Netgalley has come  through in spades with more books for the kids to review. This time ANOTHER felted character board book based on a classic (you can read our Mody Dick based review HERE). This time Jack and Holman Wang took their inspiration from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Be warned... the kids have SPOILERS in their reviews!!

Zander: It was a good book. I liked when they got married. I liked the girl with brown hair best.

Gavin: It was cool. I liked the boys and girls. They were made out of felt!

Emanuel: It was a nice book. There were cool pictures. There were really good words.

Trinity: It was pretty. The pictures were pretty. I liked the girls best!

And now for yours truly’s opinion. I actually loved this little boardbook. But this is one of my all time favourite classics. I think that the Wangs did a lovely job of picking out key moments to share, they created marvelous period friendly images of the 4 main characters. The details are marvelous as are the expressions on the felted character’s faces. I think a lover of Jane Austen young or old would appreciate a copy of this book! In fact, I could think of more than a couple friends this would be the perfect gift for (myself included)! Absolutely adorable!

Cozy Classic

November 5-6

We started talking about Thanksgiving and being thankful so here is today’s things we are thankful for:

Zander: having a mom and dad

Gavin: having friends

Emanuel: Jesus

Trinity: that we have lots of kids in our family

I am thankful that Trinity, with Ken’s help, wrote the word CAT!!

I was feeling poorly in the morning so I left Ken in charge with some worksheets and our usual morning things. The beginnings of Thanksgiving with Pilgrims to colour and wordsearches to do. All of which you can find in my Education.com collections HERE. And of course Activity Village HERE.

Trinity’s Pilgrim

Emanuel’s contributions

We got a decent start on our pen pal responses… With pictures to draw to go with each letter it is a bit of a production! We actually FINISHED our Halloween chapter story finally and the book joined the rest of our newly acquired Halloween decorations. Time to move onto those Thanksgiving ideas. So far there have been a few from people online. We just need to start assembling the necessary supplies.

The book

We had TWO sets of instructions from Art for Kids to work on! A turkey AND an alien!!! Zander created quite the picture using BOTH and Gavin decided he would send his turkey in his letter to Gammie. This site is a wonderful wealth of ideas! 

Gavin’s Gammie Turkey

Alien by Gavin

Zander’s picture… note the turkey in the middle of it!!!

Of course there was our dinosaur of the day which this time all 3 boys participated in. Again that post will follow later. The kids did another NetGalley book review for me… this time a wonderful upbeat book called Changing the World Before Bedtime. You can find our review HERE.

Tuesday’s Thankful Things!

Gavin: That I have toys

Emanuel: All the people in the world

Zander: For having Echo as a baby sister

Trinity: For my teddies

We actually had a few errands to run so less of a consistent school focus for the day. BUT we managed our usual basics AND since we are working towards Thanksgiving some more print outs. 

I had each of the twins work on writing their own sentences and illustrating them. I am planning on doing that once a week as right now they are rather dependent on me for creating full out sentences and such. Like with our pen pal letters (another kid down 2 to go). With it being a day that starts with T we had Minecraft time, that when you run errands first really does eat up your time.

I am enjoying asking the kids each day about something they are thankful for. I figured we will continue to do this right up until Thanksgiving. 

One of the many things *I* am thankful for! Echo’s continued health!

With errands came the missing colours of yarn (love coupons and teacher’s discount!)… I am working my way through Trinity’s present and figure I may have expanded my skill set enough to attempt a joint present for her and Echo.

My girlies

I have a dinosaur to blog about and another day to prep for, hopefully Wednesday will have more interesting things  to share! And hopefully, all Americans who CAN voted today! With an EDUCATED mind!

You spin me right round baby!!!

The kids have ANOTHER book review… so enjoy!

This book is all about simple ways we ALL can change the world for the better… here is what the kids think… our first question was how they could change the world. The second their opinion on the book itself. 

Zander: We can invent new things to help people. It’s a pretty good book. I liked the lemonade stand part, it was pretty cool. The book gave me ideas for saving the world.

Gavin: You can give people who need it food. I like the book. It is really cool. I liked the part where they sold stuff best. They gave the money to the poor people. I really liked the story. 

Emanuel: You can be nice to everybody. I like when people give life to everybody. Everybody had fun together. Everybody played and be nice to each other. The pictures were nice. Whoever made the story, if I could talk to them I would say I like your story.

Trinity: You can make it nice. It is pretty. I liked the pictures. There was lots of families and kids. My favourite part was when they played together and the flowers. I want to touch and smell the flowers. 

Now for my opinion. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the art and story of this book. Change the World Before Bedtime by Mark Kimball Moulton, Josh Chalmers and Karen Good is a terrific book to illustrate all the little ways you can help improve the world. I would definitely bring this book out for Earth Day or just a general discussion as to how we can be kind and thoughtful. 

The illustrations are so creative incorporating various pieces of paper and wonderful eco friendly themes. The children in the illustrations are adorable and the advice amazing and accessible for all my varying age ranges. I personally enjoyed reading it and seeing each page full of happy and positive images. I would highly recommend this book for storytime! This book was a wonderful addition to our first day of Thanksgiving learning. Learning to be thankful AND doing things to create a happy feeling in others is wonderful. I am very thankful to NetGalley for this chance to read and review!

Change the World Before Bedtime