[ Posted by bibliomom
Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:20:09 GMT ]
Once again, Costco was full of fun stuff I just couldn’t resist. One such item was their big box o’ “Coloring Classics” - which is to say, 12 coloring books pulled from the Treasury of Illustrated Classics series - Pinocchio, Robin Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Little Women, Beauty and the Beast, Black Beauty, Jungle Book (with Rikki Tikki Tavi), Peter Pan, Treasure Island, Wind in the Willows and the Wizard of Oz. Now, I don’t think my seven year old is going to give a flying flip about Little Women, but I know plenty of kids I could pass that one on to. And in the mean time, my boy is loving just sitting and reading these easy, illustrated editions of people running around with swords - I mean “classic adventure stories”.
In some ways, I think the market for these stories is a little weird – there’s only a couple of sentences per page, but the text requires a fairly proficient early reader or adult help. The stories have been super-simplified (like a Disney color book edition of a story) but it’s still enough to get the gist of the story. (And even as an adult, I can use the five-minute reminder of what each story is about.) The pictures are fairly simplistic as well, and usually far more cartoonish than the cover. Not bad, just basic, and probably really great for early elementary kids who are really visual and/or have short attention spans, as well as for slightly younger kids whose auditory comprehension skills are up to something more complex than “Maisy Drives the Bus”.
Best of all, it’s twelve coloring books for $11.49 with no t.v. characters, movie tie-ins, or bratty princesses in sight. Perfect for kids who love to color and parents who’d like to nudge their kids towards classic literature instead of the t.v.
Right up my alley.
Posted in books, cool kid stuff, educational & homeschool, compulsive research & product reviews, beginner read alouds for wiggly kids | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Wed, 20 Dec 2006 07:03:43 GMT ]
Okay, you know I’m all about the wiggly kids – the ones who can’t play Candyland or Chutes and Ladders, or any other game involving card drawing, spinnners or endless turn taking. I can barely stand these games, so I don’t know why I think kids under 5 have any chance of making it through alive.
Having said that, we recently repurchased Cariboo for my 3 year old and I remembered 1) why we loved this game so much the first time and 2) why we needed to buy a new copy.
First, this is possibly the best game ever for bright, non-verbal, sensory-happy, and/or attention challenged young children. The game is basically a box with three holes at the top, a grid of 15 doors beneath that, and an empty tube (for balls) that leads to a treasure chest on the right. (Amazon has good pictures.)
You take turns drawing a card, matching the color/shape/number to a door on the grid, opening the door by poking a “key” into a little hole, and seeing if there’s one of six brightly colored bouncy balls is inside. If there’s a ball inside, you get to add it to the tube on the right; if not, the turn moves to the next person. After all six balls are put in the tube the treasure chest pops open, everyone says, “Yay! We won!” and you start over.
Basically, it’s opening little boxes (with a key no less) and looking for pretty balls. What could possibly be more fun? Unless you’ve deeply offended the luck fairy, everyone will find at least one ball and as long as you emphasize, “That’s okay - try again next time!” it’s a great chance to work on turn taking (especially since the key moves with the turn). It’s also really fun to have a game where everyone legitimately gets to share an obvious win.
My oldest loved this game, eventually loving it to death, popping off all the doors and losing the balls.
The new one seems even better – the doors come with reversible cards for more advanced matching – but it’s still just as popular. It took my daughter about three minutes to master it and only about five to get her to echo back, “That’s okay - try again!” when she failed to find a ball. Considering her speech and social delays, I was thrilled – matching she can do, but dealing with disapointment and taking turns can be a challenge.
Anyway, what with Christmas looming I thought I should through out my suggestion for an oldie but a goodie.
Cariboo gets a 2 chair rating in my household – as in, ‘my daughter dragged two ridiculously heavy chairs into the library in an attempt to liberate her beloved game from the top shelf’.
And if that doesn’t convince you, then nothing will.
Posted in cool kid stuff, educational & homeschool, compulsive research & product reviews | 1 comment
[ Posted by bibliomom
Wed, 08 Nov 2006 19:02:35 GMT ]
Few things in this world have a higher destruction-per-pound ratio than your average toddler. Now take than toddler, remove her limiter, max out her intellegence, creativity, and fine and gross motor skills, give her a year to grow, and let her loose on an unsuspecting suburb. The doctors labelled her PDD-NOS – I’m still trying to decide if I need a permit to keep her within the city limits.
The level of havoc she can wreak in the time it takes to put away a load of dishes verges upon the epic.
But.
You knew it was coming – the “but” of doom; the “but” of “your piddly intellect could never imagine such destruction – bwah, ha, ha!”
And you’d be right.
Granted my own idiocy (and familial negligance) played into this fiasco, but still – this is the first time I’ve heard of this particular distaster.
It all started with crab. Free crab. Just caught from the ocean, all you have to do is crack it, don’t-you-know-this-stuff costs-$15-a-pound, here, have a big heaping cooler full, dungeness crab.
An onerous gift. I mean, crab is great – I love crab. But during the summer months, my house heats up like an ant under a magnifying glass and the last thing I want to do it sit around a 90 degree kitchen fending off kids with my feet while a crack a cooler full of smelly crab.
So I put it off. Just for a day. Maybe two. Hey – the crab was still good (if a bit watery) and it made fine crab cakes.
Mistake #1 - not dumping the water immediately.
Granted, the cooler was wicked heavy, I was beat, and I’m not actually sure if I could have carried it across the kitchen, across the cluttered deck, and into the grass without a catostrophic misfortune.
Mistake #2 - getting my husband to do it for me.
Or not do it, as the case proved. A couple more days passed, but he was always too tired at night and too late in the morning.
Mistake #3 - allowing the cooler to loom.
It really did begin to loom. Every morning I came into the kitchen and saw it there, looming. I should have realized then it was bound to attract the wrong sort of attention, but my only fear was that Scott’s mom would show up unexpectedly and want her cooler back. That, or the thing would begin to spawn new life. Somewhere between Dirk Gently’s fridge and the Gannymede Rock Lobster. guilt and the grotesque loomed.
So when my son came running in yelling, “Mom! Mom! Sister’s doing something bad!” I couldn’t figure out what it could be – after all, the cooler had a really strong (which is to say, Sophie-proof) latch.
She found the drain.
It was positioned on the side of the cooler that bridged into the family room.
Let us not speak of the events that followed – of carpet cleaners and ink pens and emergency visits to costco. Let us not speak of a husband who said, “Um, she spilled something? I’m in a meeting – let me get back to you.” Let’s just fast forward past the three gallons of cleaning fluid and the endless hours of carpet cleaning and yelling and banishing children to Pluto until they’d passed the age of consent and I could kick them out.
The end result was that my house smelled like low-tide.
Well, no, the end result is that we finally replaced the 20 year old disgusting carpet with Flor tiles which are actually really cool.
And we gave the cooler back.
Posted in compulsive research & product reviews | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:45:38 GMT ]
Well, okay – so one of your kids wants to be a ninja for Halloween. How hard could it be?
Being me – fair to middling.
A quick perusal of the local Stuff-Mart confirmed what I already knew – most commercial costumes are either combustibly flimsy, heinously overpriced or (more likely) an unhappy marriage of the two. Oh – and don’t forget stupid. Either that or I just missed the giant yellow shoulder pad trend in ninja-wear.
So of course I decided to make one. Silly bunny – don’t you remember that you haven’t sewn since middle school? I’m going to blame the time lapse on my other memory failures – that satin is satan’s fabric (you’ve seen the red suit) and that all patterns are evil.
So this nice, easy Simplicity pattern (that also conveniently made sorcerers robes and princess dresses) was the only kids ninja pattern I could find. (Teen and adults were swimming in ninja goodness – perhaps it’s the lack of ninja department stores.) Since my kids were screaming through the fabric store at mach 4, I just grabbed the pattern, a couple yards of the on-sale satin and ran.
It’s Simplicity, right? Aren’t they supposed to be easy? I suppose it was rendered easier by the lack of pants – hmmm, the kid on the front *is* wearing tights, I guess …
And oh, look – it’s not a one piece ninja mask, it’s a … sorcerer’s hood with a sash tied around it. Hmm. And why does it take this many pieces to sew … a graduation gown.
That’s when I said, OMG – my son is the valedictorian ninja. And he’s going to kill the other graduates with his plastic katana.
But don’t worry yourself – it’s been … fixed? Well, I wouldn’t really say fixed. I did rip out some seams and spend an ungodly amount of time fooling around with it while the satin attempted to unravel into a pile of black dental floss. Once I achieved a shelf stable consistency, we pulled out the big guns – accessories. Sashes and sweatpants, gloves and shurinken – the whole ninja kit and kaboodle. We even made our own (really bad) tabi socks.
My final thoughts?
1) Simplicity should be sued for false advertising. Either that or I need Patterns for the Incompetent.
2) Patterns made to work for many things will inevitably look like the worst thing in the set. If I want to make a valedictorian princess dress I’ll be sure to pull this one back out.
3) I should have bought a friggin’ bath robe to go over his sweat pants – it would have looked better. That, or I should have sprung for the pricey ‘real’ ninja costumes online. At around 15 woman hours and $50 in materials, it had to have been cheaper.
In short – go buy black sweat pants, a black yukata or bath robe, and a $10 ninja toy set that includes a face mask. Either that, or tie two sashes around the head and face, like a real ninja. Now cut the fingers out of a pair of super cheap black gloves and use velcro sticky tabs to artistically attach a couple of shurinken (throwing stars) to the back of the gloves or open neck of the robe. If it’s cold, make them wear a black turtleneck.
And whatever you do, don’t use satin.
Posted in my crazy life, cool kid stuff, compulsive research & product reviews | 7 comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 25 May 2006 22:09:48 GMT ]
How nifty is Jolly and Useful?! It’s the place I bought the Maisy plates for Sophie’s birthday and they just have the best Maisy and Peter Rabbit selection of, well, jolly and useful things. (Can I tell you how badly I want the Maisy eggcup?)
Sure, it’s in the UK, so shipping’s on the steep side, but since there prices were cheaper (and their selection much better) than any place I could find in the states, I figured it was worth it.
The service was good, the plates are adorable (and seem to be holding up well in the dishwasher) and the cute little apron I bought her is also working out quite well.
Our UK postage price is the tiny, almost laughable, sum of £1 per item or less, with free postage if you spend £25. And international shoppers, we haven’t forgotten you: you get great value shipping, tax removed at the checkout, online currency conversion and the spontaneous outbreak of world peace shortly after you pay!* *(probably not true)
They even have a sense of humor ;-) The only problem I had is with Safari, which sends their site into epileptic fits. Firefox seems to do just fine, though.
Now, I just need to figure out who Elmer Elephant is; if he’s featured on their site, he’s got to be good.
Posted in cool kid stuff, compulsive research & product reviews | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:43:00 GMT ]
Rosetta Stone
You’ve probably seen those nifty adds: “Learn a foreign language in just ten easy steps, fifteen minutes a day, while driving in your car, asleep.” And it’s always just so tempting. Dreams of sipping champagne by le Tour Eiffel, snappily summoning the garcon in flawless French; lounging around Tuscany, munching on mozarella and being able say “mo-tza-reLLa” without sounding like an idiot.
Putting aside that even my travel fantasies seem to revolve around food, learning another language makes it seem like you might actually go somewhere one of these days.
This is not to say that I’ve spent any time actually working on a foreign language since I ruined my high school French by too many summer trips to Mexico. (Parle vous frijoles?) But given my latest, best homeschooling mom tip, this might just change.
I’ve been lusting after the Rosetta Stone foreign language software since I first saw it advertised: immersion learning through images, text and sound with no drills or rote memorization. Woot!
Only two things stood in my way: picking a language and the price. (Lo! A topic approaches!) Japanese seemed like the best compromise, since Scott took it high school and we watch about as much tv in Japanese as in English. But since the Rosetta Stone Japanese edition is, oh $300, it seemd a little pricey for a homeschool class for a five year old.
(Yes, yes, I’m getting to the cheap part. Keep your pants on.)
Then my homeschool connections (impressive, huh?) tipped me off to the King County Library system database. Yes; if you go to the main page and look at the top, there it is on a big yellow button to the right of “Library Catalog” – “Databases”. All the books I’ve reserved online and I never even noticed it. Click that, then under the alphabet letters on the next page, click “R” for Rosetta.
And there it is, between Resume Builder and Sammamish Valley News. Dutch, English, Farsi and Portuese – I think there’s 29 in all. Basically, King County has already paid enrollment for an online foreign language class; all you have to provide is a library card, a web browser, and a decent internet connection. Log in, sign up, and then just mosey along at whatever pace your heart desires.
Ah, the wonders of technology.
Now, my title is misleading: this particular deal only works if you live around Seattle and don’t need to mortgage your car to pay off your library fines.
It may not be a trip to Tokyo, but as Grandma K always says, it sure beats a sharp poke in the eye.
Posted in educational & homeschool, compulsive research & product reviews | Tags education, foreign, homeschool, language, Rosetta, Stone | no comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Sat, 01 Apr 2006 04:49:00 GMT ]
I’ve had a lot of nasty cold medicine in my day. The bottle my dad had the pharmacist mix up special for us leaps to mind (and claws at my memory like a menthol scented wolverine). “Stop your whining,” he’d say, “It’s not that bad.”
Of course it was that bad. It was hit yourself in the head bad. The mere sight of that opaque brown pharmacy bottle induced such panic that we siblings rose up as one and begged our dad not to make us take any more, pleading with him to at least try it before he rendered judgement.
My dad. The man who took such joy in denying us gas station candy bars on the grounds that we’d never had to eat rats and be thankful for them, took a healthy swig and froze. After several seconds of wild twitching he slowly crossed the room and placed the medicine in the back of the cabinet. Way in the back.
It’s a memory that still gives me pleasure to this day.
Of course now I’m the one who has to force the meds down the kids throats. “Oh, be quiet,” I say, “this one’s not that bad. You should have tried the one your Papa made us take when we were kids.”
And then I found the Triaminic “Bubble Gum” flavor. “Oooh, bubble gum,” I thought, “maybe this one won’t be that bad.” I don’t actually go looking for the nastiest medicine available; I’m just lucky that way. I mean, “bubble gum” conjures such happy images of pale pink, mild flavored elixirs. Unfortunately Triaminic shares a slightly different image; something along the lines of ‘gag inducing’ and ‘almost exactly the same color as fake blood’.
Picture, if you will, my shirt, my pants, my carpet, and my snowy white, 500 thread count sheets, all sprayed with blood red syrup. Picture my son, gums and teeth stained red, screaming and choking on his medicine, dripping it all over the room while his frantic efforts to wipe away the mess just smear it all over his face and hands.
Remember Army of Darkness? It was like my son just got a face full of boom stick.
While sitting on my bed.
So much like the first Evil Med, this incredible example of pharmaceutical nastiness is now gone, if not forgotten. I mean, how could I forget such a horrific sight any more than I could forget such a horrific taste?
Besides, I’m still trying to get the stains out of my carpet.
Posted in my crazy life, compulsive research & product reviews | Tags Triaminic | 3 comments
[ Posted by bibliomom
Thu, 30 Mar 2006 18:06:00 GMT ]
So the other morning at o’dark-hundred my son came wandering in to tell Scott about his latest problem. “Dad,” he said seriously, “I don’t like yogurt in my cereal.” After some investigation it was determined that it wasn’t actually a cooking experiment gone awry – Gabe had grabbed the only milk carton he could reach, the one that said B-U-T-T-E-R-M-I-L-K.
An honest mistake, if more than a little disgusting – all those pricey little Kashi Mighty Bites guys floating around in a pool of goo – but really not his fault.
It’s the Milk Man.
Well, it’s the Milk Man and my insane need to sample everything in every possible combination. You see, we signed up for home milk delivery from Smith Brothers which has been great for convenience but bad for temptation. Whole milk, 2%, 1%, non-fat; buttermilk, yogurt, soy – hundreds of fun to try combinations, conveniently delivered to my front porch once a week.
I never grew up with such extravagence. We had a cow. No really – a big old bossie named Laurie, after my cousin. (Since she and I were the first girls born to the family, Pa named a cow after each of us. I still remember the packages labelled “Cindy - Chuck Roast” in the deep freeze.)
Now, I know – glass gallon jars full of the morning’s milking, with a thick layer of cream rising to the top sound really picturesque.
They sucked.
We had to keep a big metal ladle in there for stirring in the cream and dipping out the milk, and even after you managed to spill milk all over yourself and the counter, you were still left with nasty globs of cream floating around your milk. Raw milk does not taste like the stuff in the plastic jug, and your average 8 year old doesn’t care how “natural” it is any more than they care for gathering happy little brown eggs from a musty old chicken coop.
My parents didn’t care so much about the natural stuff, either; they cared about how much cheaper it was for feeding four hungry kids. Milk for breakfast, lunch and dinner: “Drink up kids – there’s still a half gallon left in the fridge and we need room for the two gallons I’ll get this evening.”
Scott on the other hand, grew up with a Milk Man. (His family also had a Costco membership, a swimming pool and a freezer full of Bagel Bites – hard proof of his decadent, bourgeois childhood, had I needed it.) Needless to say, he got into the milk man groove right away. “Just fill out the order form, Cyn, and when he leaves a bill, just throw the check in the milk box.”
Such luxury! Such indulgence! Happy little boxes of homogenized, hormone free goodness, lined up in my tidy little metal box. No special trips to the grocery store with screaming kids and no cows. I really don’t know why it inspires me to such levels of ordering excess; maybe it’s just the rows of pristine check boxes on the order form. But I remain confident that one day I’ll figure out the magic combination and move beyond the order form and into the land of the standing order.
Maybe then, on that blissful day, my son will have learned to tell the difference between buttermilk and 2%.
Unless 1% is better.
Posted in my crazy life, food, compulsive research & product reviews | Tags Brothers, man, milk, Smith | no comments
