Home's

Yesterday I was reading a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears from my  Seasons of Joy Spring Edition.. One of the suggestions, which I have done before with other books too, was to act the story out with some puppets.
So as I had not made any puppets I found three bears that we have around the house and a doll from the girls collection and used these with a few other small items like silk, a plate and spoon and a small basket to represent a chair.
As it was a beautiful day we went outside on the balcony and I used one of the play stands that Braedon had made years ago for a 'stage'.
The little ones really enjoyed this version of the story and the props were fun to use too.
After the story we grated some nutmeg by hand and added it to a honey milk drink.

I have never grated nutmeg before even though it is one of my favourite spices. I could not get over the beautiful aroma that was wafting around the kitchen.
As we grated we sang the little song that Annette uses
" Grate the nutmeg!
Grate the nutmeg!
Smell the nutmeg sweet.
Grate the nutmeg!
Grate the nutmeg!
Sweet enough to eat.

We made up our own tune as I cannot read music from the sheet. The children loved this activity and adding the fresh ground nutmeg to the top of one of their favourite drinks.

It is a wonderful experience to share the wonder of a story with children and then add that something extra as well.
Every time I do an activity like this ( Frances Lunch) I remind myself to keep doing it. That is until I get caught up in the basics of learning and forget to add the fun stuff.
But it is the fun stuff the kids remember and one of my goals as a mama is to make memories with the children.

What better way to do this!!
Linking with Annette today...

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

You can never have too many books right?

Of course right!
Well with my Amazon gift card from the older boys, yes I did use it once but actually made a mistake in processing- long story and had not actually used it.
So I bought these books with the money, and guess what I love them all!

 So here is a quick review on them so far.
Twenty Six Letters to Heaven I bought this one for Corbyn to use for his start to lessons instead of my Alphabet Path which I think might be a little too, um, girly for him.
I like the simple and yet crafty, reading structure of this programme.
A Christmas Dress for Ellen This is a most beautiful Christmas book, in fact one of my all time favourite books for telling the message behind the birth of the Christ Child.....pure unselfish love.
Penny's Christmas Jar Miracle This is a sweet story too but in my opinion the above book is a better choice if you had to choose.
Pheobe's Sweater I loved the idea of this and Pheobe's Birthday after reading about them from Nicole's blog. I really love them and two of my younger girls have asked for items from the book. So I need to start some knitting and sewing for them
Fancy Nancy: Pajama Day These four Early readers I got because both Moran and Myffwyn love Fancy Nancy. Well we all do really but I wanted to have these as an incentive for the girls to progress to more advanced books.
Fancy Nancy: The Show Must go On
Fancy Nancy: Sees Stars
Fancy NancY: At the Museum
Gyo Fujikawa's Little Library These I bought after falling in love with the illustrations. Yes I so love a great illustrated book, especially one with children in them.
These will be perfect for little Trahaearn to be read to and for him to look and hold.

So there you have it what we are snuggling up with to read with at the moment.

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

You know I love books right?
You know I adore picture books as well?
You also know I love baskets too?
And of course scattered throughout our home are books in baskets!

If you happen to see an empty basket in our home, goodness how did that happen, well it won't be like that for long.

A week or more ago I happened to have a few empty baskets and was browsing blogs and saw this post by Ginny about her book basket.

Now like I said I had an empty basket and we have so many little books on our shelves that they just begged to be put in this basket for 'special time use'

What sort of special time though?
Hmmm, I think it will work for us as a 'wiggle time basket', you know a little one has some need for cuddle and special time with mama or just some time to be apart from others in a busy household and a focused activity to regroup with in a special type environment.

And as we are entering a stressful time with moving I can see this little basket getting a lot of use.
Oh, you are wondering what I put in that basket well here is an incomplete list (as I am a long way from that basket at the moment)~
Old Bear Collection by Jane Hissey (we have had these simply forever they are well loved and their box is missing the bottom too)
Brambley Hedge Boxed Set - Summer, Autumn, Winter Spring by Jill Barklem (again a much loved set)
If you give a Mouse a Cookie
The Fairy Necklaces Flower Fairies of the Wayside and Flower Fairies of the Trees all by Cecily Mary Barker
Now it's Fall and I like Winter by Lois Lenski
Selected 'extra' copies of Beatrix Potter that aren't in our boxed collection
Miffy and Miffy's Garden by Dick Bruna (we have quite a collection of these as our own dear Myffwyn is often  called Myffy and we bought her some of these for her won as well as some for our family library)
Little Grey Rabbit's Washing Day By Alison Uttley
Mother Goose  and The Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway
First Prayers  and First Hymns by Tasha Tudor
A collection of Victoria Plum Adventures
Ladybird Books - The Story of Daniel and The Wind in the Willows
And from my own childhood Little Donkey by Jessica Broderick

Well that is all I can think of right now but I hope to change and add some interesting titles for our little ones to enjoy.
Do you have any favorites to add??

Blessings to you and your homes,
 

Family traditions are so important don't you think?
Special occasions that bring a smile to your face!
There are so many opportunities for us to have these in our lives and  they are the ones we have that are to be treasured.

One of these for our family is reading from the books written by Russell Hoban.
Last week I was reading Bread and Jam for Frances to the little children. It was Arwen's choice for the day and when I finished reading it we decided to have a Frances Lunch.

Now we have had "Albert Lunch's" before from another favourite book Best Friends for Frances complete with a red wagon packed with luncheon goodies. We have had this happen so many times and the children have such fond memories of it.

So this day we made a new memory by creating a Frances Lunch. Then main thing in this lunch was the setting up of the  meal like in the book..

First we made paper doilies of which I had a few and as is Winter here I thought we could make some snowflake doilies too. However I really could not get the hang of it, I was so embarrassed. Here was this so simple paper craft and I could not do it. So in the end we went with a couple of my snowflake placemats and the bought doilies.
The next important item to have was the  flowers in the vase, followed by the egg in an egg cup.
As we did not have thermos we simply had milk in a glass.
For the food as we were having a lunch type of meal anyway - Frances has carrot and celery and we just used some leftovers and salad.

The interesting thing with these type of activities is the fact that while it was aimed for our little kids it was not long before we had more takers for our Frances Lunch.

Again I am so thankful to be able to 'enjoy the journey together' with our children, which is one of the most special aspects of living and learning at home.

Blessings to you and your homes,

 For my birthday this year I was given a fairly substantial book voucher by my older sons.

I worked out a wish list and then finally after much deliberation placed an order for the books.

Guess what? Today they arrived, well all except one that I am still waiting for. I can tell you there is much joy in opening a box full of books in our family. The children were all vying for their favorite new picture books and I was keen to look at my 'boring mother books' as the children call them.
I am really excited about reading them, some for myself and some to the children.
In fact I really should link to the books for you but I just am going to read them instead, sorry.

However you will certainly be able to find them on line from the title in the pictures if you are interested.

Any way have a lovely day what ever you do, and  me what will I be doing? I will be reading to my hearts content to our children and then a little for me too!

Blessings to you and your homes
,

Just thought I would share with you our listing of favourites within our family~

Favourite Family Movies ♥

Have you ever have a book that you read over and over?
Of course you do, as do we.
This of course can change at a moments notice.
However at the moment our little ones are getting whoever they can to read this one So Much!

It has been a much loved favourite for many years. In fact it was first introduced to our family when Saxon was a very little 'tacker' and he picked it up from the library. He loved this book right from the start and I must admit it is one of those books that is fun to read aloud. I love to do 'all the voices' as Jo March says in Little Women.

So last week we had this book read so many times a day I lost count. I think it holds many precious memories of holding an excited little child and  reading together enjoying this special time.

I especially love to re visit those favoured books from when the older children were little as it draws the family circle closer together I think.

So what are some of your family's favourite books to read over and over again?

Blessings to you and your homes,

I know, I know, the title is SO obvious if you have known me for any length of time. We are huge book lovers in our family and the Education of our children has been based around a living book ideal. We have been blessed over the years to build up  a fairly extensive library.

We have made exhaustive use of the public libraries but have reached at each one the stage where there is not much new material unless we research and order it in on intra-library loans.
Just recently we were able to order a significant amount of new books. Some of these were books we had read from the library and were wanting to add them to our own library....what we call 'keepers'.
Some were ones we had had 'our eye on' so to speak for a while.
When ordering these from Book Depository I tried to get a variety of books taht would appeal to our whole book loving family.
Above we have Some Rosemary Sutcliffe ( a favourite with just about all of us), Redwall Series ( Stephen, Kynan and Eden's favourites) The Hollow Kingdom series (part of, more still to come) The Mismantle Chronicles, Rogan really started to love reading from this series (with more to come) and Alex O'Donnell and the 40  Cyber Thieves (always a line up for these books) and Story of the World Book 4
The picture books are a huge success with all of us: We have some new Patricia Polacco, I think we now have an almost complete collection Daniela Drescher picture books and the latest Elsa Beskow.
Today we received Saxon's favourites the Murderous Maths series, two new Fancy Nancy books (everyone's favourites) and a 'Mummy book' for me. We still have a few to get that we are looking forward too.  We all rush down to check the mail for a car to pick up the parcels from the post office!!
Funnily enough on the day we received this big book of new books the children wanted to go to the library and get some books.
Who knows why as we had some very excited children starting to read the new books.
However getting new reading matter is always fun no matter where it comes from So off we trooped to the library and came back with a fairly descent haul. Not to big for us ........only three bags full.
And of course where their are books in our house there you will find at least one person reading. As soon as I put them into our library baskets/boxes Saxon and Vellvin sat down to read some.

We keep all the library books in assigned baskets in an assigned area (the area can change in the house) but you must read them near the basket or bring them straight back to the basket if you are an older child as soon as your finish reading them. This we I can keep track of the books and have less chance of losing them . It has worked for us for a very large number of years.

So having books all over the house means we can be assured of children all over the house too☺. Not good when you are looking for them to do their jobs though!
It is a joy to see our children LOVE spending time reading, and thus opening their horizons to many interesting tales and lands.
This is the blessing of a literary lifestyle, one I am so glad we embarked upon many years ago.

Good reading to you all this night!!

Blessings to you and your homes,