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.

Sharing Saturday 15-10

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! There were so many great ideas. I had a hard time choosing features, but with all the snow outside, I am ready for spring. So my features this week are Rainbows and St. Patrick's Day and a few of My Favorites. Be sure to check back at last week's party for even more in these themes. This is just a sampling.

Easter Baskets for American Girl Dolls

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 each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

We have been getting ready for Easter with Hazel's dolls. We had a lot of fun filling baskets for them. Most of the supplies including the baskets came from Oriental Trading. We found a few other items elsewhere. Hazel kept making baskets while I took some pictures. She really was enjoying making them. 

Hypatia Multicultural Mathematics in Women's History Month

This week I thought I would share with you one of the first known women mathematicians as part of the Multicultural Kid Blogs' Women's History Month Series and my Multicultural Mathematics. Be sure to visit the  main page of the Women's History Month Series to see all of the posts and link up your own!

My Garden Birthday Party Ideas

So Penguin Kids challenged me (and you) to come up with some birthday party ideas based on favorite books this month. They will be sending me some books to do this with and also wanted us to use our own favorites. I decided our first party idea would be to the theme of the book My Garden by Kevin Henkes. This is one of my favorite books and Hazel loves reading it still. We shared it a couple years ago with a few different crafts and ideas as part of the Virtual Book Club for Children. This story is about a girl telling us how her garden would be different than her mother's. The girl is very imaginative and it includes things like growing jelly bean buses and shells and having only chocolate bunnies. We decided to start with the table settings.