Saint Anthony the Great -- Book Review

Disclosure: Wisdom Tales Press gave me a copy of this product free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Recently we decided to switch churches. As a family we are going to an Episcopal Church now. Steve is Catholic and I was raised in a United Church of Christ church and have always gone to one. We found the Episcopal Church to be a combination of the two and fit us all. We love being able to go to one church as a family and go almost every week together. Not having grown up in a church that focuses on the saints I do not know much about them. Now that we go to a church that focuses on them more I would like to learn more about them and teach Hazel more about them. I was happy to see this new book at Wisdom Tales Press, Saint Anthony the Great by John Chryssavgis and Mailyn Rouvelas and illustrated by Isabelle Brent. 

The Sparkle Box -- A Must Read Christmas Book!!

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Ideals Books./Worthy Kids. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

When reading Christmas books I always like ones that have the true meaning of Christmas in the story. Many just retell the story of the first Christmas, however the book I am sharing with you today does not. It shares the real meaning of Christmas with children and gives an activity for the family to do as well to focus on Jesus during this sometimes over commercialized season. The Sparkle Box by Jill Hardie and illustrated by Christine Kornacki is one of my favorite Christmas books ever. 

The Little Christmas Tree -- Book Review & Craft

 Disclosure: Kregel Publications sent me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

It is hard to believe Thanksgiving is this week. Christmas is just around the corner. Today we get to share a book that is being added to our must read every year list for Christmas. These are books that bring the Christmas story and season alive. The Little Christmas Tree by Andrea Skevington and illustrated by Lorna Hussey is a definite must read. When we read it again last night Hazel commented on how she LOVES this story. 

Christmas Book Review: B Is for Bethlehem and Santa's Christmas Train

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Ideals Books./Worthy Kids. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

 Today we get to share two fun Christmas books with you. One book is a religious Christmas book and the other is a Santa Claus one.  The first is a book that has the elements of the Nativity story in an alphabet book form. Hazel has been very into alphabet books lately and started reading this one as soon as we got it (in September). B Is for Bethlehem by Isabel Wilner and illustrated by Elisa Kleven is a beautiful book. 

Ishtar's Odyssey and the Christmas Journey Storybook -- Advent and Christmas Book Reviews

 Disclosure: Kregel Publications sent me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

As someone who likes to focus on one holiday before the next, I try not to share Christmas too early. However I am seeing it everywhere and this year I have some great books and DVDs to share with you. I decided to start with a great Advent book and a fun Christmas story book. I am always trying to bring our focus to the story of Jesus and not the commercialism that Christmas has become. These books are two great ones for doing this. 

Colour Your Day & 99 Prayers for Children -- Book Reviews

 Disclosure: Kregel Publications sent me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

I love finding ways to bring God into our lives. I know I personally need time to reflect and pray and want to teach Hazel to do the same. I found some books to help me with both of these things. The first is for me--some Mommy time. It is Colour Your Day: A Spiritual Colouring Book by Marcel Flier. 

Now I have mentioned the adult coloring craze previously and reviewed a fun adult coloring book already. What is different about Colour Your Day is that the focus of each page is on God and/or Jesus. There are scriptures quoted, blessings and such on these pages as well as crosses.

How The Very Worried Sparrow by Meryl Doney Is Helping Me Raise My Sensitive Child

I have 2 current giveaways!! One for an Origami Toy Monsters Book & Kit (ends tonight!!) and the other for 2 DVDs.

 Disclosure: Kregel Publications sent me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

As I have mentioned previously Hazel is very sensitive and easily frightened. She is always anxious and wants to please everyone around her but she worries about doing it. With Halloween fast approaching her anxiety shows up much more. Around the end of August we went into a store that sells many holiday decorations including the owns for lawns. Hazel had nightmares for a few days after that visit, because of the Halloween decorations they were selling. She is even talking about not going to our next door neighbor's house when trick-or-treating even though she loves their fourteen-year-old daughter and always wants to see her, but they have put out their Halloween decorations and she is scared of them. She had a bad dream about some of the things like the giant spider and the witch being at her school playground during recess and the teachers not seeing them right away. At some point Halloween seems to have become almost an adult holiday and the adults are trying their best to scare each other and in return scare the younger children. 

Veggie Tales Book Reviews

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Ideals Books./Worthy Kids. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Recently Worthy Publishing acquired Ideals Books. They asked me to pick some of their books to review. Hazel and I looked and two of the books are Veggie Tales books and the others are Christmas related so we will be sharing those as it gets a bit closer to Christmas. Now the funny thing is Hazel and I both don't really like the Veggie Tales. I personally find them annoying and Hazel finds them strange. However in books they are easier to deal with since you do not hear their voices and these books looked good so we decided to try them. I have been reading the devotional book, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, for a couple of years now. After finishing the first year, I decided to read it each day again since I didn't remember the readings. I find it really helps me with connecting to Jesus and staying more calm all day. Now that Hazel is reading I wanted her to have a devotional and she actually has asked me for one, so we picked  God Is With Me: 365 Daily Devos for Girls by Veggie Tales. 

Christian Halloween Party

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to the products for your convenience but do not receive anything if you buy from them.

 Now I have not been shy about my feelings about Halloween. I really hate the gore and how far people take it. Hazel is easily frightened and I can no longer take her into some stores because of the Halloween products. I have tried and regret it due to the bad dreams she has. When I was offered to do a post using Halloween products from Oriental Trading, I hesitated, but then remembered all their great Sunday School supplies. Hazel and I planned a Christian Halloween Party. Many of the parents at her school do not celebrate the holiday or take their kids to a church event on Halloween. Needless to say many feel like I do about the holiday. We started by sending out an Evite. We asked the guests to dress as their favorite Biblical character. Hazel wanted to be Queen Esther. I let her pick out the color of the Nativity Child Costume she wanted and she picked the Pink Nativity Child Costume. We made a handknit belt to wear with it and added beads to the ends. (Hazel ended up being the only one to wear a costume, but she did not care. She was really excited to be Queen Esther.)

Exploring Hajj with Books at Home

 Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. They also sent me a copy to giveaway! As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

This post is part of the Multicultural Kid Blogs' Hajj for Kids Blog Series. As we are Christian I did not know much about Hajj. I knew that Muslims try to make the hajj at least once in their lives and that it involved visiting Mecca. As a member of Multicultural Kid Blogs I learn new things about other cultures through the group and one thing I found out was there is actually a time in the year called Hajj when the trip is suppose to take place. This year Hajj falls between September 21-26. It of course changes each year since the Muslim calendar is different from our calendar. To explain Hajj to Hazel and myself, I turned to our library. I did not find much. However we did find Hajj Stories by Anita Ganeri.

Five-Minute Bible Devotions for Children

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Ideals Books. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

With it being summer Hazel is not learning about the Bible at school or going to chapel at school and we have been traveling many weekends and thus she has not been attending Sunday School regularly. I want her to know that reading the Bible and praying is still very important and that we are not taking a vacation from God. We found the perfect way to include Bible lessons in our nightly story times with the books Ideals Books sent us. 

Both books are very similar in how they are written. The first is Five-Minute Bible Devotions for Children: Stories from the Old Testament by Pamela Kennedy and Anne Kennedy Brady and illustrated by Amy Wummer. This book has twenty-one of the Old Testament stories. It simplifies and summarizes the stories so a young child can truly understand it and then it gives a paragraph of relating the story to everyday kids' lives. Next comes a prayer. Then there are four questions relating to the story, the illustration and the child's life. Finally there is a scripture.  To show you an example of the story I found this sample page at Rainbow Resource Center.

Exploring Ramadan

We are participating in the Multicultural Kid Blogs Ramadan for Kids Series. This is our post for the series. As a Christian family, we do not know much about Ramadan except that it lasts a month and includes fasting. So our first step was to find out more about the holiday. We started with a DVD from the Holidays for Children series called Ramadan.

It is an older video we found at our library. It explains the holiday and some of the why for the holiday. It also shared a craft that was similar to the craft on In the Playroom: Watercoulour Mosque Silohouette Pictures. So we did not do this one. Next we read some books from the library.

Mary and Mary Magdalene for Women's History Month

With today being Palm Sunday and Easter a week away, I thought we would learn more about two of the women who loved Jesus, his mother, Mary, and Mary Magdalene. Besides the Bible I wanted to share with Hazel what is known about these to Biblical women. I found a few books on each of them. We have only been able to read one from each person, but I found these books on Amazon or available at our public library.

Relgious Kids Book That Teach God Loves Us and Is Here for Us

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Ideals Books. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

I am always looking for good ways to bring religious lessons to Hazel at her level so she can truly understand them. Today I am going to share three books that do a wonderful job of this. They are all board books or board like books, but Hazel loves all of them!!

The Sparkle Egg -- Easter Book Review

Disclosure: I was sent this book to review free of charge from Ideals Books. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

I am so excited to share this book with you. You may remember that I shared The Sparkle Box by Jill Hardie and illustrated by Christine Kornacki on my Must Read Christmas Books Post. Well, last year Jill Hardie and Christine Kornacki came out with The Sparkle Egg for Easter! When we received it in the mail, Hazel wanted to read it right away. This story is about the same family as The Sparkle Box. This time Sam does something he is ashamed of, he lies to his parents about how he did on a test at school. Even though his parents forgive him he still feels really bad. Boy, does this sound familiar. This is exactly how Hazel behaves. Well, his mother has him make a sparkle egg on Good Friday. Sam draws a picture of something he is ashamed of or feels he needs to ask God to forgive him and puts it inside his sparkle egg. Then on Easter the sparkle egg is in his basket and it is empty! His parents explain that holding on to shame after being forgiven goes against what Easter is about. It is such a deep message in a way that kids can understand. Hazel could not wait to make a sparkle egg. I gave her a plastic egg and she got to work with glitter glue.

Tadeo Turtle Book Review

Disclosure: Janis Cox gave me a copy of this book free of charge to review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today I get to share with you a wonderful book called Tadeo Turtle written and illustrated by Janis Cox. Now I got to know about Tadeo Turtle through Sharing Saturday. Every few weeks Janis will share a Tadeo craft with us. Recently she asked if I would like to review the book and I jumped at the chance.

Faith Celebration--United Church of Christ

Have you entered my current giveaway for a wooden watch?

 Back in September I reviewed the beautiful book, Everyone Prays: Celebrating Faith Around the World by Alexis York Lumbard. As I thought about this book I began to think about how wonderful it would be to have a place to learn about the different world religions in a personal way. I talked to some of my fellow bloggers at Multicultural Kid Blogs and came up with the wonderful series that will include a giveaway of the book. Each blog participating will be sharing about their own religion and all will be linked together on January 25th at Multicultural Kid Blogs with a review of the book and the giveaway. In my part here is to share about my own religion.
 

Immanuel Congregational Church (Source)

I grew up attending Immanuel Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut. This is the church in which I was baptized and attended Sunday School. For a short while my  mother served as the Interim Director of Christian Education there. It was a church with a lot of history. It is across the street from the Mark Twain House in Hartford and I was always told that Mark Twain called it the oily cloth church because of the yellow and green tiles above the entrance. 

The Mouse and the Miracle -- Christmas Product Review

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Oriental Trading. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.

I am so excited to share this amazing product with you today. It is a Christmas product and I usually do not like to do much Christmas this early, but this product is wonderful and I want you to have a chance to get it in case they run out! Everyone who we have shared it with wants to get one and I have already ordered another set for a Christmas gift. Yes, this product is that great. I am sure you have heard of Elf on the Shelf. Well, I find the Elf on the Shelf a little creepy and refuse to have one in my house. I love seeing what people do with their elf however and think it would be fun to be able to be creative. And now Oriental Trading has come out with a wonderful religious replacement for the Elf on the Shelf!! They call it The Mouse and the Miracle, but I like to say we have a Mouse in the House.  (What can I say, I like to rhyme.) Without further ado, meet Holy!!

Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

This is the third week of the Hispanic Heritage Month. We are participating in the Multicultural Kid Blogs Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Hop and Giveaway. You can enter the giveaway here by scrolling down as well. We are sharing something we have done to celebrate or learn about Hispanic cultures each week during the month. Today we are sharing the story of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. We discovered this story by reading The Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guadalupe by Pat Mora. There are however many books that discuss the story and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We also have enjoyed thus far Tomie de Paolo's Our Lady of Guadalupe. Here are some other books we found at the library that share some part of the story or how the festivals are celebrated.

Book Review: Everyone Prays by Alexis York Lumbard

Source of Prayer for USA Photograph: By Harley Pebley (Flickr: Prayer for USA)
 [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Disclosure: Wisdom Tales gave me a copy of this product free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today is the Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Having many Jewish friends, my Facebook feed has been filled with Happy New Year comments the past couple of days. Happy New Year and best wishes for the new year to all who are celebrating! (The holiday started Wednesday night at sundown.) Hazel goes to a Christian school, and we are very active at our church. This summer she learned The Lord's Prayer and is pretty good at saying it without too much help. We talk about praying all the time as well as other religions. One of her good friends is half Jewish, so she always asks questions about Judaism.

With all of this on my mind I thought today was a great day to share this wonderful book, Everyone Prays: Celebrating Faith Around the World by Alexis York Lumbard and illustrated by Alizreza Sadeghian. This book is beautiful. It has colorful illustrations representing people all over the world. The text itself is simple and leads to discussion and questions. It is the perfect introduction for children to other religions and the fact that many of the world religions pray to the same God. 


In the appendix is a few sentences about each religion mentioned in the book. It includes how long the religion has been practiced, where they worship, who they follow and who started it, etc.  

Source: Wisdom Tales

 
The book itself shows the many differences in the world and religions yet also shows how we are the same. In this day of violence claimed to be due to religion, it is important for us to realize how similar we all are and our religions are. This book does this in a basic way that is easy for young children to understand. The book is aimed at 4- to 8-year-olds and was released in March. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to help their child understand some connections between the religions and understand some differences.