Oriental Trading Christmas Craft Kit 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.

Recently I was contacted by Oriental Trading to see if I would be interested in doing reviews on some of their products. Having bought from there and knowing my church uses them for Christian Education crafts, I jumped at the chance. Now for those of you who have not explored Oriental Trading yet, it is a wonderful company with party supplies as well as craft supplies and so much more and all of it is reasonably priced. To be honest I have gone through some of their craft pages just to get inspiration. I also bought several items for my wedding reception there as well as things for my classroom and parties. 

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures: A Cinderella Tale from Thailand

For this week's fairy tale in a different culture we are sharing a Cinderella tale from Thailand. We are exploring Thailand with Around the World in 12 Dishes this month and I happened across this Cinderella tale when I was looking at books from the library that came up with the key word Thailand. The book is Kao and the Golden Fish: A Folktale from Thailand As Remembered by Wilai Punpattanakul-Crouch retold by Cheryl Hamada and illustrated by Monica Liu. Now one thing I loved about this book are the beautiful pictures. The story is wordless, however at the end of the book the story is written in words. The first time through the book, we just looked at the pictures trying to figure out what was happening and then found the story. The second time through I was able to tell the story as we looked at the pictures. I was very happy to discover it was a Cinderella tale. Before we get into the tale, a little about Thailand.

Thailand is officially the Kingdom of Thailand and was formerly known as Siam. It is in Southeast Asia. It is a constitutional monarchy with King Rama IX reigning since 1946. He is the longest serving head of state and the longest reigning monarch in Thailand history. The capital city is Bangkok and it is the largest city in Thailand. 

Thailand is considered an emerging economy and a newly industrialize country. It offers free public education through age 17. Teaching is done mostly by rote memorization. Thailand exports rice, textiles and footwear, rubber, cars, computers and more. Thailand exports the most rice in the world. Rice is the most important crop there. (Source)

Now onto our story. Kao is a young Thai girl who lives happily with her parents until her mother dies. Her father remarries a woman who also has a daughter. The stepmother and stepsister make Kao do all the housework. One day after Kao's father has died while bathing in the pond a golden fish comes up to Kao and talks to her saying it is her mother. Kao spends more time bathing and comes back happy and her stepmother gets curious as to the cause. She sends her own daughter to spy on Kao the next day. She sees Kao talking to the fish. Then the stepmother has the stepsister go down and trick the fish and capture it. They cook it and eat it. Kao is so upset. She buries the fishbones and waters where she buries them in hope her mother will come back. Soon an eggplant plant grows there. Kao talks to the plant on her way back from bathing in the pond each day. Her stepmother is jealous of Kao's happiness and sends her daughter to dig up the plant. They eat and burn the plant, but Kao finds some seeds. She takes the seeds away from the house near the road and plants them there. When she can she goes and waters them. They grow into two beautiful trees. Kao hears her mother's voice when the wind blows them. Many people rest under the trees. One day a prince stops and rests there. He loves the noise of the wind blowing in them and orders his servants to dig them up and bring them back to his palace. The servants try and try and even use an elephant to try, but the trees will not be moved. The prince posts signs and asks the owner of the trees to come to his palace. Kao sees the sign and goes. The prince asks her to give him the trees. She tells him she will give him an answer the next day. She goes and asks the trees/mother what to do. They decide to make the prince happy. The mother asks Kao to bring the prince to the trees and she does. Then they get married and live happily with the trees in the courtyard of their palace. 

This story reminded me a bit of the Chinese version where the lead character befriends a fish and uses the fishbones for magic after the stepmother kills the fish. Again what I really loved about this book were the pictures and the wordless pictures. If you read this book, read the story ahead of time so you can tell the story with the pictures. It is a wonderful introduction to life in Thailand.

November Events

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It is hard to believe it is already November!! We have so many exciting things planned for the month. My mind however seems to already be on Christmas, so expect some Christmas ideas in November as well as a couple of Christmas product reviews and at least one giveaway. But do not worry we will also have plenty on Thanksgiving!! November is National Native American Month. We will be focuses on Native American fairy tales as well as other Native American crafts. My love for the various Native American cultures will shine through out November.

This month we are exploring Thailand with Around the World in 12 Dishes. We will start our exploration on Monday with a Thai Cinderella! Our recipe post for Around the World in 12 Dishes will be shared on November 19th! However the placemat and passport pages for Thailand are available (Thanks to Valerie over at Glittering Muffins!)

The author this month for Virtual Book Club for Kids is Karma Wilson! She is best known for her Bear books, but we are loving the Mortimer ones as well. She seems to have something for everyone--holidays, lessons, young and older. Have you discovered her yet?

We will be sharing our book and activities on November 11th. I hope you will join us for these great posts and more!

Sharing Saturday 13-42

Ok, I have been a bad hostess the last few weeks. Once again I have not made it to visit many. I'm so sorry. I have to admit my life seems crazy from now until the new year. Hopefully I'll find time again soon. I am so behind on emails and social media as well. We also dealt with Hazel having a cold. She was sick enough to stay home and want mommy, but well enough to need to be entertained, so I didn't have the time I usually do the past few days. This is also why Flamingo Friday did not happen this week. Between Halloween and a sick child, I was lucky to check the computer. Anyway, I hope you had a chance to check out the great posts shared last week. They look amazing!! There was a large tie for the most clicked, so we will just feature a few that caught my eye.

1) From Doting on Deirdre: Wise Old Owl Crafting

2) From There's Just One Mommy: Preschooler Owl Craft

3) From What We Do All Day: 25 Math Activities for After School

4) From April's Homemaking: 52 Weeks of Fairy Tales #49--Lichka

5) From Juggling with Kids: The Secret to Cutting Felt

6) From Trillium Montessori: Parts of a Turkey (Free on Teachers Paying Teachers)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess:
This week we shared a Baby Moses craft and books we have been reading, an Islamic Snow White, craft book review to make felt animals, and our Halloween.

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Halloween

Congratulations to Andrea F. for winning the ebook of Christmas Crafts for Kids and a belated congratulations to Brenda W. for winning The ABC's of Australian Animals yoga book!

I have never really liked the scary parts of Halloween. I don't like where Halloween has gone and how over the top it is. I do remember loving dressing up and trick-or-treating as a child, so I wanted Hazel to have that experience without all the drama and commercialism. For her first Halloween I was excited to dress her up and take her to some family and friends' houses. Now of course she is excited to dress up and go trick-or-treating. I have made her costumes except for the first year where I found an adorable one at a consignment shop.

I chose the duck and lion costumes. She wanted to be the dish and spoon with me since she use to take my hand and tell me to run so we could be the dish and spoon from Hey Diddle, Diddle. Last year she wanted to be Rapunzel and this year she wants to be Cinderella. I finally finished her dress. I still need to put the elastics in her lower sleeves/gloves, but I need her here to measure her arms to do that. Here is the dress.

I bought her a Cinderella wig to go with the costume. I will add a picture to this post once she is dressed up for trick-or-treating. 

She picked the darker blue for her gown instead of the Disney light blue. I should add she has two light blue dress up dresses to be Cinderella, but will not leave either one for any length of time since the cheap fabrics bother her skin. This is why I make so many of her costumes. 

Now Hazel is easily scared so Halloween is not a time we pull out the scary and gory decorations. We tend to focus on pumpkins, though we do have a large spider and web on our staircase this year and some friendly ghosts in our front entrance. I have struggled with explaining Halloween to Hazel and why so many people like to dress up scary. Last year I used the Mexican Day of the Dead to help explain it. Today I found a wonderful way to do it and to bring the religious meaning back to the holiday. Over at Catholic Icing there is a wonderful post on Explaining Halloween to Catholic Kids. I would say not being Catholic, that it could be used for any Christian children.

Then there is the issue of the candy. We try to limit Hazel's sugar input (and should really limit ours more). We have used the story of the Pumpkin Fairy to help with this. I shared our version of the story here.

This year we spent some time making the egg carton pumpkins that you have seen around on-line including some at Sharing Saturday. We took our candy corn rice krispie treats a step further and made them apple and pumpkin shape (we used cookie cutters). We decorated them this time with M&M's and Steve helped Hazel with the decorating.

The final thing I would like to share with you is a wonderful book. Now the note to parents says it is not a Halloween book, but it is about a jack-o'-lantern. The book is The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs. I bought a copy of this book for my church and then found a used copy at the used book store and picked one up for ourselves. The church used it for Hazel's class earlier this month and one of the crafts they made was a simple one. They took orange jack-o'-lantern goody bags and stuffed them and then added a special leaf on the tie.

The book goes through a farmer planting a pumpkin patch and then when harvest time comes choosing one special large pumpkin to carve a smiling face and leaving it on his porch for all to see. Throughout the book, there are Bible quotes to go with the story. It is really a nice book to take some of the scary away from Halloween and make you like jack-o'-lanterns more.

So that is a bit about our Halloween. How do you celebrate? We are really excited that this year it appears there will not be a Halloween storm so Steve will be home with us!