Crafting is my Therapy September 2016

Welcome to September's Crafting is my Therapy linky hosted by myself and Me, You and Magoo - a place for you to share all the crafty things that you've been working on over the last month!

It's not been easy to get much crafting done this month with it being the school holidays - I didn't realise quite how dependent I was on my child free time to get things done! So most of the crafty activity around here has been that which involved the children - I wrote about our crafty summer here!

We've been doing all sorts - Hama beading, painting a porcelain tea set, gel stickers, making headbands, shrinky plastic crafts - it's been a lot of fun! Probably my favourite thing that we made together was these lovely little felt finger puppets/stuffed toys - Harry made his giraffe all by himself and Mia and I worked on the teddy/monster together!

This month we have been working with Posca pens. These gorgeous pens are unique, water-based paint markers that can be used on almost all surfaces - fabric, glass, metal, paper, card, wood, stone...anything you can think of! The pens come in a range of vibrant colours and tip sizes, making them a brilliant pen for crafters.

I'm always collecting notebooks, and I have these two that my husband has brought back from conferences. With their black covers they are quite difficult to decorate, but the Posca pens worked brilliantly, even the white pen showed up beautifully. Mia decorated one notebook and I decorated the other one with a bit of help from Harry - I'm planning on using it as a notebook for us to write little letters to each other, an idea I've picked up from Pinterest!

Then I used the pens for a bit of stone decorating. Our garden is full of stones that we've picked up from the beach, but I've never had a lot of luck decorating them with paints as it can get a bit messy. With the pens I was able to come up with some really intricate designs and the pens drew on the stone beautifully with lovely bright colours and no smudging.

I'm looking forward to trying out the pens on some glass and plastic surfaces - you can see some more fab crafting with Posca pens over at Me, You and Magoo.

Our crafty summer 2016

The summer holidays are drawing to a close, and as I look forward to some peace and quiet next week I'm also looking back on a lovely summer. I'll admit it has been hard work at times, my attempts to send the children along to the free summer classes at the gym failed miserably, and there were many days when I was glad to pack them off to bed in the evening. Fortunately I was granted a few hours respite every now and then when Ram took them out on long Pokemon hunting trips, so I could at least run the hoover around and enjoy the silence!

But I do love having the children around at home, and I try my very best to limit their screen time as much as I can. Mia has never been that bothered about screens to be honest, which can be a bit annoying as sometimes I just need her to be occupied for a little while, but Harry would play Minecraft and watch YouTube all day if I let him. They can play nicely together for a reasonable amount of time when left to their own devices, and of course as you can probably guess we did lots of crafting together, so I thought I'd share some of our favourite crafts from the summer.

Our summer started with a fab trip away to Blackpool and Manchester, and we worked very hard on our holiday scrapbook. It really was a joint effort, and I was so impressed with how much time and effort the children put into it. We've been leafing through it over the summer and remembering all the fun we had.

Mia received lots of craft kits for her birthday in May and I kept lots of them in reserve for the holidays. So she was kept busy painting a porcelain tea set, making gel stickers and doing sequin art. There were also child initiated crafts. Harry had spotted a tutorial for fresco painting in one of his history books and had been asking to try it for a while so we gave it a go - you basically pour plaster of Paris into a flat mould (we used margarine tub lids) and before it has set completely you paint on it with water paints. He painted two designs, depicting a tree at different times of the day.

Mia on the other hand was desperate to do some sewing, so I came up with some simple felt projects that we could do together and I loved the results, Harry made the giraffe finger puppet and Mia and I worked together on the red stuffed 'teddy bear'.

We had fun colouring in together...

and painting together - these are some blank masks which their Auntie brought back from Venice for them to decorate.

In the background you can see our checklist for the YouTube Kids summer reading challenge. I'm afraid that we didn't quite get all the way through the list but we gave it a good go. Harry has really gained confidence over the summer to tackle some longer books, and Mia's reading has improved a lot too, she is happy to try and read anything even if she doesn't always get it quite right!

We also turned to some of our old crafty favourites - we did Hama beads, made shrinky plastic crafts and did some crafting with Fimo. You may be able to spot a bit of a theme here going on!

Review - My First Bananagrams

My First Bananagrams is a brand new game in the Bananagrams family, aimed at ages 4+, and specially designed for little ones that are just starting on their reading and writing journey. The case is green to show that it's for little ones that are starting to ripen their vocabulary, but the letters are still contained in a handy, distinctive, banana shaped pouch. The set contains a mixture of colourful lower case letter tiles. There are 80 single letter tiles and 13 combo-letter tiles which contain two letters that make a single sound, for example vowel teams like ai and ea, word families like an and et and digraphs like ch and sh.

The game comes with instructions for the basic game which can be played by 1-4 players. Using just the single letter tiles, each player draws 15 tiles, with the object of being the first to use all your letters in a connected word grid without a spelling mistake, proper noun or abbreviation. The grid can be rearranged as you go along, and you can swap tiles if you can't use them. For an advanced game, the combo-letter tiles can also be included.

When children are finding this game too easy then they are ready to try the original Bananagrams game. But if this game seems a little too advanced for those that are only just learning their letters, with a bit of imagination you can come up with lots of different ways to use the letter tiles. There is a handy booklet included with the game which contains ten curriculum based mini-games to give you some ideas.

The mini games are divided into three sections - preschooler, early reader and reader - and I found these really helpful, perfect for little ones that aren't quite up to playing the full game. For younger children you can begin by matching letter pairs and spelling their own name and those of friends and family, before moving on to games with rhyming words or a matching memory game. Mia's favourite game was to use the combo-letter tiles and then add beginning and ending letter tiles to make words, and even though Harry is a confident reader already, he still had fun joining in and playing around with different words.

The letter tiles are chunky and easy to read. Letters that can be confused if the tiles are upside down, such as p and d, have a clear underlining so you know that you've got it the right way up, and vowels are yellow to distinguish them. I was surprised with how well Mia got on with the game - sometimes I underestimate how much she has learned in her first year of school! We were able to play as a family and she didn't need much help at all, it was great to find a game that we can play together, and of course there was plenty of learning going on too.

Amazon link is affiliate. My First Banagrams costs £14.99. I received a set in exchange for this review.

Book review - The Foolish King

The Foolish King: The Secret History of Chess (affiliate link) was written by Mark Price to teach his daughter to play chess through an interactive story, featuring beautiful and funny illustrations throughout from illustrator Martin Brown. 

Chess is fascinating, but although it's one of the world's most popular games it can be a bit daunting to learn to play, especially for little ones. The Foolish King teaches children the different chess moves and rules with the use of a fabulous story, with gorgeous illustrations to bring the characters to life. There are puzzles throughout the book to help children familiarise themselves with the pieces and to practice the different moves, and the story follows a chess game between the daytime and night time bugs.

Harry really enjoyed the story, he found it easy to follow and it helped him to understand and remember the different pieces and moves. The book is packed with little tips, for example how you should start the game and telling you the best places on the board to move your key pieces.

There is also app to accompany the book which is a brilliant idea. It uses the same story and illustrations along with tutorials and tips. The best bit about the app is that there are one and two player options for playing the game, perfect for little ones that are desperate to get started playing once they've finished the book and either don't have a chess set or are without an available competitor! We did find that playing against the app itself was quite difficult, but what is really handy is that when you click on a piece it shows you all the available spaces that you can move to, which really helped.

If you are looking to teach younger children how to play chess then I'd definitely recommend the book and accompanying app.

Amazon link is affiliate. I received a copy of this book and app download in exchange for a review. 

Book reviews - New books for young readers from Gecko press

Today I'm sharing three new lovely chapter books from Gecko press, aimed at both new and more confident readers.

Yours Sincerely, Giraffe (affiliate link) by Megumi Iwasa is an absurd and endearing story about an African giraffe and his penguin pen pal. Giraffe is bored and wants a friend to share things with. One day he finds a sign from a bored pelican offering to deliver anything, anywhere. So he writes a letter and sends it as far as possible across the other side of the horizon. There he finds a pen pal - Penguin.

The book is written from the point of view of both Giraffe and Penguin and also contains the letters that the two unlikely friends write to each other. It's a very sweet book and instantly appealed to Harry as his comfort object is a giraffe, so he liked it very much!

Life According to Dani (affiliate link) by Rose Lagercrantz tells the story of Dani, who is spending the summer holidays on an island with her best friend Ella and they are having a fantastic time. But one day an unwelcome visitor comes and Dani isn't sure that her life is that happy any more now that her widowed father has a new girlfriend. But thanks to her best friend Ella is there to help get things back to how they should be. With lovely illustrations from Eva Eriksson, it's a story that children will enjoy, as well as dealing with a serious issue that many children have to face.

Bicycling to the Moon (affiliate link) by Timo Parvela is a beautifully illustrated chapter book suitable for more confident readers. It's all about Purdy the cat and Barker the dog, who are friends that live in a sky blue house on top of a hill and are quite different to each other. Barker likes to potter in the garden, but Purdy has big dreams - he wants to fly south with the birds, win the singing competition, be a Supercat...

It's a quirky and funny selection of stories all about friendship, and because each chapter can be read as a separate little story, it's great for reading aloud to younger children at bedtime or for older children to read to themselves, with a different story each night.

I received these books in exchange for a review.

Book review - The Storm Whale in Winter

The Storm Whale in Winter (affiliate link), written and illustrated by Benji Davies, is the sequel to the equally beautiful The Storm Whale (affiliate link). In The Storm Whale we meet Noi, who rescued a little whale after a storm washed it ashore, and then returned it to the sea.

Noi can't forget his friend the whale, and longs to see him again, watching for him while his father sets off to sea every day in his fishing boat. One cold night his father doesn't return home, and Noi goes out in search of him. He can't find him and becomes lost himself, until an old friend brings his whole family to the rescue.

It's a lovely book, and the illustrations are perfect, with touching images that carry so much expression. It's a really peaceful book to read aloud, with a gentle story and a happy ending - just right for a bedtime story! 

I was sent this book in exchange for a review.

Warwick Castle with the family

We've visited Warwick Castle several times over the last few years with our Merlin Passes, as it's literally just around the corner from where Ram's parents live. It had been a few years since my last visit to Warwick Castle though and a lot has changed, so we spent a lovely day out there at the beginning of the summer holidays.

Warwick Castle is a very well preserved castle, and has all the features of a castle that you expect to see - a portcullis, turrets, crenelated walls, a dungeon, grand rooms and a huge open courtyard in the middle. You have lovely views across the River Avon and surrounding countryside and there are some beautiful gardens with peacocks.

We started our visit in the Horrible Histories Maze, as we had heard that it can get very busy. The children were given a little booklet with spaces for stamps that they needed to collect at various different locations within the maze. The always love this sort of thing, and had a lot of fun chasing about. Some of the stamps were quite difficult to find and quite a few people were slipping through gaps in the walls, but Harry insisted on doing the maze properly and finding them all correctly!

It was quite educational too, with lots of little informative snippets about different periods in history, like the Vikings and the Tudors.

Then it was time for the Trebuchet demonstration, so we found ourselves a nice spot on a grassy bank (the picture below is taken from the top of the castle, we were lower down with a wider view). The trebuchet takes a few minutes to get into position, with some very hardworking staff running around the treadwheels in the heat. While this is going on you are told about the trebuchet, in essence a huge catapult, which was used to hurl projectiles at the castle walls. They fired a flaming ball, and it was very exciting to watch, definitely worth making the effort to watch the demonstration!

Then we explored the rest of the castle. We arrived at the Princess Tower just as the show was starting so we didn't have to wait, but at busy times you need to collect a timed ticket. We met a princess who introduced us to the story of Guy of Warwick, who was cursed and trapped in a painting, and then the children helped her to break the curse, it was a lot of fun and they really enjoyed it.

The Royal Weekend Party takes you through a series of rooms in the castle which tell the story of a weekend spent in Victorian high society, and the Kingmaker exhibition takes you on a journey as Richard Neville, Warwick the Kingmaker, prepares his army for battle in 1471. We also very much enjoyed the Time Tower, where you can join characters from the castle's past to learn all about the history of the castle, very interesting.

It was a busy day when we visited and if I'm honest it did feel as though the castle wasn't quite set up to handle the large volume of visitors. Even though we arrived just as the castle was opening in the morning we had to park in the overflow car park which was a good 20 minute walk to the entrance, the restaurant ran out of vegetarian food choices at lunch time, and there was a long queue for the toilets.

There was also a queue to climb up the Towers and Ramparts as it's all quite narrow so we gave it a miss. However we were able to climb up to the Mound, which gives you some lovely views both inside and outside the castle.

Finally we spent a lot of time in the Pageant Playground, which fortunately wasn't too busy. It's a good playground with only one entrance/exit, so you can be sure that the children can't escape if you take your eyes off them!

There was plenty going on during the day when we visited and we didn't have time to see everything - as well as the trebuchet demonstration there was a birds of prey show and jousting, and plenty of colourful characters walking around. 

There is loads to do at Warwick Castle, there is definitely a lot more there than your typical castle experience, and I'd recommend a visit (avoid peak times if you can, and if you can't, arrive early!)

We visited Warwick Castle with our Merlin Passes (which we purchased!)