Christmas in Different Lands -- New England

This post is part of the Christmas in Different Lands series from Multicultural Kid Blogs.  Be sure to visit the main page and Pinterest board!

This year instead of investigating what Christmas is like in another country, I decided to share Christmas in our neck of the woods. Of course then I had to wonder "What defines Christmas time in New England?" 
 

Map of New England Source

In many ways I often feel like Christmas time is a step back in time in parts of New England. Many houses (and almost all the churches) are still decorated with white lights on the tree, candles in the windows and a wreath on the door. I tried to get a picture of our church at night, but the candle light seems to blur.

My First Chess Book -- Book Review

Disclosure: Ryland, Peters and Small 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.

My husband loves chess though he hardly ever plays anymore. He has a collection of chess boards around the house so Hazel has always been curious about chess. I have only played chess a handful of times in my life. I was taught by a boyfriend from high school/college time and played a few times since dating him. I am not much competition for Steve. I thought My First Chess Book by Jessica E. Prescott could help us teach Hazel how to play and hopefully help improve my game. 

Now the book says it is for children aged seven and more. Hazel will be sick this month. I figured we would try it anyway. The book starts with an introduction to the game and how each piece can move. It also describes how the squares on the board are labeled to be able to discuss them (letters along the horizontal and numbers along the vertical so each square has a unique letter and number combination). Next the book is divided into four chapters. The first chapter is to teach Piece Movement. This is the chapter we are focusing on right now for Hazel. In fact we will probably not get past the first lesson for quite awhile. I want to know she understands each lesson before moving forward. The first lesson is called Pawn Football. It uses four pawns of each color and is a two person game. The winner of the game is the first to get a pawn to the other side. There are a few lesson built within this game. The first being that the pawns must work together to get across. And of course to understand how the pawn moves.

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.