Monday 24 February 2014

My latest finds for the kids

The blog has been sadly neglected throughout February. The trouble with having a baby, looking for a new house, and family members who have the audacity to have birthdays and things, is that blog time is limited.

Anyway, I have not abandoned reading, or looking for wonderful new reading material. There have been a few stand-out reads over the past month or so.

Firstly, I nicked a recommendation my cousin made to someone else on Facebook.  This is why I love and adore Facebook.  Before it existed, I didn't know what anyone was reading really, except for people I saw on an extremely regular basis. Now, people share all sorts of snippets of information about what they are reading.  I know I generally enjoy the same kind of books as my cousin, and, in fact, I had the book on my kindle, waiting to be read, having heard a short extract on the radio once.  The book in question is Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. This is not a children's book, but I would have loved it as a teen.  It is based on a traditional fairy tale, and follows the shape of the tale.  The characters are beautifully drawn. It is extremely sad, but in a very lovely way.

 Secondly, I noticed that Craft by Dorling Kindersley was available in the Book People catalogue.  We LOVE Dorling Kindersley and craft, so thought this would be right up our street.  There are some fabulous ideas in it, and C has already painted a watermelon mug at the ceramic cafĂ©, based on one of the ideas in the book.  Simple, but really, really effective.

Another revelation has been Q&A a day for kids, which we bought from Amazon.  I can't even remember how I stumbled across this, but we've only been doing it for a month, and there have already been some classics.  Basically there is a question for every day, which you ask your children, and then you note down their response.  Gems so far include "Give some advice on how to keep a friend:" "Don't punch them in the face". Describe what one of your parents does for a living: "My Dad goes to a boring office to read boring things on a boring computer and tell boring people boring things about boring subjects". Harsh, but probably will still raise a smile when we look back on the book in a few years.  For teens and adults there is Q&A a day - fine for 10+ - you just have to substitute work for school.