100 Fun & Easy Learning Games for Kids -- Book Review with one full lesson

Disclosure: I was sent this book to review free of charge. 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. This activity has been reprinted with permission from the publisher from book 100 FUN & EASY LEARNING GAMES FOR KIDS.

Today I get to share an amazing book with you which is being released today!! It is from fellow Kid Blogger Network bloggers, Amanda Boyarshinov and Kim Vij. They are the creators of The Educators' Spin on It.  The book is 100 Fun & Easy Learning Games for Kids. 

Sharing Saturday 16-11

Reminder: This link party is for child-oriented crafts and activities and parenting/teaching posts!! 

It is time for Sharing Saturday!! This is a link party to share all of your child-oriented crafts, activities and lessons as well as your parenting and/or teaching posts. On Sunday night we also host Crafty Weekends for all your crafts (done by any age), patterns, and craft product reviews! It is the perfect place to share your creative side!! And the Creative Kids Cultural Blog Hop lasts all month for anything cultural or diversity posts!! Be sure to join us at it!!

 Thank you to everyone who shared at last week's party!!  I always love seeing what everyone has been up to and your creative ideas!! Our features are just a sampling of them so if you haven't checked them all out, you should! The features this week are March & Spring Features, Easter Features and Educational Features. 

Beyond the Tiger Mom -- Book Review with Math Lessons & Free Printables

 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. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation. 

As a parent I want to make the best choices for Hazel and I am sure you feel the same way about your own children. With all the mixed messages out there it can be hard. There are the studies that say our children need more free play time and then there are the messages that our kids need to be doing academics more. I had a conversation with a fellow parent of one of the boys in Hazel's class that expressed concern about the school not stressing the academics enough. I was a little shocked because in my opinion it was stressing them too much at such a young age. But this mom has five children with the boy in Hazel's class being the youngest and she told me her older children (who started at a different Christian school that has since closed) had a better foundation in math than our kids are getting. She even talked about the Asian families in Singapore and having to compete with them. It does make one wonder what is being done differently in Singapore, Asia and in Asian American families that often put their kids in the top positions in math and science classes. 

Bedtime Snuggles -- First Look Review

Disclosure: I was sent this book to review free of charge from Worthy Ideals. 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 I get the pleasure of sharing with you a beautiful board book that is perfect for getting little ones to bed. It is called Bedtime Snuggles by Patricia Reeder Eubank. 

The Year of the Monkey -- Exploring Chinese New Year with books & Chinese New Year Link Party

 Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me copies of these 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. 

We have explored the lunar new year and more specifically the Chinese New Year for several years now and have tried many different crafts, recipes and books (see below for a sampling and links). We have looked at the Chinese Zodiac and as of yesterday we have begun the year of the monkey. Last year was the year of the sheep.

A Monkey Valentine Craft from a Kit

 Since we are not Chinese or any of the cultures that celebrate the lunar new year, we do not do too much for our Chinese New Year except try to learn a bit about it. This year since we have an idea of the celebration and the stories behind it we decided to take a look at Chinese stories and especially ones involving the monkey.  We started with Celebrating Chinese Festivals by Sanmu Tung.

Two Great Chapter Book Series for Younger Kids

Disclosure: Candlewick Press gave me a copy of these books 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.

 We all want to do what is best for our children and want to bring them up to love learning and reading. It is hard to know what is best to do. I have seen articles about reading chapter books to preschoolers both pros and cons. I feel it is important to do a variety of reading. Chapter books can help kids begin to picture the stories in their own heads, but you need to be careful the story is appropriate for your child. We started reading chapter books by reading Charlotte's Web. I chose to read it to Hazel because we were going to a live production of it and I wanted Hazel to know the story ahead of time so we could discuss the sad part of Charlotte dying before seeing it. Reading this book opened the door to chapter books for Hazel. She loves them!! She also loves picture books and really loves any book. Then we discovered The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale. Hazel LOVES the Princess in Black and even dressed as her for Halloween. She was so excited when Candlewick sent us second book in the series: The Princess in Black and the Perfect Princess Party. And now the third book is being released on Tuesday, February 9th and we get to review it early!! Yes, Hazel was ecstatic about getting The Princess in Black and the Hungry Bunny Horde.  

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. 

Princess Rosie's Rainbows -- 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.

Today I get to share a wonderful new book from Wisdom Tales Press. It is being released October 7, 2015. Princess Rosie's Rainbows by Bette Killion and illustrated by Kim Jacobs is a beautiful book and story about a princess who lives in a magical kingdom but is only happy when there is a rainbow in the sky. Her parents want her to be smiling all the time and offer a reward for the person who can give her a forever rainbow. None of the rainbows do it until a wise teacher comes to share a secret with the princess.

She Takes a Stand Book Review

Disclosure: Chicago Review Press 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.  As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Now it may be the way my mother brought me up, but I love reading stories about strong women. I also love teaching Hazel about strong women. When I first saw the book, She Takes a Stand: 16 Fearless Activists Who Have Changed the World by Michael Elsohn Ross, I thought I might be able to read about each woman to Hazel. We tried this, but several of them were beyond her true understanding and she was always asking questions about what it meant. We decided we would have to save it for when she was older, but I got to enjoy reading it. 

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 Iran with Books & Music

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.

Take a moment to check out my post on the Middle East and enter the Middle Eastern and North African Heritage Month Giveaway over at Multicultural Kid Blogs! Global Learning for Kids has left Lebanon and headed to Iran. Now recently I turned on the radio in the car to check the traffic report and we caught a small snip of the news and they were quoting someone from Iran about how Americans will always be their enemy. Hazel only heard a few words, but it was enough for her to question me what was said and why. Unfortunately, this was her first introduction to Iran. Now we are going to spend time to explore Iran and focus on some of the positives this month, but I know we will not be able to overcome that statement in her mind. However she has been enjoying stories from Iran, well actually Persia which is now Iran.  


We were lucky enough to get two fun Persian stories from Wisdom Tales Press and both are prizes in the giveaway. These are books you will want to add to your multicultural library, so make sure to enter or go buy them!!

Avoiding the Summer Slide with Free Programs

Before I get into today's post, I have to share with you what made me so proud of Hazel yesterday. She had decided she wanted to get her hair cut. She was not sure what she wanted to do, but mentioned the possibility of donating it again. With it long it gets tangled very easily and she hates brushing them out. Well at the hairdresser she decided she did want to donate it and got a cut similar to mine. She was very excited this morning to brush her own hair and put her own barrettes into it.

Multicultural Monday-- Kevin So

The weekend after Hazel's last day of school this year, Kevin So was playing in Cambridge at a venue I felt would be safe for Hazel called Club Passim. Hazel was really excited to go to her first "rock" concert and even more excited that I know Kevin So. I met Kevin back in my teaching days when I ran a diversity club. After having him come perform at the school for our diversity celebration I started going to his shows. He lived in Boston then and was playing around the area often. We got to know each other. I had all of his CDs up to the time he left for New York and then Nashville. Over the years his music style has changed, but it is still great. It is original and he sings often about his own experiences as a Chinese American.

Earth Day Book Reviews and Giveaway

Disclosure: Wisdom Tales Press gave me a copies of these 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. They are also providing copies for the giveaway.


Today I am joining with a group of bloggers to do an Earth Day Giveaway. There are three prize packs and the information for the giveaway is below. Today I am lucky enough to review two of the books that are in the third prize pack. Hazel loves both of these books! The first book is Just Like Me, Climbing a Tree by Durga Yael Benhard. This book was released to celebrate Arbor Day which is April 24.

Our New Morning Routine: Imaginations 2 Book Review

Disclosure: Bambino Yoga 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.

So for the last couple of weeks Hazel and I have a new morning routine thanks to Bambino Yoga. Carolyn Clarke sent us a copy of her newest book, Imaginations 2: Relaxation Stories & Guided Imagery for Kids. 

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures: The Golden Slipper: A Cinderella Tale from Ukraine

So this month Around the World in 12 Dishes is visiting Ukraine. I am behind in writing the intro and cooking something, but imagine my surprise when choosing a story at random from The Magic Egg and Other Tales from Ukraine by Barbara J. Suwyn I found a Cinderella tale. Hazel and I have been enjoying stories from this book each night. I pick one at random to read to her as part of our bedtime stories.Since today is the day I usually would share our food from the Ukraine, I thought we would share the Cinderella tale called "The Golden Slipper".

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:

• The Gift of the Crocodile: An Indonesian Cinderella Tale 
• All In Just One Cookie 
• Asian Kites 
• Mei-Mei's Lucky Birthday Noodles 
• Mulan and My First Book of Chinese Words

Teaching Spanish at Home

Have you entered my current giveaway?

Now if you have been following along for the past couple of weeks, you know I am involved in helping with the Little Pim Giveaway being run by Squishable Baby.  Part of my involvement is to also include a little about how I am going about teaching Spanish to Hazel.

Last spring we made the decision to switch schools for Hazel since we were having some issues with the discipline at her school. We moved her to a private Christian school that has a traditional curriculum. As part of a traditional curriculum she will be learning Latin. Now I do think knowing Latin can be helpful. I took a year of it in high school myself, but I also want her to have some experience with other languages (besides saying ciao to her Italian grandmother). I took Spanish from fifth grade until my junior year in high school and was in honors classes most of the time. However I have not spoken much Spanish since, so I need to relearn some. 

I know based on all the research out there, that now is the time to begin to teach her, so I am starting. I found some resources and have won some that we have been enjoying.

The first resource is a CD with book. It has songs that sings sayings in English and in Spanish. We often listen to this in the car. Hazel really enjoys it and is repeating some of the words. The next is a board book of Spanish numbers. It goes from 1 to 12 and then has 20, 50 and 100. Then it has adding and subtracting sentences in Spanish and English. We read this often at bedtime. She has started counting in Spanish, so it is working. The last two we have not spent much time with yet, but will be expanding our words with the dictionary and eventually she will not freak out that she does not understand the Spanish when I put on the DVD. Our only time watching it, she asked me to turn it off since she did not understand anything.

I also found some good resources at our local library. We are still exploring them and some are a bit ahead of Hazel's level, but we are working to it.

It is amazing what resources are out there. There are also some great ideas on many of the blogs I like to check out. 

• Spanish Playground
• Toddling in the Fastlane
• All Done Monkey

Needless to say I know I would find the Little Pim DVD series a huge aid in our lesson!! I hope you will come and enter the giveaway!!

Noah's Ark

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

Hazel and I read her story Bible every night at bedtime. We read through it once skipping around a bit and then started at the beginning again. Hazel loved the story of Noah's Ark. I knew I had bought ages ago a Shrinky Dink Noah's Ark kit when it was on sale or clearance. I had put it away for the right time. I also discovered there are hundreds of books about Noah's Ark. Today we will share some of the traditional stories that follow along with the Bible. Hazel loves when we read a Noah's Ark book.

Most of these books we took out of the library, but some I also found at the used book store. The amazing thing is I didn't take out all of the Noah's Ark children's books at the library, because there were so many. Again these are the ones that tell the story the same as the Bible. I will share others another time.

My sister had given Hazel a wooden Noah's ark toy many years ago. Hazel loves the idea of it, however the top floor never stays in and the roof of the top never stays on correctly plus she is missing many of the animals. Hazel now plays with it usually more as a storage place, house or something but without all the pieces together. 

So after reading many of the books, I pulled out the Shrinky Dinks one Saturday. Hazel and I had fun coloring them in together. Don't you love the zebra colors? Hazel did them. A hint for coloring them is to put white paper underneath so you can see what you are coloring (unless you are coloring white of course).

Then we put them on a pan and watched them shrink.

Then once they cooled they turn harder and the kit came with stands for them.

The kit also came with a ark to put together as well as some other animals. Steve took on the job of putting the ark together for us.

Now Hazel has two Noah's ark toys. She really loved playing with this one. Here is the other side.

Stay tuned for some more Noah's Ark stories and crafts!!