What a Great Little Book for Advent!

Recently, we were mailed a really neat little book to review,

Joy to the World: Advent Activities for Your Family, by Kathleen M. Basi

Source: liguori.org via Colleen a.k.a. Pinterest Mama on Pinterest

Written from a Roman Catholic perspective, it is perfect for all Christian families who want to prepare their homes for the coming of Christ and the Christmas Season. This lovely book helps families, especially those with young children, to redirect their energies on celebrating Advent.

The approach of the book highlights three key concepts for Advent, namely:

The Advent Calendar, the Evening Ritual, and the Good Deeds Manager.

Advent calendar:

The Advent Calendar organizes activities into four categories:

Service, Spiritual Growth, "Homebody," and Pure Fun!

Included in the book is a great sample Advent Calendar.

Each day, it lists an activity as well as the category for the activity.

For example:

Day 1 Activity:

Make Christmas cards for grandparents.

(Homebody)

Day 2 Activity:

Make Jesus’ Manger.

(Homebody & Spiritual Growth)

Day 3 Activity:

Make candy.

(Pure Fun!)

Under the Pure fun section, Kathleen explains how a family can include some of the secular fun for little ones, including Santa. If you have ever grappled with how to include the secular fun parts of the holiday with the Christian religious aspects of the holiday, you will love this book, as it keeps things in perspective, that it is fine to have pure family fun, whether you are making Rudolph ornaments, decorating gingerbread houses, or singing songs about Santa, Frosty, and the others but then, to make sure that as a family, the emphasis comes back to the religious meaning and aims towards developing spiritual growth in all family members…that is key.

Evening Ritual:

This includes both the Advent wreath and the Jesse tree

Features easy-to-understand versions of Scriptures.

Children will love these and will find them easy to understand.

We are really excited about making a Jesse Tree! We have not made one before, so it will be nice to integrate that into our family’s nightly Advent routine.

Good Deeds Manger: 

This involves having all family members, young and old alike, prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ.

Since Advent is here, plan to update you as we do different activities from this book.  
Have set up an entire Advent Calendar Board on Pinterest so if you want to see our Advent activities in progress, please be sure to check out my Pinterest Advent Calendar Ideas Board.

The timing of receiving this book is amazing, as our family really wants to focus our attention on Advent and spending time explaining to the boys that Jesus is the reason for this season. If you are interested in purchasing this book, you can order it through Liguori Publications.

Joy to the World: Advent Activities for Your Family is also available through Amazon.com

Thanks to Kathleen for putting her heart into writing this insightful and inspiring book!

Also, please keep Kathleen in your prayers. She is expecting a baby due in mid-December and is hoping to make it to term with this active little one!

What joy…to have a new little one who will arrive in time for Christmas! Wow!!! Awesome!!!

Kathleen has a very inspiring blog called So Much to Say, So Little Time.

Kathleen describes her blog as Life at the intersection of Faith, parenting, and the written word.

When you know that that is her mantra for her blog, it is not a surprise that her book, Joy to the World: Advent Activities for Your Family also touches upon Faith, family, and the day-to-day, in this case, the day-to-day during Advent.

Please be sure to pop by and tell Kathleen that you read this review of her nice book and to wish her and her family well on her new baby-to-be!

World Reptiles: Cool Work from Laughing Star Montessori

Recently, the boys and I had the privilege of reviewing two versions of wonderful Montessori inspired work: World Reptiles  - Early Childhood Version and World Reptiles - Elementary Version.
Laughing Star Montessori created these lovely cards and the work that goes with them.
Worked out great, as Little Bro completed the Early Childhood Version and Big Bro did the Elementary Version.
For the first Early Childhood Presentation, the child is shown the cards and then, does a choosing and naming activity.
We then sang the Continents Song we sing here:

North America

South America 

Asia...Africa...

Antarctica

Australia

and Europe!

Little Bro laid out the continents label cards in the order from our song, from left to right on top of his rug. He then sorted the cards based on their continent labels. He then did his best to read the names of each animal from his cards. I helped him with some of the animal names.
As an extension to his work, he selected his favorite one from all of the cards. He drew a picture of it and then, did some completed the sentence about where his favorite animal was from by writing the word Africa.

For the Elementary Version, Big Bro had a great time learning various facts about reptiles from around the globe.
First, he sorted the cards by continent. Then he read the cards independently, and then, later in the morning, he shared the information on the cards with Little Bro. Both of the boys loved sitting together and learning facts about the reptiles.
As an extension, Laughing Star Montessori suggests that an elementary child could pick a card and draw it in their journal or on paper. Big Bro did this extension and enjoyed doing it!

Our family really found these cards to be interesting, well done, and informative. We liked that the work was already differentiated for younger and older children, as many times, I have to work to make Montessori work more challenging for Big Bro...this time, the work was done for me!
Would highly encourage you to check out Laughing Star Montessori's collection of World Animals work. We really enjoyed these cards and think you will too!
Here are some photos of the boys doing their World Reptiles work:

Disclaimer: We were given pdfs of both of the version of this World Reptiles work. In exchange, we agreed to provide an honest review of the products. The opinions expressed in this post are genuine. We really found this work to be enjoyable and educational and were glad to have the opportunity to review it!

Laughing Star Montessori Review, Part 1 (Beautiful Handwriting Series)

Recently, our family had the privilege to get to review some wonderful Montessori materials made by Laughing Star Montessori. The materials were sent as compressed files so it was super easy to download all of the files at once.Laughing Star Montessori sent us included three items from their Beautiful Handwriting Series, as well as three items from their World Classification Photo Cards Series.

In order to be able to share a comprehensive review about Laughing Star Montessori, am breaking the review down into two parts, Beautiful Handwriting Series and World Classification Cards Series...
In this post, will focus on telling you about the three items from their Beautiful Handwriting Series.

From their website:
"Beautiful Handwriting" was created in Montessori classrooms 20 years ago. It is based on a 3-period sequence~students trace, then copy, then compose. Use it to introduce the correct formation of cursive, D'Nealian or Print writing when children are drawn to it, usually ages 4 - 4.5 for girls and 4.5 - 5.5 for boys. 
 
This series includes recommendations for supplies, suggestions for lesson presentations, and ideas for extensions.


First, we sampled Letter Writing and then, Number Writing...
These two pdfs are designed to help a child learn letter and number formations, as well as how to trace or copy letters and numbers. If you have a child who is trying to learn the correct way to form either letters or numbers, these pdfs are very helpful. What makes them nice is that they are not overly cluttered, but instead, are very straightforward, with nice, clean, simple drawings for each concept. They effectively worked at helping both of my sons to work on their handwriting.  Little Bro used both the number and letter writing practice pages, while Big Bro just tried out the number writing. The best thing was that both boys really took pride in doing their writing and enjoyed their work. What is also nice is that the booklets contain blank templates for additional practice or for extensions...


Then, what ended up being just a huge hit with the boys is the  
Farm Story Masters...
First, a basic lesson for story writing is given to the child.
This pdf contains wonderful directions on how to do this in a Montessori inspired way.
Then, children trace and illustrate their own farm animal stories to practice writing on lines.
In addition to having a child trace and then illustrate their stories, they can  also copy stories onto lined paper for additional writing practice. An explanation is also given on how to have a child use the Farm Story Masters to find parts of speech and to use grammar symbols or stamps. There are many options for using the Farm Story Masters...

In our Montessori inspired homeschool, each day as we were reading realistic books about farm animals, Big Bro and Little Bro then added a page to their own Farm Animals book.
They each selected different animals and then, would share their work with each other.
 Big Bro did the suggested work of using his farm animal pages with our box of wooden grammar symbols. He seemed to really enjoy doing this work.
Little Bro did a different extension with this work.
He had a basket filled with farm animals and had to find the animal as he read the page about the animal in his book. He then did an additional extension using both the Farm Masters and the Number writing Masters. Little Bro sorted the basket of farm animals and then, counted and wrote the numbers of each group on a paper.
They also did a very fun extension together by making a little farm finger puppet show to go with what they had learned. 


The Farm Story Masters are excellent...very effective at getting the boys to enjoy their handwriting work. If you have a child who is generally a reluctant writer, as Big Bro can be at times, try this set of Farm Story Masters. What a difference! 
So much fun yet such good writing practice, as well as opportunities for multi-sensory learning extensions, too.


All in all, the pdfs that Laughing Star Montessori sent were high quality, very interesting, and well planned. We feel so blessed to have been able to review their products for them and to tell you about their products, as both boys really enjoyed these as Montessori inspired activities!

 Please be sure to check out Laughing Star Montessori to see these great products.
They would be nice additions to any Montessori inspired homeschool or classroom. They are also quite affordable. They offer a wide range of  materials that are very professionally made and already laminated for you, as well as their newest offer of excellent,  affordable pdfs, plus some
free downloads for you to try.

Full disclosure: 
 Our family was given six free pdfs to try in exchange for an honest, thorough review of their materials. 

The feedback is my honest perception as to how my sons enjoyed using these materials, how effective these materials were at presenting concepts, and the quality of the materials we were given.

Some Sweet Little Books: A Review

My dear friend, Jody, has very graciously offered to post this review today at her blog, Mommy Moment. 

I am very grateful to both Jody and her bloggy colleague, Lena, as without them, I would have never even had a blog, much less a review or a giveaway.
They really know what they are doing with respect to all bloggy things, so if for some reason, you have not popped by their blog, please do so, as it is great!

Now, many of you may have already read this review over at Mommy Moment, but for those who may have missed the review there, here it is:
For Little Ones Books Review and Giveaway
Montessorian Pauline Meert, owner and creator of Etsy storefront, For Little Ones,
makes adorable little readers and has graciously offered to giveaway two sets.
She has correlated them with the pink, blue, and green series often used in conjunction with Montessori language.You do not have to use the pink, blue, and green series to enjoy these books...they work well as little phonetic readers, but are also appealing enough to pre-readers to use as a read-together little book.

All of her books are simply written and beautifully illustrated...the colorful illustrations and easy to read text make them very appealing to young children.
The books progress in difficulty from phonetic 3 letter words to phonograms.
Both sets of readers include non-phonetic, sight words in little envelopes to practice.
We love her little books...so much so that I contacted Pauline and asked if I could please do a review and giveaway for her.

We had purchased Set 2 first, along with her awesome World Stamps kit, so to do a review of all of her little books, Pauline sent us the Set 1 books.

Here are the titles and the skills covered in all of her little books:

Set 1
The Hen and the Fox- A Pink Level Book: phonetic 3 letter words
The Frog and the Slug- A Blue Level Book: phonetic blends
Josh and the Fish - A Green Level Book: 'sh' phonogram
Peep the Sheep - A Green Level Book: "ee" phonogram

Set 2
The Red Bug- A Pink Level Book: phonetic 3 letter words
Matt and the Muffin- A Blue Level Book: phonetic blends
The Raccoon- A Green Level Book: 'oo' phonogram
Chip and the Chestnut - A Green Level Book: 'ch' phonogram

We originally purchased Set 2 earlier in the year, as we were going to go to Pennsylvania and I knew that my sons would see bugs, raccoons, and chipmunks while visiting Presque Isle State Park.

Big Bro's favorite from Set 2 is The Raccoon and Little Bro's favorite is The Red Bug.
We took them with us on our trip to Pennsylvania and tied them in with a study about forest animals of Northwest PA.

I made three part cards of forest animals and the boys found the animals in the books.
We also made a work extension to go with these books, using the grammar symbols for noun and verb. We made some muffins to go with Matt and the Muffin, and bought, cracked, and tasted some roasted chestnuts to go with Chip and the Chestnut so we were even able to tie in some practical life with her books.

By bringing the Set 2 books with the enclosed sight word cards, a box of muffin mix, some chestnuts, and a few work extensions for language and science, we had plenty to do for our entire visit up North.
We also purchased the World Stamps set she sells...what a wonderful kit...great addition to your continents studies...


This post shows the World Stamps work, one of the little books by Pauline, and a grammar work extension I made to go with the book.

Set 1 arrived this week, so we spent some time reading Set 1.
Pauline sent them out so quickly in a padded envelope, along with a nice note.
Once again, the books were a hit with the boys, as they love the sweet drawings in the books. The sight word cards are nice for Little Bro, as he is starting to know some sight words. Little Bro really enjoyed The Hen and the Fox and was excited, as he felt he could really read this little pink book.
Big Bro's favorite book from Set 1 is The Frog and the Slug.
We are getting ready to study frogs, so The Frog and the Slug is perfect.
From a skills standpoint, the two green books were right at the right level for Big Bro.

Peep the Sheep is great for Big Bro's current reading level.
All in all, Pauline's little books surely will be enjoyed by all.

Now, over at Mommy Moment, they are going to tell you about a giveaway for these books...so pop on over, read their Montessori Monday post, and then, pop back to enter.

Comments have been disabled on this post because you will need to enter the giveaway at my next post on my blog that will say Enter Here...