Kayla: A Modern-Day Princess: These Shoes Are Made for Dancing -- a Multicultural Children's Book Day Review

 

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

Have you ever had one of those bad days? You know when you think the world is against you? We all have them--even kids. Today I get to share with you a book for young readers that deals with just that! It is the fourth book in the Kayla: A Modern-Day Princess Series. The book is These Shoes Are Made for Dancing by Deedee Cummings and illustrated by Charlene Mosley. The series is recommended for ages 4 to 8. (To see my reviews of some more of Deedee Cummings' books, click here.)

My Giant Fairy Tale Activity Book -- Parragon Book Buddies Review

Disclosure: Parragon Books sent 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 always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

This month's Parragon Book Buddies book is My Giant Fairy Tale Activity Book. I was really excited to see this book since we love fairy tales. 

This activity book tells the tales of The Three Little Pigs, Hansel and Gretel, The Princess and the Pea and Little Red Riding Hood. Throughout the story there are various activities to go with it. Things like coloring, mazes, find hidden pictures as well as counting, pattern finding and more. 

Changes at Crafty Moms Share

With my new business of selling Thirty-One Gifts as an Independent Consultant I have not had as much time and energy to put into Crafty Moms Share. Over the summer I thought and prayed and discussed what to do. Hazel really wants me to keep it going. I considered stopping it. When I started this blog in 2011 I was sharing things I was doing with Hazel and she was only 2.5 years-old. Now she is 10.5 and does a lot on her own. We stopped Sharing Saturday because of the low participation and Crafty Weekends is also dwindling. I love having others share their crafts and ideas but link parties seem to be a bit of a thing of the past.  Then I also feel pressure to work on book reviews and I realized I have been getting too many books to review and many do not motivate me to review them, so we decided to cut back on book reviews as well as how many we accept. We also discussed what we would do with Crafty Moms Share. One of our most popular series ever has been Fairy Tales in Different Cultures. While we looked at a few fairy tales we really focused on Cinderella. She was Hazel's favorite princess at the time and there are so many different versions easily available and most are in picture books which were perfect for Hazel at the time. Now she has a few different favorite princesses. Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and the Frog Princess (Tiana) are among the top ones. So we are going to restart this series and look at some of the other fairy tales a bit more. I even gave our button a new look for it. What do you think?

Dances of India Book Review

Disclosure: Our Little Loka 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.


Today as part of the Multicultural Kid Blogs Multicultural Kid's Products Promotion Services, I get to share with you a wonderful board book called Maya and Leela Present: Dances of India by Kyra Khanna, Malini Sekhar and Alyssa M. Torres. This colorful book goes through in simple details of four popular dances in India. They are Bharatanatyam, Dandiya Raas, Chhau, and Bhangra. Each is a traditional dance from different parts of the country. It is a wonderful introduction for young children to the culture of India.

Sharing Saturday #12

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week for Sharing Saturday. If you didn't check out all the entries, I highly recommend you do. I know Mia and I were amazed by the talent and creativity. We have started a Pinterest board for our features. From last week on we will pin all of our features there. Please feel free to check it out and follow!

The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen -- Parragon Book Buddies

Disclosure: Parragon Books sent 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 always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

Parragon Books sent us a copy of the soon-to-be-released The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen retold by Mandy Archer. Now you know we love our fairy tales. We have read many fairy tales and versions of fairy tales with our Fairy Tales in Different Cultures Series. However we have not read too many of Hans Christian Andersen's tales.

A Day in Finland--Around the World in 12 Dishes

This month Around the World in 12 Dishes takes us to Finland. We had big plans to try lots of different recipes for this month, but our plans didn't work out completely. We did however enjoy making a wonderful Finnish breakfast called pannukakku. Our recipe came from the wonderful book, Easy Breakfasts from Around the World by Sheila Griffin Llanas. What I like most about the book is that it gives a little information about the country the recipe comes from as well as a bit about the recipe.

From this book we learned that Lapland, Finland's northern province is above the Arctic Circle, so in the summer the sun never sets and in the winter it never rises. Some Laplanders herd reindeer. We also learned that the capital city, Helinski is in southern Finland, but is the most northern capital city in Europe.

Pannukakku is described by the book as a baked pancake. It puffs up in the oven and sinks as it cools. It is often served with fresh fruit, whipped cream and powdered sugar. We ate it with fresh fruit since that is what we had at home. Steve described it tasting like a custard pie.

Pannukakku is an easy recipe using butter, eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt, flour and milk. I was tempted to add some cinnamon because we add it to everything, but wanted to stay traditional to the Finnish recipe, so we did not. It did not need it. We all loved it.

Next we did some coloring pages. We did the map, the flag and discovered lily of the valley is the national flower of Finland. It is one of our springtime favorites and is in bloom in our yard now.

Next we read some Finnish stories. In the Stories from the Sea, we read the Finnish story on why the sea is salty. Another legend/myth type story is When Bear Came Down from the Sky. The Princess Mouse is very much a fairy tale with similar story to the frog princess. Mika's Apple Tree is a wonderful story about a stubborn boy who works hard to grow an apple tree near his house even though his house is on a rocky point. This story involves sharing quite a bit about the country since his two uncles come to visit when his father is home and all three men have different jobs in different parts of the country.

We continued our look at Finland by listening to Lapin ai din kehtolaulu by Hannele Wida. It is the third song on the CD Lullabies for Kids from Around the World. We also read about birthdays in Finland. Birthdays Around the World by Mary D. Lankford, told us that Finland is smaller than the state of Montana. It has sixty thousand lakes and sixty-five islands. Plus forests cover almost three-fourths of the low flat lands and rolling hills. Daylight in the summer may last nineteen hours and when it does set it barely dips below the horizon.

In Finland a child's birthday celebration is important to the entire family. Birthday parties are usually held on Saturday or Sunday so everyone can attend. The Finnish tradition is to open gifts as soon as they are received. Finnish children sing "Happy Birthday to You" when they arrive at the door. A traditional Finnish birthday cake is three layers and is filled with fruit and whipped cream. The candles on the top are almost hidden by the whipped cream, candies, kiwis or strawberries. It is usually served after a celebration lunch. A popular Finnish birthday game is Onginta, which means Angling or Fishing. Each child takes a turn standing at a cloth held up by two adults. The child drops a rod attached to a line and hook over the cloth. An adult attaches a small basket on the hook and the child reels in the prize.

Our final exploration of Finland came from the book Going to School Around the World by Melissa Koosmann. In the third chapter, a boy named Matti arrives just in time for school in Finland. The chapter describes the day in Matti's life. Matti is in the third grade. School is free in Finland and all of the children receive a free hot lunch as well. During his school day there was science, math, Finnish language and literature, English language, physical education, music, arts and crafts and religion (the religion of his parents' choice). He had two recesses before lunch, but during the shorter fifteen minute one it was his turn to clean the classroom. For the arts and crafts they made coffee filter snowflakes and the desks were covered with food coloring so it took the full fifteen minutes to do the cleaning. The students address the teacher by his/her title, "teacher" in the morning greeting and when they are in trouble. All the other times they call their teachers by their first names. In the winter months they hold a mock Olympic Games with skiing. Matti's favorite winter sport is ice hockey though. After school Matti jogged home to stay in shape for hockey. He tried to play some computer games, but his father told him to do his homework. Since he did not have much homework, he was able to play computer games after finishing it and then he joined his father for dinner.

Matti looks forward to learning Sweden and another language in high school as well as learning more about computers. In third grade only the teacher has a computer in the classroom.  The book also gave the instructions to make the coffee filter snowflakes, so we did. Hazel decided her last one looked like the sun so we used red and yellow food coloring to color it instead of the blue.

That is how we explored Finland. Next month it will be Spain. Will you join us on that trip?

Here is the Finland passport and the Finland-themed placemat. 

Be sure to check out these great Finnish explorations and add your own here.

Happy Family Times #27--Meeting Cinderella

Just a reminder that today is the last day to enter my current giveaway!!

Have you done anything new with your family? Anything fun? Kelly from Happy Whimsical Hearts and I would love to hear about it. Please share below!! Or look below for inspiration for some fun family activities (and read about mine and Kelly's as well).

This week we had a lot of relax and cuddle time since we have a sick little one. However before she got her cold (or at least before she showed signs of it) we went to our local McDonalds for dinner and to meet Cinderella. For some reason our local McDonalds has characters and different events all the time. The only reason we go to McDonalds is to see the characters. Usually if we go we just get french fries and drinks since that is about all I can usually get Hazel to eat. However since Cinderella was going to be there from 4-6, we had to eat there. We ordered a cheeseburger Happy Meal since Steve wanted a cheeseburger (and it got Hazel the small fries and apple slices plus the toy) and I got their premium chicken strips which we actually liked. Hazel and I split it and Steve helped out too. Plus Steve and I split some fries.

When we arrived Cinderella was painting the girls' nails. When it was Hazel's turn she got blue nails. (Have I mentioned how I really hate blue nail polish?) Next Cinderella put eye shadow on the girls, but I talked Hazel out of this. She was going to do blush as well, but for some reason did not. Next Cinderella blew up blue balloons for the kids and autographed them and drew different pictures on them. Hazel got a crown.

She also put pink metallic ribbons/streamers on the end of them. Cinderella then noticed that several kids were eating their dinners so she had the ones not eating dance to Bippity Boppity Boo. She passed out lyrics to the parents sitting near by to help sing.

Then she had the kids play keep the balloons in the air. If your balloon popped you were out, but she gave the ones whose popped stickers that said something about getting popped.

 Next Cinderella made them streamer wands to dance with. All she did was rip a piece of crepe paper streamer (blue or pink) and roll one end to be thin enough to stick in a straw. However the streamers kept falling out so one of the mothers went to her car and got some scotch tape and taped them in so we weren't all fixing them every two seconds.  (We are definitely going to use this idea for Hazel's birthday party since she wants a princess party.)

By this point it was getting close to six, and since that usually is around the time we start going to bed, we headed home. Hazel gave Cinderella a hug goodbye!

Now I have to say, Hazel and I went to see several of the princesses at McDonalds over the summer. It amazes me that almost all of them have been the same actress (she owns the business) and the kids who are almost always the same group don't seem to notice. Or maybe they just don't care. The princess always gives a gift to each child with a business card attached, so they get good advertising and McDonalds definitely gets more business. I guess it is a win-win for them. During the summer it was at lunch time so Hazel and I would walk over after having an early lunch at home. This time she was very excited that Mommy and Daddy were with her. I can only imagine what it will be like when we go to Disney. It amazes me how much she loves the princesses when the first time she saw anything Disney on television or (movie wise) was this past weekend. We let her watch Cinderella on tape. I figured it would not scare her and we gave in on the television when she was barely moving from the couch. Now we will have to break that again. Oh, well. She does know she is only getting to watch it because she is sick.


Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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Halloween, Dressing Up, Pretend Play, & Friend Picture Books

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

It is hard to believe it is already October. That means we need to think about Halloween. Now I have posted in the past how Halloween is not our favorite holiday and how Hazel hates October because of the gory and scary decorations in yards and stores. When Hazel was young we found some Halloween books she loved, but not too many. Today we are going to share two more Halloween books that are fun and two books that involve dressing up, being yourself and being kind and making friends. All of these books are for kids in the age range of 3 to 8. We will start with Skelly's Halloween by David Martin and illustrated by Lori Richmond. 

Relaxing Morning so here are some Birthday party ideas

This morning we are having a relaxing morning. Hazel slept in until 6:20 (much better than her usual time between 5 and 5:30). She is having fun coloring now, so I thought I would share some of the birthday party ideas I have been gathering.

To start I don't believe in going broke for a birthday party. I believe in an at home party with friends and family. I like to have a theme, but that is because I like to go a little crazy planning it. Hazel's birthday is New Year's Eve. We usually have a party for our friends and family on January 1st. When she is a bit older we are  hoping to have a small kids' birthday party for her half birthday as well. I tend to make most of the food and cake myself and I buy the appropriate paper supplies, but often buy special napkins and solid color everything else to save money. It is not about how much you spend but how much fun you have.

For her first birthday party we did a cupcake theme. We made invitations with pictures of Hazel saying "Our Little Cupcake Is Turning One". Needless to say instead of a cake we served cupcakes. I also made paper cupcakes and filled them with candies for favors. Of course this was before cupcakes were so in so I had trouble finding cupcake related items. Right after her party cupcakes became the very in thing. Resource: I bought a template because I couldn't find anything for free, but this site looks like it would work: http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/forums/templates-f143/cupcake-box-templates-go-linseys-card-t350478.html.

For her second birthday, we did a tea party. Our theme was "Tea for Two". Since it was still mostly an adult party, we served many different flavors of tea and typical tea time treats. I made a birthday cake and had my nephew paint a miniature tea set for the top of it that I bought at Joanns. I also had a bigger paint your own for everyone to sign so Hazel has a memory from the party of who was here. For the older kids that came we had white mugs to paint. I also had put together a bag of kids activities including a coloring book with pages I found on line with crayons and stickers. For a favor, I found garden teacups and saucers at Micheals on clearance in the fall for 39 cents each and bought them up knowing we were going to have this theme and put two tea bags in a nice bag and attached a tag that said "Hazel's Tea for Two" on one side and "Thanks for Coming" on the other. I attached the tags with a string to the bag and had them hanging out of the tea cups. Resources: http://www.coolest-kid-birthday-parties.com/tea-birthday-party.html, http://www.coolest-kid-birthday-parties.com/free-coloring-pages.html, http://familyfun.go.com/parties/tea-party-704536/#lollipop; http://hubpages.com/hub/Tea-Party; Pink Princess Tea Parties by Barbara Beery (I borrowed it from the library), Come to Tea by Stephanie Dunnwind, Let's Have a Tea Party by Emilie Barnes, The Totally Tea-rrific Tea Party Book by Tanya Napier. I borrowed all of these books from the library, but found I wanted to own some of them because of the many themes they had in them. From these books I took decoration ideas, recipes, etc. I also got many facts about tea and the history of tea and tea parties and printed them. I stuck them into my centerpieces and decorations so the adults could have something to read in case they got bored.

Religious Books for Different Ages

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.

Today we are going to share with you some wonderful religious themed books for different ages. This post will also include three Hazel's Corners! The first is Princess Prayers by Jeanna Young, Jacqueline Kinney Johnson, and Omar Aranda. This a sparkly book filled with prayers for various times of day and different events for your little princess.

Royal Clothespin Dolls

After making Hazel the peg doll fairies and animals, she wanted some princesses, princes, knights, king and queen to play with her castle playmat.  I decided to use clothespins since I had a bunch of them. We needed to glue buttons on the bottom so they could stand on the playmat. I decided to paint the males and I painted the tops of the females and added felt to be their skirts. I used wool roving for the females' hair. Some of which I even needle felted into place.

She has named each one. One is Princess Moonlight and there is Cinderella (in blue), and Princess Carrie. The men are named after her father, grandfather and first cousin. She is still deciding which are princes and guards.

Now she loves to make up stories about all her princesses. It keeps her busy for hours and then she puts on a show for us.

Hawaii Challenge -- A Look at Native Hawaiians -- Native American Heritage Month

Today we are taking a look at the Native Hawaiians. This is our post for the Multicultural Kid Blogs Native American Month. I figured this was a perfect time to truly explore the Native Hawaiians. They have been making news lately because they are fighting the world's largest telescope being installed on one of their sacred lands. Although they are not actually indigenous people many think of them as a group of them. Since we know they came from the Polynesian Islands they are actually aboriginal people. (Source) As I mentioned in my fist Hawaii Challenge post the Hawaiian islands were formed by volcanoes. South Seas peoples of Polynesia and Tahitian descent came to the islands and stayed. This was around the third century. 

Pocahontas

Well as my readers know by now, Hazel is going through the princess stage. She loves the princesses and has loved them even before she knew the stories about them. Although we try to not expose her to media, when she has been sick this past few months we have caved and let her watch Cinderella and Pocahontas (on video--yes we still own a VCR which is good since I inherited a dear friend's Disney video collection).

Source

Well I got to thinking that I would like Hazel to know the real story of Pocahontas rather than Disney's version. Plus it gave me something to research. Have I told you how much I love Native American stories and culture. (I took enough courses on them in college to minor in it.) I have always been fascinated by their cultures and harmony with their environments.

Source

The first thing I discovered was that the facts are a bit unclear about Pocahontas. I find different versions of the story almost every place I read it. Apparently are stories mostly come from what the English settlers recorded and not from Native Americans, so you also have to take that into consideration as you read the stories. My goal however was to get some more truth and background for Hazel about one of her princesses (and yes she has named a baby doll Pocahontas, so she likes her).

I found some books at the library--well through the library network on Pocahontas that were age appropriate for Hazel. Hazel has been enjoying the stories though she often is asking me who people are in the pictures.

The first is Pocahontas: Powhatan Princess by Diane Shaughnessy. This is an easy read book that gives the details about where Pocahontas lived and the brief details of her life.

The second is Pocahontas by Nancy Polette. This is another easy reader with illustrations and large print. It reads more of a story than just facts. It gives the basics of her famous life.

The third is Pocahontas by Ingri and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire.This is the longest (and definitely oldest of the ones I took out). It goes into many details the others do not. It has illustrations throughout it and goes through in much detail her life.

The fourth is Pocahontas by Jan Gleiter and Kathleen Thompson. This book starts with Lady Rebecca Rolfe (Pocahontas) remembering her life in Virginia with her father and tribe. It goes through her life  basically from meeting John Smith onward. It is more of a book for older readers or to be read by an adult. 

Things I learned are that Pocahontas was not her birth name, but a nickname given to her because of her personality--it means playful one. Even with all the help Pocahontas gave the English settlers they still kidnapped her to try to ransom her for things with her father, but their plan backfired when Powhatan (another interesting thing--the chief takes the name of the tribe when he becomes chief) refused to give them everything they wanted in trade. Instead one of the settlers, John Rolfe fell in love with Pocahontas and married her. 

We have not done any Native American crafts as of yet, however Daria has some great music crafts over on her Monthly Song. Oh, and she has some great giveaways there as well!!

We did however make a Native American stew last week. We got the recipe from a book I picked up at Foxwoods Casino last summer, More Than Moccasins by Laurie Carlson. When we had the second storm and Steve had to work through dinner we decided to try a recipe for Corn and Pumpkin Stew. This stew was eaten by the Havasupai people who lived at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. The recipe is very easy: a small pumpkin, 3 ears of corn or 2 cans of whole kernel corn drained, 2 cups water and a teaspoon salt. We however added some more spice and more water. We decided to add some nutmeg and cinnamon (of course since Hazel thinks we add cinnamon to everything). It was all right, however not something I would want all the time or as a complete meal. Hazel got very into stirring the stew and loved cooking it.

Today I thank God for all of all veterans and service men and women and their families who sacrifice so much for our protection and freedom!

DIY Canopy for a Princess Bed

For the past year Hazel has been scared of everything. She does not like to be in her room alone or for that matter almost anywhere in our house. One day she told me she might feel better if she had a canopy. Now being a girly girl myself, I had seen this idea on one of those home improvement/design shows and loved it and tried it for myself when I was single. Steve did not really want a canopy over our bed, so we packed it away in case we had a daughter some day. I should add we inherited Hazel's bedroom set from my grandparents (yes, my Grandmother Hazel slept on that bed frame), so we did not buy her a bed. If I had my say and bought one it would have been a canopy bed.

To make this easy canopy for a bed (I guess technically it is half a canopy), you need a wooden curtain rod, two matching small wooden plaques, fabric and screws and anchors for the screws. First cut the wooden rod in half (I obviously did not measure when I did this). Then put the cut edge against each plaque. I glued them, but would recommend screwing them together with flat headed screws (on one of them this eventually had to be done). If you want to paint them (I did) paint them now. Then hang them high above each side of the bed using the wall anchors to make sure the screws stay in the wall and the rods do not fall on top of anyone.

Once hung, hang the fabric over each pole and decorate however you want. I glued fake pink roses into the holes on the ends of the rods and draped over fake ivy. When it was over my bed I also had a string of pink star shaped lights going over it. We decided she didn't need that and kept her star light under the canopy. 

Apparently Pumpkin (one of our cats) approved of it since she does not usually sleep in Hazel's room. And of course Hazel loved it the moment she saw it. We put it up when she was at Nonni's. We told her we had a surprise for her and I told her she had to search for it like and Easter egg. This is her reaction when she saw it.

When I had it as a single woman, my good friend and landlady owned a store. We bought the share fabric wholesale and she gave me a pillowcase that read: "The Princess Sleeps Here." The pillowcase is on one of Hazel's pillows now. Needless to say she loves it all. Here is another view of it from when I was single. This was my winter look for the bed. I wanted to match my newly finished winter quilt.