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Mulan--Teach your kids the story of Mulan and not only Disney's versions

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Have you seen Disney's live action Mulan yet? It came out on Disney+ a couple of weeks ago for the subscribers that didn't pay for the premium subscription. I made Hazel wait until it was included in our regular subscription. Her love of Mulan was reignited recently. She loved meeting "Mulan" at Disney last February.

In the beginning of the month, I shared with you a wonderful version of Mulan by Li Jian and Yijin Wert is the translator, which Tuttle Publishing sent me to review. I compared it with the Disney version or at least the movie version. I also found a few other versions of Mulan and thought I would share all of them with you.

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of these books 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.

Mulan was a story I really knew nothing about. I had not watched the Disney film when it came out and every time Hazel and I sat down to watch it, she got scared. Mulan was the one Disney princess we did not try to see in Disney World. When I was offered to review some of Tuttle Publishing's books, I thought Mulan would be fun to review to compare with the Disney story for my Fairy Tales in Different Cultures. While receiving Mulan by Li Jian and Yijin Wert is the translator, I also received My First Book of Chinese Words: An ABC Rhyming Book by Faye-Lynn Wu and two other books I will be reviewing at another time.

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week and to everyone who took the time to visit what was shared!! I know I was once again inspired by so many ideas. We will be trying some of them in the next few weeks! There was not a most clicked, so this week's features are in four groups: August and Back to School, Marshmallows, Pioneers, and a few of my favorites.

August and Back to School

1) From Living Montessori Now: August 2014 Calendar Observances and Activities

2) From Gift of Curiosity: Children's Books about Starting School

3) From Exploring Literacy with Heart: Dear Bully...

4) From Mini Monets and Mommies: Cherry Glitter Art for Kids: Paint with Nature

Marshmallows

1) From Mama to 5 Blessings: Building With Food

2) From The Surly Housewife: Letter of the Week - Letter M

Pioneers

1) From Life with Moore Babies: Little House on the Prairie Party

2) From Line Upon Line Learning: Pioneer Week: Covered Wagons Craft

3) From Line Upon Line Learning: Top 12 Best Picture Books about Covered Wagons

A Few of My Favorites

1) From Dabbling Momma: Flower Cutting and Fine Motor Skills

2) From Stella 123: What do ducks eat? Feeding the ducks with kids

3) From Sunshine and Hurricanes: Paint Your Own Frozen Puppets

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess: This week we shared our exploration of Ukraine with Around the World in 12 Dishes, all the versions of Mulan we could find, Doll Clothes ideas to make and/or transform from baby clothes, a birthday party at the American Girl Doll Store and cheap doll accessories to buy or make.

Now for This Week's Party
Please note: I tried a different thing with the linky and they will go into a random order!!
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Multicultural Product Review-- A Little Mandarin

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from A Little Mandarin as part of the Multicultural Kids Product Promotion Services. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.

Today I get to review for you an award winning CD. The CD is A Little Mandarin by Toni Wang, a Shanghai born New York City mother. This CD has fifteen classic Chinese songs. Many are to familiar tunes and some are the familiar songs in Chinese. The music is very upbeat and perfect for little ears to hear. Here is a little introduction to it, so you can check it out yourself.

As I thought about Women's History Month I knew I wanted to really touch on women in history that may be forgotten. Today women are members of the Armed Forces, but not that long ago they were not allowed. I decided I would focus on women who played important roles in wars. This month I will share about women in the Revolutionary War, Civil War, and the two World Wars. Today I thought I would start with some women who fought wars before America was a country. I have focused on the legend of Mulan in the past. She is one of the women who reportedly disguised herself as a man to fight in a war. Then there was the Greek goddess, Athena, who was the goddess of war, as well as the Amazons, the race of women warriors in Greek mythology. Even the Aztecs had a warrior goddess, Itzpapalotl. Then we know of Joan of Arc and how she led the French army through battles. And we shared about Artemisia in the past. Today let's talk about some of the other women you may not have heard about that fought in real wars and battles. As I started researching women in wars I found The Book of Heroines: Tales of History's Gutsiest Gals by Stephanie Warren Drimmer. All of the women, goddesses and legends mentioned in this post are featured in this book. This book is one of the sources for my entire post. I will list others that I used to find out more about the women and share books for kids when possible. (Note: I have not checked out these books but found them searching my local library website and Amazon.)

Book Review: The Pandas and Their Chopsticks and Other Animal Stories by Demi

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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.

Today I am going to share a fun book which was recently released by Wisdom Tales Press. The book is The Pandas and Their Chopsticks And Other Animal Stories by Demi. I asked to review this book because lately Hazel has been really into panda bears and figured she would love it.

This book takes ten classic Asian animal fables and adapts them to have universal appeal. Each of the ten stories has a moral or lesson stated at the end. Needless to say Hazel loved it. I enjoyed reading the fun stories and with morals like learning to share, being careful around people who brag, it is sometimes better to listen than talk, our faults will follow us unless we change them, who couldn't love to read and teach your child these lessons. Some of the morals were written in words that Hazel had trouble understanding, so each one was a starting point to talk about what it means with the story to illustrate it. I always love books that give us a starting point for conversations about things that matter in life.

The pages themselves are beautiful. The colors and illustrations make the story come alive with room for the imagination to full in the story as well. The stories are short and clear and presented beautifully on the pages. It is truly a wonderful book.

For more posts about books from Wisdom Tales and about Asia check out:

Sharing Saturday 14-28

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

Thank you to everyone who stopped by last week to share and be inspired and a special thank you to all who took the time to visit others. With the holiday, we had less than usual, but there were many amazing ideas shared as always. Here are some of my favorites.

1) From Just a Touch of Crazy: "Summer Is" Poem Printable

2) From DabblingMomma: Leaf Creatures

3) From Our Adventure Story: Clouds Study with Printables

4) From Living Montessori Now: N is for 40+ Summer Nature Walks

5) From Wesens-Art: Summer Ideas

6) From ABC Creative Learning: Curious George Goes Camping Poppins Book Nook

1) From Rubberboots and Elf Shoes: Sandcastles: Books and Activities

2) From Toddling in the Fast Lane: Recycled Flower Crown

3) From Blossom Family: How Your Child's Brain Works

4) From Krafts and Kiddos: Seashell Letters

5) From Mini Monets and Mommies: Alphabet Art with Plants

6) From Exploring Literacy with Heart: Inspiration #2...Play

7) From An Idea on Tuesday: Pirates and Mermaids

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog.

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From Your Hostess: This week we our review of the newly released Cat in the Hat DVD and have one to giveaway, a review of a beautiful book on Mulan as well as one on Chinese words, our color exploration looking at secondary colors and hues and another one looking at intermediate colors and shades or violet, a review of the book, Mei-Mei's Lucky Birthday Noodles, and our lime exploration!

Make sure you enter our giveaway!

Now for This Week's Party
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1) Please follow Crafty Moms Share via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).

Disclaimer: By sharing here, you are giving Crafty Moms Share permission to use your photos for features and to pin your craft at Pinterest.

Chinese Zodiac and Chinese New Year Book Reviews

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of these books 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 Chinese New Year Blog Series and Giveaway. More details about all of this below including the giveaway!!

Seal Nakhon Si ThammaratBy Fine Arts Department (กรมศิลปากร) of Thailand.

[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge in exchange for an honest review. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.

Now a series of Tea Parties Around the World would not be complete without looking at Chinese tea. Let's face it, the China is where tea began. January seemed like the perfect time for us to look at China since we were looking at the Chinese New Year already. I will admit writing this post has been intimidating me and I keep putting it off. How can I do the long history of tea in China justice? I have decided just to share with you my references and what we enjoyed as we looked at China and the history of tea.

Book Review: All About Indonesia

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of this book 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.

Do you homeschool or like to teach your child about different cultures around the world like I do? Here is the perfect book for you. It is All About Indonesia: Stories, Songs and Crafts for Kids by Linda Hibbs. This book covers so much of the Indonesian culture, history, and more. It is a wonderful resource.

Hazel and I read it over several nights at bedtime. We usually read four books a night and counted each part we read as one book for the night. We read until she felt she couldn't take in anymore information on Indonesia. After we finished she did tell me she enjoyed the book and then we had to try some of the crafts and a recipe. Indonesia is so diverse with all the different islands forming one country. The book goes through the different types of places in the country. Through out the book there are also blurbs with words in Bahasa Indonesia and English. The book is full of photographs as well as details of every day life in Indonesia. Throughout the book is information on animals, plants, food and more. There are also many activities, crafts and recipes. There are ideas like making your own volcano, making your own batik, shadow puppets, and more.

We started with making our own batik. However I thought I would simplify it for Hazel and do it on paper with crayon as our wax. However our crayons did not work well. For some reason it did not resist the paint like I thought it would. Oh, well we tried. We also looked at some batik fabrics I have in my collection.

Hazel also wanted to make the shadow puppets. I have been promising her a shadow puppet theater since we went to a shadow puppet show months ago. They provide pictures to make shadow puppets of a kancil and a crocodile to go with the traditional story that is shared in the book. This story is often performed with shadow puppets in Indonesia.

We also tried making the dadar gulung. We were not very successful, but had fun making it and trying it. First we made the coconut filling on the stove.

After the filling was finished we began the pancakes. Hazel helped mix the batter. It is dyed green and traditionally it would be dyed with pandan leaf paste, but we used regular food coloring.

I cooked the pancakes, but could not get them thin enough. They are suppose to be very thin and even like crepes.

Since they were not thin enough, they also were not large enough and we had trouble rolling them properly. However we tried them and Hazel loved the filling and I liked the whole thing.

So this was our experience exploring Indonesia. This book has a little bit of everything to give the whole view just like traveling there. It is a wonderful quality as all the books from Tuttle Publishing are. It is the perfect book for anyone looking to do a project or teach about Indonesia.

For more ideas and books from Indonesia and/or from Tuttle Publishing, check out:

Disney Princesses Sightings and Peg Dolls

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Disney World Princesses

As you know we went to Disney World in June. Hazel loved meeting all the princesses. There is a McDonalds near our house that has had many of the princesses and I have taken her to see them there, but they only have the white ones since the actress is white. So on her must see list were Jasmine, Pocahontas and Tiana. Of course whenever we saw a chance to meet a character, Hazel wanted to even if she had no clue who the character was. We spent a lot of time waiting in character lines. I think she has now decided the princesses at McDonalds are actresses, but the ones in Disney World are the real ones.

To remember our visits I made Hazel some peg dolls for the princesses. (I still need to make a Merida and hope to make a mermaid Ariel one as well.) I got the idea from Pinterest. Apparently there are many out there and I cannot find the exact pin to give you the source I originally saw. I however played with their hair in different ways.

Now one of my favorite photos of Hazel meeting the princesses is this one of her and Rapunzel. She has just told Rapunzel that she dressed as her for Halloween.

Our count for princess sightings:

Cinderella we saw 3 times.

Aurora/Sleeping Beauty we saw 3 times.

Belle we saw 2 times.

Ariel we saw 2 times (once in a dress and once as a mermaid).

Jasmine we saw 1 time.

Pocahontas we saw 1 time.

Tiana we saw 1 time.

Merida we saw 1 time (and it was after the heavy downpours so we were soaked).

Rapunzel we saw 1 time.

Snow White we saw 1 time. (Sorry, I cropped out her friend since he was in every picture of Hazel with Snow White.)

We did not see Mulan since we do not know her story and Hazel really has no idea who she is.

Now Hazel knows who the princesses are, but does not know all the stories behind them. She also has not seen many of the Disney movies since she is scared easily. She likes to watch Cinderella and Pocahontas, but that is about it for those movies. I won't let her even try Snow White or Aladdin. I remember seeing Snow White when I was five and I had nightmares for weeks afterward. My mother was not happy with my father for taking me. For Hazel the princesses are about beautiful dresses. She is at the age of loving dresses and the fancier the better. I remember being like that too, so I do not worry about how this will influence her since I know I grew up the same way.

Mulan--Teach your kids the story of Mulan and not only Disney's versions

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures: Mulan and the Many Versions

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures: Mulan

Sharing Saturday 14-31

Multicultural Product Review-- A Little Mandarin

Women in Wars -- Introduction-- Women's History Month