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Showing posts sorted by date for query elephant. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Books that Make Imaginations Soar for Ages 2 - 8

Disclosure: I was sent these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Today I am sharing some fun picture books that are for ages in the range of 2 to 8 and they make your imagination soar. The first book is Pop! by Jason Carter Eaton and illustrated by Matt Rockefeller. 

Informative Animal Picture Books & Activity Books

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

Do you have an animal lover between the ages of 4 and 8? I have some fun books for you. There are three domesticated animal stories and four wild animal books. The first is actually a wordless book called Pip & Pup by Eugene Yelchin. 

Back to School Picture Books

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

Are your kids back at school yet? Many of the schools around me start this week or next. Hazel goes back next Wednesday. Our summer is coming to an end and it feels like it just began. Such is the way of life. Today I am going to share three books for kids starting school or about school (and its lessons). Each child has his or her own difficulties and anxieties about school and these books seem to help kids with different ones. The first is for kids with allergies or who will be in a class/school with kids with allergies. It is Eppie the Elephant (Who Was Allergic to Peanuts) by Livingstone Crouse and illustrated by Steve Brown. 

You're All Kinds of Wonderful Blog Tour

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

Have you read any of Nancy Tillman's books? They are the type of books that make you feel good and help teach kids about how amazing they truly are and how much we love them. Her newest one is no different. The book is You're All Kinds of Wonderful by Nancy Tillman. It is being released today!!

Picture Books that Make You Feel Good

Disclosure: I was sent these books in exchange for honest reviews. All opinions are my own.

Today I am going to share with you five new picture books that make you feel good when you read them or have the overall theme of making the world better. Don't we all need that in our world. We will start with How to Heal a Broken Wing by Bob Graham

It's a Small World Felted Friends -- a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing sent me this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Tonight I am sharing a fun needle felting book. It gives instructions to make miniature needle felted animals, buildings, and other things that make you think of certain countries. It even includes a mini flag garland. The book is It's a Small World Felted Friends by Sachiko Susa. 

Books for Father's Day

Disclosure: Macmillan Publishers gave me copies 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.

Can you believe Father's Day is next week? Are you ready for it? If you need ideas for a DIY gift make sure to check out last week's Crafty Weekends features. Macmillan Publishers sent me some books about fathers for different ages. The first two books are board books for the younger kids. The first is Daddies Are Awesome by Meredith Costain and illustrated by Polona Lovsin. 

Sharing Saturday 17-8


It is time for Sharing Saturday!! This is a link party to share all of your child-oriented crafts, crafts made for kids, 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 for all of your cultural posts come share them at the monthly Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop.

Thank you to everyone who shared with us at our last party! It was full of many great ideas, crafts, lessons and more!! There are ideas for celebrating Dr. Seuss's Birthday, Lent, Easter and St. Patrick's Day and more! Our features are just a sampling of them so if you haven't checked them all out, you should! This week we have three groups of features: Books & Learning, Math, and Everything Else Features.

Announcement: Multicultural Children's Book Day Twitter Party (and Giveaways)

Please join us for our Multicultural Children's Book Day
Win 1 of 12 Book Bundles! Giving away Book Bundles every 6 minutes!
Twitter Party
Friday, January 27th
9 pm to 10 pm EST
Hashtag: #ReadYourWorld
We will be discussing the state of children's book publishing and giving away diversity book bundles every six minutes! We invite EVERYONE to join us: authors, publishers, parents, caregivers, librarians, KidLit lovers. You don't have to be an author or publisher sponsor to join us! Let's talk about our favorite multicultural and diverse children's books, authors, and illustrators!

How do you join the Twitter party? Just use hashtag #ReadYourWorld to find us. When you tweet, use the hashtag so everyone can find you!

Register below to be able to win!!

Multicultural Children's Book Day Twitter Party

Getting Ready for the Real Christmas

Disclosure: I was sent these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

Yesterday I was the storyteller in our church's Goldy Play classroom. I got to share with the kids the first two weeks of Advent since the kids will be upstairs in the service for the second week. (Click here to see the Godly Play story of Advent.) As I told the kids about the mystery of Christmas and the busyness of people at this time of the year I realized that my early holiday preparations that I have been sharing since the beginning of November are so my family has the time to prepare for the glorious mystery of Christmas. My shopping is mostly done and my holiday cards are just about ready to mail, so now I can slow down and enjoy and reflect on the season. I have even shared some new Advent books that are also calendars and the gifts I bought for Hazel's big Advent calendar. Today I am going to share five books that help us focus on the true meaning of Christmas. The first three books are part of a series by Arnold Ytreeide. I reviewed the newest one last year: Ishtar's Odyssey. This year we get to read the other three books in the series. Jotham's Joruney, Bartholomew's Passage and Tabitha's Travels. Hazel was so excited to read one about a girl so we started with Tabitha's Travels and have been reading it each night. She LOVES this story!!

Help with Bedtime!!

Disclosure: Penguin Random House Books 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.

How is your child's bedtime routine and sleep? Does he or she get enough? Do you know how much is enough? These are questions I have been struggling with for a few months. No matter how much Hazel seemed to sleep she always complained about being tired. So finally I took her to the doctor who referred us to Boston's Children's Hospital Sleep Center. Hazel has many fears and her biggest one is of being alone, so often she was waking up in the night and calling one of us in or one of us was sleeping with her every night. Needless to say none of us were getting a good night's sleep. 

Animal Fun -- Summer Fun!

Disclosure: I was sent these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

Hazel counted the days and realized she has eleven days of summer vacation left. We are trying to enjoy all of them!! So today we are going to share some animal fun with great activity books and kits!! Let's start with Disney Zootopia Collector's Tin.

http://www.parragon.com/9781474826297/


Diversity Calendar

Disclosure: I was sent a free digital copy of this product for this review. All opinions are my own and I received no other compensation. I am providing links for your ease.

Do you try to teach your child(ren) about different cultures? I find it so hard to keep up with all the various holidays and celebrations that there are around the world, but also find it important to teach Hazel about it all. I like to supplement what she learns at school and add more about other cultures and religions so that she will have a better understanding of the world. After all if we all had a better understanding of each other perhaps we could live in peace. Well Becky Morales of Kid World Citizen has made it easy for everyone with her new Diversity Calendar of Multicultural Holidays for Academic School Year 2016-2017. It is available at Teachers Pay Teachers for $3.50 for a digital download.

The Colors of Asia -- A Relaxing Friday Adult Coloring Book Review

 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. 

After yesterday I need a relaxing Friday and definitely need the anti-stress of coloring!! Let's just say whatever could go wrong basically did and it kept going wrong. Ugh!! But today is another day. So today I am going to share with you The Colors of Asia published by Tuttle Publishing.
http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/new-releases/the-colors-of-asia

The Thinking Girl's Treasury of Real Princesses from Goosebottom Books -- Women's History Month

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge from Goosebottom 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.

Back in January I had the pleasure of reviewing my first Goosebottom Book for Multicultural Children's Book Day. The book was Hatshepsut of Egypt and we learned about the first female pharaoh of Egypt. At the time I reviewed an e-book and loved the book, but now that I have actually seen the hardcover book I have to tell you the e-book does not do it justice. I actually passed on the book to Hazel's school since the third grade class learns about Hatshepsut during their study of Ancient Egypt. The principal loved the book as well. Along with the hard copy of Hatshepsut of Egypt I was sent five more of the books in the Thinking Girl's Treasury of Real Princesses to share with you today. I love learning about these amazing women most of whom I had not heard of previously. Update: My review of Isabella of Castile is now published.

Outgrown Favorite Sweater Dress to Doll Dress -- Crafty Weekends Link Party

* Disclosure: The links in this post are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you.

We had another busy week and weekend!! I mean between Steve's birthday and Valentine's Day the weekend should be one big party, but we had some cleaning and getting ready for our guest. My 13-year-old nephew is arriving tonight (after several delays) for a week long vacation!! Hazel is so excited!! It was hard to calm her down today. After I write this post, I am off to the airport to pick him up. I hope he took all the adults seriously when we told him he had to wear warm clothes to come here this year. Boston is experiencing the coldest day in almost 60 years and I can feel the cold even with the heat on in our house. Anyway, one of our chores this weekend was going through Hazel's clothes and pulling the ones she has outgrown. We had a few piles: pass down to friend, donate to Salvation Army, keep as memories and make crafts or doll clothes. Some of her favorite clothes she does not want to part with and so I make some into doll clothes for her 18-inch dolls. She had this fun sweater dress from Gymboree last year. 



DIY Wild Kratts Themed Birthday Party -- 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 including links to the products for your convenience but do not receive anything if you buy from them.

I have been promising a post about our Wild Kratts themed birthday party and here it is. The rest of the week I will be doing posts on New Year Resolutions and products that are helping with mine. But with New Year's come Hazel's birthday party. It is always over Christmas vacation, but this year we decided to have her party with her school friends after the vacation and we discovered many more people come when it is not on vacation!! But first our invitation.


Origami Zoo Kit -- Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

So Hazel's birthday was last week. We had a fun ducky themed party for family and a few friends. And we will be having a Wild Kratts themed party for her school friends. You will be seeing some posts about that party this week and next! However Ann at Tuttle Publishing sent Hazel a gift this year. It was one of the first gifts she got this year!


Celebrating Roald Dahl's Birthday Month with Crafts for Some of His Books

Disclosure: Penguin Kids gave me a copy of these books free of charge for this review in return for an honest 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.


Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916. To honor him, Penguin Kids asked us to read a few of his books and come up with a craft or activity to go with each of them. Now I will admit that I sadly only really knew the story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I know I read Charlie and the Glass Elevator when I was young and I have seen the movie version of Matilda, but that is about all of my knowledge of Roald Dahl's stories. I was given a list to choose three of his books from and I showed it to Steve. He didn't recognize any of them until I mentioned Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and he said Willy Wonka. Needless to say we included Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to our list. 

Sharing Saturday 15-36



Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! With the long weekend in the United States we did not get as many posts as usual, but there were some great ideas shared! For features this week we have Play Features, Parenting Features, and Art and Educational Features.  Remember the features are just a sampling of the things shared so if you did not get a chance to check them all out, go back and be inspired!