…

Want to learn more about McNeill Designs for Brighter Minds award-winning games like You’ve been Sentenced!, Twisted Fish and more? Visit McNeill Designs for game rules, printable score sheets, or even order online!

Need more fun and games? Find You’ve been Sentenced! on TWITTER and Like us on FACEBOOK  for special offers, coupons, and insider gaming news!

In addition to It’s how you play the game!  Susan Conforte McNeill also writes for the fashion site Susan Said What?! and is the co-founder of the literacy organization Success Won’t Wait!

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill with country music artist Billy Dean.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Billy Dawson.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor and country music artist Tracy Lawrence.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor and country music artist Ty Herndon.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Adam Gregory.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music group One Night Rodeo.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor and country music group The McClymonts.

“Games can be a fun and useful tool for a range of reasons.  They be used to support or encourage literacy skills, communication and oral language, and of course logic and mathematics.  Most importantly they are a social activity; a shared experience that involves a range of interpersonal skills and interactions.  To me this is a fundamental aspect of what is unique to board and card games – of course there are programs and games that can simulate a similar shared experience, but board and card games excel in this domain.

I’m in the lucky position of having a reasonably large school game collection – we have something like 100 different games.  Over the years we’ve been building our games program I’ve tried to vary our collection to support different age levels, as well as ensure the games we have and use can be drawn upon to support a range of skill areas – especially language to mathematics.

This post I want to focus on a handful of those games I’ve used as a part of my literacy program.  I’ve often used games as a way of incorporating various language skills in an activity that is engaging and enjoyable – and when I use them it is not all about the learning – I want the experience to be social and enjoyable, but I do also want students to be thinking too…

You’ve Been Sentenced…This is a great game for sentence building – I’ve used this game as a one of the rotations a particular group might engage in over the course of a week. I’ve also used the cards in teacher directed lessons looking at the role of different word types within modeled sentences, or how verbs change, conjunctions are used and so on.  It is a challenging game for students who have difficulty forming multi-event sentences, especially as the best sentences often involves adjective, adverbs and so on – more complex forms of language that suit a learner of a particular level.  Nonetheless, it is a useful and specific tool, and as a game there is ample opportunity for the construction of amusing sentences – which makes the game experience enjoyable and interesting.”

To read more of Pritchard’s suggestion for using games in the classroom including Bananagrams, Word on the Street and more, visit Castle by Moonlight.

In addition to It’s how you play the game!  Susan Conforte McNeill also writes for the fashion site Susan Said What?! and is the co-founder of the literacy organization Success Won’t Wait!

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill with country music artist Dustin Lynch.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Glen Templeton.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Jason Sturgen.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Jeff Bates.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Jeremy McComb.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Jeremy Parsons.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Maggie Sajak.

You've been Sentenced! word game inventor Don McNeill and country music artist Mark Wayne Glasmire.