Welcome to Mommynificent! We are so excited about Christmas here this year! If you’ve never been to Mommynificent before, you’ll want to know that we are a book-loving family! We love to read books, share books, and talk about books! We even host a family-friendly weekly link-up all about books and literacy every Thursday. We’d love to have you join us each week for Booknificent Thursdays!
We are thrilled to be a part of this year’s Kid Lit Giveaway Hop Holiday Extravaganza taking place from December 6th to 13th and hosted by Katie of Youth Literature Reviews and Renee of Mother Daughter Book Reviews.
I’ve been racking my brain to decide what Christmas book I wanted to give away. There are just SO MANY good ones!!! So I decided to give you a gift card so you can decide for yourself!
If you need some ideas for young kids, check out my Advent book list for our favorite picture books. And if you’d like a clean romance suitable for ages 12 and up, I highly recommend Chautona Havig’s Advent, 31 Kisses, and Tarnished Silver. And one more favorite that came up while my husband and I were brainstorming our favorites is Madeleine L’Engle’s lesser known And Both Were Young, which isn’t strictly a Christmas book, but Christmas plays a big part in it. (Those are all affiliate links, fyi.)
So without further ado, here’s where you can enter to win a $10 Amazon gift card! Good luck and Merry Christmas!
It’s that time of the week again, when we share the books we’ve been enjoying! As always, I’m also open to any posts about helping others learn to read or improve their reading skills (including adults). Basically, anything literacy-related is fair game.
Two quick but important announcements:
Starting next week, Booknificent Thursdays will go live at 8am Eastern US time on Thursdays. This is about 9 hours later than they have been going up. Hopefully, this won’t inconvenience anyone. Some changes in our schedule have made the last few a real challenge to get up on time, and we realized that pushing it back a few hours would really help.
I’ll be having a Christmas giveaway starting tomorrow so be sure to come back and check that out!
I’m so thankful for you guys! I really enjoy getting to know each of you a little better each week through the posts you link up, so thank you for being a part of the Booknificent community!
And now, it’s time to party! What fun literacy stuff have you been up to this week? (And what are you thankful for?)
Please link up any posts you have, past or present, about books, reading, and literacy. This link party is all about sharing how books are impacting you! Joining in is easy; just click “Click here to enter…” next to “You are next” and copy/paste the URL of a blog post (not your homepage). Choose a photo to upload and then click some of the other great posts in the party and meet new bloggers and find out about new books!
Why should you link up to Booknificent Thursdays?
Linking up to parties and leaving comments on other posts is a proven way to increase traffic to your blog and grow your blog’s followers! Here are a few rules and suggestions:
You can link up as many posts as you want.
Please grab the Booknificent Thursday button and share it somewhere on your blog (sidebar, post, bottom, etc.) and please share about this party with any book-lovers you know.
I’d also really appreciate it if you’d hop over to my facebook page and give me a “like” and/or subscribe to receive my blog (just enter your email address up on the sidebar.)
We do want to keep it family-friendly, so I reserve the right to remove anything I consider offensive.
And one final rule, please visit AND comment on at least one other linked post if not more.
Hello readers and happy Thanksgiving to my American readers! It’s that time of the week again, when we share the books we’ve been enjoying! As always, I’m also open to any posts about helping others learn to read or improve their reading skills (including adults). Basically, anything literacy-related is fair game.
We’ve been reading lots of books about the first American Thanksgiving as that’s where we happen to be in our history lessons. It worked out pretty well this year timing-wise. I’m linking up a post from Desperate Homeschoolers that my daughter helped me make of her favorite Thanksgiving chapter books for kids.
I’m so thankful for you guys! I really enjoy getting to know each of you a little better each week through the posts you link up, so thank you for being a part of the Booknificent community!
And now, it’s time to party! What fun literacy stuff have you been up to this week? (And what are you thankful for?)
Please link up any posts you have, past or present, about books, reading, and literacy. This link party is all about sharing how books are impacting you! Joining in is easy; just click “Click here to enter…” next to “You are next” and copy/paste the URL of a blog post (not your homepage). Choose a photo to upload and then click some of the other great posts in the party and meet new bloggers and find out about new books!
Why should you link up to Booknificent Thursdays?
Linking up to parties and leaving comments on other posts is a proven way to increase traffic to your blog and grow your blog’s followers! Here are a few rules and suggestions:
You can link up as many posts as you want.
Please grab the Booknificent Thursday button and share it somewhere on your blog (sidebar, post, bottom, etc.) and please share about this party with any book-lovers you know.
I’d also really appreciate it if you’d hop over to my facebook page and give me a “like” and/or subscribe to receive my blog (just enter your email address up on the sidebar.)
We do want to keep it family-friendly, so I reserve the right to remove anything I consider offensive.
And one final rule, please visit AND comment on at least one other linked post if not more.
For all my American friends, as you prepare today for your big feast tomorrow, consider this quote by Richard Foster from Celebration of Discipline (affiliate link):
“To use good things to our own ends is always the sign of false religion…Fasting reminds us that we are sustained by ‘every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’ (Matt. 4:4)…Therefore, in experiences of fasting we are not so much abstaining from food as we are feasting on the word of God. Fasting is feasting!”
Today, over at One Fun Mom, I’ve posted Five Ways We Teach our Kids about Prayer and Fasting. This may seem strange as part of a Thanksgiving series, but I think it’s important that as we feast and thank the Lord for His blessings, we keep our attention on Him!
And especially with the encroachment of Black Friday into Thanksgiving, it’s so important we keep in mind that everything we do in preparation for Christmas is to prepare for the Nativity of our Lord and Savior. We need to sit down with our families, thank God from our hearts for how blessed we are this Thanksgiving, and then determine how we will spend the next month preparing for the Coming of Christ and honor this season.
Fasting is one way we can deal with the encroachment of materialism into our Thanksgiving and Christmas. Here are some great blog posts discussing the relationship of fasting with Thanksgiving and Christmas feasting. I’ve found them very encouraging and challenging with good reminders to keep our heart’s focus on Christ! (Keep in mind that while you and I may not agree with all the theology presented in all of these, there is still much to learn from them!)
And don’t forget to hop over to One Fun Mom and check out my post today, Five Ways We Teach our Kids about Prayer and Fasting. It’s actually a really fun post as our family really enjoys coming up with creative ways to fast and focus on the Lord.
Would you like to join us for Thanksgiving season? Visit the introductory post to see the updated index.
Finally, please share about this series by pinning, sharing on Facebook and Twitter, and linking back to this post!You are welcome to grab the button and share the inspiration!
{Today, I’m pleased to introduce to you Dave Ray of DaveRayPhoto.com. Dave and his wife spent two decades serving the Indonesian people on Java through education, humanitarian aid and community development. Dave is now a freelance cultural-photographer with a passion for creating understanding between people, cultures, civilizations, faiths and worldviews. In addition to hiring himself out for shoots and selling rights to his beautiful photos, he also leads cultural photo-tours throughout Southeast Asia and blogs about interesting aspects of the cultures he photographs. Dave is one of our neighbors here in Penang, and I asked him to share about the fascinating community thanksgiving events common on Java for our Season of Thanksgiving.}
The people of Java, Indonesia – including the majority Javanese, but also the Sundanese and Madurese mega-ethnic groups – have the selamatan meal as one of the pillars of their culture. It is also called a kenduri. It is one the most important and fascinating means to corporately express thanks in Southeast Asia.
It’s not always easy to figure out what the selamatan means—is it a ritual seeking protection or success for some future endeavor, or is it an expression of thanks for some past benefit received? It seems that each family can perform one for their own very different reasons, so you have to figure it out on a case-by-case basis.
You’ll be going about your routine at home around sunset when, all of a sudden, a neighbor comes and tells you that you’re “requested” to attend a selamatan at his or another neighbor’s house that evening. What time? In no more than 20 minutes! If you’re an expat living in Java, you had better have already gotten over your marriage to your daily calendar and have become more event-oriented, because attendance is compulsory—not showing up will communicate that you distinctly dislike your neighbor—and invitations never go out earlier than what you just experienced. So, you drop everything, put on a sharp-looking batik shirt and head out. Every close neighbor gets invited whether the host knows them well or even likes them or not.
You’ll come into a room where men are sitting on woven mats along the walls with plates of local food beautifully displayed in the middle. If you’re among the Sundanese, you’ll likely smell incense burning. This is an older custom that seems to be dying out among the more numerous Javanese and Madurese. Depending on the exact local custom, the food in the center is probably not for any of the guests to eat. It, as well as the smell of the incense, is meant as food for the spirits that are dwelling in the gathering—the ones this meeting is about as much as it is for the human guests.
If you arrive a bit later, you’ll sit outside on the front porch or even out by the curb wherever late-comers find a place.
No women are present in the room, though you’ll hear them quietly chattering in the kitchen where they’ve been busy all day, and you’ll likely see them peeking through a screen or around a curtain to see how the event is developing.
The host or his assigned spokesperson gives a short speech in the highest falutin language attainable explaining what the purpose of the selamatan is, perhaps explaining some of the deep symbolic meaning of the foods on display on plates in the center of the floor, and thanking everyone for coming. Whenever he pauses while speaking, everyone in the room tends to mutter together “Yes . . . yes,” in the local language.
The purpose may be just about anything. It almost always has to do with some rite of passage or major life event—birth, marriage, moving away, moving into a new house, a child’s graduation from school, or memorial service for the dead. It could precede one of these events and function as a request for a safe delivery, or a successful wedding and marriage, or performance on final exams. Or it may follow an event, perhaps asking for safety (selamatan comes from the Arabic word for safety and holistic welfare) or good experiences in a new house and community.
One of the more predictable series of selamatans happens after a death in the family. In many communities you can actually plan to attend your friend’s event on the 3rd, 7th, 40th, 100th, and 1000th day after a death (with some others added in as well depending on local custom).
Some elaborate selamatans seem to function as a “pressure release” to relieve social envy. Occasionally a very wealthy neighbor will hold a lavish selamatan including all of his destitute neighbors. No one will dare to actually say it, but many suspect the real reason—regardless of what is expressed in public—is to pacify the neighbors with his relative affluence as over against their poverty—for another year.
After the host expresses the purpose of the gathering, a Muslim imam will read Arabic prayers. Most present will not understand the Arabic, though some may have memorized it before. During pauses the group will mutter together “Ameen!”
Promptly after the prayers are finished some of the host’s friends pass around food either in banana wraps or—more common nowadays—in cardboard boxes. The custom is that it would be very bad form to get chatty at this point. Every man opens his box quickly and quietly begins to eat his food. But don’t eat too much! It’s understood that after a couple minutes of eating, men will begin to stand up and quietly excuse themselves, taking their packet of food home to share with their families.
As an expat, I’ve tried to understand the selamatan communal meal and its meaning to locals. It seems to constitute an effort to maintain balance and peace in one’s world by asking for help or thanking Deity or spirit powers and corporately involving the whole community as one seeks this.
I know of one Javanese follower of Jesus who has reinterpreted the selamatan for his worldview. He always begins his selamatan by expressing to the guests that this selamatan is not for the more common purpose of asking for safety, salvation, life advantage and benefit from Allah or the spirits, but to openly and corporately express thanks and praise that those things have been convincingly provided through Jesus. He sees it much like a Javanese interpretation of the Lord’s Supper.
After years of living in Java, I realized how important and expected this selamatan practice was among my friends and neighbors and even held a few adapted selamatans myself at appropriate times. Our neighbors loved these events! The selamatan is not only about the distinct worldview you hold; to the Javanese, it is about gathering together as a community to express dependence and thanks.
Would you like to join us for Thanksgiving season? Visit the introductory post to see the updated index.
Finally, please share about this series by pinning, sharing on Facebook and Twitter, and linking back to this post!You are welcome to grab the button and share the inspiration!
{Today, I’m pleased to introduce to you Sarah Hansen of sarahfaithhansen.com. Sarah and I went to university together and have since reconnected via facebook. I love her story of how she left a six-figure salary as a corporate-sales professional to save her marriage and follow her husband to “a new location… and life” in Grenada. When she mentioned a few weeks ago that they had just celebrated Grenadian Thanksgiving, I asked her if she’d be willing to share about it here with us in our Season of Thanksgiving. I have learned so much from this post, and I hope you will too! Enjoy!}
The memorial on the St. George’s University campus where the Grenadian Thanksgiving ceremony is held every year.
So, what do choppers, soldiers, and gunfire have to do with Thanksgiving? For most Americans, not a whole lot. In the U.S., Thanksgiving is the season of thanks traced back to the first meal in 1621 between 53 pilgrims and the 90 helpful American Indians who saved them. It’s changed a lot from that three-day feast almost 400 years ago. Now, it’s a time of football, turkey, family, and if you’re from the south like I am, deer chili and hunting tall tales of how the men bagged their big buck. (Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian, but I still get included in the stories.)
However, for the last few Thanksgivings, I have missed the family women buzzing around carrying large mountains of food, while kids wrestle on the floor underfoot, and the men groan in unison after a devastating interception from the opposing team. For the last few Thanksgiving holidays, my husband and I have been in Grenada, West Indies; a tiny Caribbean island about the size of Detroit and 268 miles off Venezuela’s coastline.
Living on a tropical island, while a wonderful experience, takes some getting used to around the holiday season. The sun is still blazing hot, the humidity stays high, and our home has no central A/C unit. Our oven has just one setting: “on.” The oven’s definition of “on” is full-on fiery furnace of death which erupts the second I hold my trembling hands to the gas spewing from its creaky jaws. It stands to reason that I don’t do much holiday baking. The oven is so hot that anything but a casserole becomes a black hockey puck on the outer core while the innards stay mushy. Also, the kitchen temperature rises to sauna levels, so no one wants to stick around. This Thanksgiving, I used someone else’s oven. Christmas music also just seems out of place without a fireplace or chill in the air, and the Christmas lights around the grocery store look a bit strange next to the sandy beach. So, for this fourth Thursday in November, we won’t be celebrating Thanksgiving, because we’ve already had it.
So, why bring up all that war stuff and try to tie it into a holiday like Thanksgiving? Because for Grenadians, that is what this holiday commemorates. The island of Grenada celebrates the Thanksgiving holiday on October 25th. It is in honor of the day when U.S.-led invasion forces overthrew the leftist New Jewel Movement in 1983 in response to a military coup’s deposition and execution of Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop during Operation Urgent Fury. The battle for freedom cost lives. The U.S. forces lost 19 people, Cuban forces had 25 killed, and the Grenadian forces casualties included 45 killed, as well as another 24 civilians killed in the fighting.
A memorial near Point Salines airport
There is now a beautiful memorial on the campus of St. George’s University (pictured at the top of this post) in tribute to the sacrifice of those who died liberating the Grenadian people and saving the American medical students. The American and Grenadian flags fly proudly together next to the statue, keeping watch over the memorial.
Today the Grenadian celebration, just like our American holiday, revolves around food (although turkey isn’t favored over any other meat), family, and friends. However, since it is the anniversary of the battle, there is also a more formal and somber aspect to the holiday. St. George’s University has a ceremony at the memorial where the Grenadian Prime Minister lays a wreath on the statue commemorating the sacrifice of the lives lost during the invasion. People also attend a church service ceremony where the ministers and parliamentarians make an appearance in the service. The message is usually geared towards thankfulness and freedom.
The plaque at the airport memorial
Of course, the best part of any holiday for everyone on the island is time off of work to spend with their families. While many Grenadians choose a more traditional dinner at home, the beaches are also full. People gather around the grill roasting fish or chicken, while children play in the surf. It’s just another typical tropical day in paradise, and people enjoy the time with family and friends.
However, even though the American and Grenadian dates are different, and Grenadians don’t focus on eating all the turkeys on the island (honestly, I have yet to see an unfrozen, living turkey on this island), the spirit of Thanksgiving is still shared similarly within and between both countries. Because of the U.S.-led invasion force, Grenada is a democratic country, and the people here are free. And, as all Americans would agree, there are few things more deserving of gratitude than freedom.
Would you like to join us for Thanksgiving season? Visit the introductory post to see the updated index.
Finally, please share about this series by pinning, sharing on Facebook and Twitter, and linking back to this post!You are welcome to grab the button and share the inspiration!
Hello readers! It’s that time of the week again, when we share the books we’ve been enjoying! As always, I’m also open to any posts about helping others learn to read or improve their reading skills (including adults). Basically, anything literacy-related is fair game.
I’ve had a crazy busy week, so we’re going straight to party-time! What fun literacy stuff have you been up to this week? Please share, share, share! And don’t forget to pin, share on facebook, and invite others to come and party with us!
Please link up any posts you have, past or present, about books, reading, and literacy. This link party is all about sharing how books are impacting you! Joining in is easy; just click “Click here to enter…” next to “You are next” and copy/paste the URL of a blog post (not your homepage). Choose a photo to upload and then click some of the other great posts in the party and meet new bloggers and find out about new books!
Why should you link up to Booknificent Thursdays?
Linking up to parties and leaving comments on other posts is a proven way to increase traffic to your blog and grow your blog’s followers! Here are a few rules and suggestions:
You can link up as many posts as you want.
Please grab the Booknificent Thursday button and share it somewhere on your blog (sidebar, post, bottom, etc.) and please share about this party with any book-lovers you know.
I’d also really appreciate it if you’d hop over to my facebook page and give me a “like” and/or subscribe to receive my blog (just enter your email address up on the sidebar.)
We do want to keep it family-friendly, so I reserve the right to remove anything I consider offensive.
And one final rule, please visit AND comment on at least one other linked post if not more.
As those of you who know me and those of you who found this blog because of our Booknificent Thursdays book link-up know, I LOVE PICTURE BOOKS!!! So, of course, this “A Season of Thanksgiving” series could never be complete without a list of picture books that we love at Thanksgiving! I’m also including some non-book resources at the end of the list (gasp!) There are oodles and oodles of Thanksgiving books out there so this is by no means an exhaustive list. These are just the ones we have and love as well as a few I’ve come across this year for the first time and am excited about. I’ll let you know whether each one is “tried and true” or “new to us.”
Any of these links that take you to Amazon are affiliate links. If you click through to Amazon from here and decide to buy that product or even go on to buy something else we haven’t recommended, Amazon will pay us a small commission for it at no additional cost to you. Thank you for your support! Links that take you anywhere but to Amazon in this post are not affiliate links, just places to get great resources!
Picture Books for American Thanksgiving
If You Were At The First Thanksgiving - This is an installation in the “If You…” Series of living books about history. (Not to be confused with the “If you give a mouse…” series which comes up every time I do a search for these!) This book is full of good illustrations and interesting about the first American Thanksgiving.
The Pilgrims’ First Thanksgiving - Ann McGovern, who actually wrote many of the “If You…” series mentioned above but not that Thanksgiving one, authored this one instead. I love the full-page colored illustrations, and I like how the story is broken up into the seasons of the Pilgrims’ first year. I wish it had actually been entitled “The Pilgrims’ First Year in America” or something but I suppose it wouldn’t sell as well without the Thanksgiving reference in the title.
The Thanksgiving Story – While I don’t like the pictures in this one as well as the last one, I really like how the author, Alice Dalgliesh, chose one family to focus on and followed their journey from England through to the first Thanksgiving. That really helped my children to identify with real people who lived this story. Even though the text to picture ratio is higher than my three year old usually likes, she sits happily through this one and asks for it again.
Samuel Eaton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Boy, Sarah Morton’s Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrim Girl andTapenum’s Day: A Wampanoag Indian Boy In Pilgrim Times - We love this series! The photographs from Plimoth Plantation make them so very accessible to young children. They are not about the first Thanksgiving, but instead are set in the year 1627. They tell all about a typical day of one of these children in that time, from waking up and getting dressed, to doing chores and eating, to getting used to a new step-parent (which seemed to be a fairly regular occurrence for the Pilgrims as so many adults died in the first years.) I highly recommend these books. We read them over and over again every year.
Thanksgiving (Circle the Year With Holidays Series) - This is my girls’ favorite Thanksgiving book. It is about a modern-day family getting ready for Thanksgiving. There are some innocuous history lessons about the Pilgrims in it as well as a focus on establishing and maintaining family traditions each year. There are crafts and activities included at the back of the book. My children act like they’ve never seen them before and insist on doing them every single year!
Three Young Pilgrims - This is a new favorite. Like Dalgliesh’s The Thanksgiving Story, this one focuses on actual children, but the illustrations are so much better! It features full-color, full-page renditions, but what takes it over the top for me are the hand-drawn maps, layouts, and timelines with hand-written details and information about the Pilgrims, the “Strangers” who traveled with them, and the neighboring Native American tribes. I could pour over this book for hours!
Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving - I haven’t gotten to read this one yet, but it comes highly recommended from a reader. If you or your kids have tired of the “Pilgrim and Indian” bit of Thanksgiving, this book gives you something new to focus on while still learning history.
No Better Thing Under The Sun: Making The First Thanksgiving - This is another new one for me that I just picked up for my Kindle. I haven’t gotten to read it yet, but it looks fascinating! I love Amazon’s description of it and can’t wait to read it!
“Using a selection of primary sources, including Pilgrim accounts, period cook books, and probate inventories, the author brings the world of the Mayflower settlers to life and creates a 17th century feast incorporating only the ingredients they would have had available (including the five deer that the Wampanoag contributed). An engaging, often humorous, but never dull account of the birth of America’s most beloved festival and the Pilgrim Fathers we thought we knew.”
Thank You, Thanksgiving - This is a firm favorite in our house. It doesn’t have any history at all but is a very simple story, told mostly with pictures, of a little girl’s Thanksgiving day. It is delightful and we read it over and over again!
10 Fat Turkeys - This is a silly rhyming picture book about turkeys that my kids love to read over and over every year. I suppose you could use it to introduce the subtraction concept of taking away one, but we usually just read it for fun!
Other Thanksgiving Resources
A Thanksgiving Prayer digital sheet music for piano, vocal, and/or guitar – available as a PDF download. This is composed by Wendy Stevens of Compose Create. She describes this piece of music as follows:
“This new piece comes with a solo piano and vocal version, a version complete with easy guitar chords, and a version with advanced guitar chords. It’s a prayer that can be sung on Thanksgiving, every meal before Thanksgiving, or just by yourself at the piano.”
You can listen to the music on the page linked above so you’ll know if you and your kids like it before you buy.
Scholastic virtual field trip to Plimoth Plantation to learn about the first American Thanksgiving. This page is absolutely packed with information about Plimoth Plantation. There are videos and photos, historical letters, reader’s theater ideas, Thanksgiving printables, and more.
A Thanksgiving Bible study from Good Morning Girls. You can do this with some friends or with your kids, by yourself or you can join my facebook Bible study group where we’re studying it together. We’ve just finished week 1, but it’s the kind of study you can jump into whenever so we’d love to have you!
Seeds Family Worship, maker of some of our favorite CDs, is offering the entire Seeds of Praise CD as a free download until Thanksgiving! You definitely don’t want to miss out on this great offer!
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving - And finally, (for now), what Thanksgiving would be complete without good old Charlie Brown? Even though this is so old, our kids love it, and it’s actually surprisingly educational while being quite entertaining for the kids and for me too. Win-win!!
Would you like to join us for Thanksgiving season? Visit the introductory post to see the updated index.
And coming soon is a Grenadian Thanksgiving, guest-written by my friend Sarah who is currently living in Grenada. I’m super excited about this one as I didn’t even know Grenada had their own Thanksgiving! I can hardly wait to read her post. You can get to know Sarah in advance on her blog, sarahfaithhansen.com.
Finally, please share about this series by pinning, sharing on Facebook and Twitter, and linking back to this post!You are welcome to grab the button and share the inspiration!
Hello readers! It’s that time of the week again, when we share the books we’ve been enjoying! As always, I’m also open to any posts about helping others learn to read or improve their reading skills (including adults). Basically, anything literacy-related is fair game.
I’ve continued reading the series I mentioned last week from Patti Hill. Goodness and Mercy is still my very favorite, but I am definitely enjoying these.
I’ve also been hard at work on my annual Thanksgiving project, which I’ll be sharing about on the blog next week, so stay tuned. I’m really excited about it, and I think you, my book-loving friends, will really appreciate it!
But for now, it’s time to party! What fun literacy stuff have you been up to this week?
Please link up any posts you have, past or present, about books, reading, and literacy. This link party is all about sharing how books are impacting you! Joining in is easy; just click “Click here to enter…” next to “You are next” and copy/paste the URL of a blog post’s (not your homepage’s) URL. Choose a photo to upload and then click some of the other great posts in the party and meet new bloggers and find out about new books!
Why should you link up to Booknificent Thursdays?
Linking up to parties and leaving comments on other posts is a proven way to increase traffic to your blog and grow your blog’s followers! Here are a few rules and suggestions:
You can link up as many posts as you want.
Please grab the Booknificent Thursday button and share it somewhere on your blog (sidebar, post, bottom, etc.) and please share about this party with any book-lovers you know.
I’d also really appreciate it if you’d hop over to my facebook page and give me a “like” and/or subscribe to receive my blog (just enter your email address up on the sidebar.)
We do want to keep it family-friendly, so I reserve the right to remove anything I consider offensive.
And one final rule, please visit AND comment on at least one other linked post if not more.
It’s finally here! The Little Pim Giveaway I’ve been talking about for the last two weeks! Hurray! Hurray!
I told you we had purchased the first three Mandarin DVDs and that I’d let you know this week what we think of them, so here goes. We really like them! The kids are quite happy to sit down and watch them whenever I turn it on. All four (ages 9, 6, 3, and 9 months) watch happily, but the middle two definitely enjoy it the most.
We are also doing Rosetta Stone for Mandarin with the older two. I really like how Little Pim has filled in the cracks that Rosetta Stone was leaving, especially for my 6-year old. Rosetta Stone gives no translations at all, so my 9-year old has appreciated the option of subtitles available with Little Pim. She has commented several times that she understood the gist of something from Rosetta Stone but Little Pim really cleared it up for her.
Both of the older ones actually say that they prefer Rosetta Stone. Little Pim is by far the best choice for my 3-year old, and I actually think it is better for the 6-year old right now. I am happy that we have both. I think they make a great pair!
Now, you can have a chance to win the Discovery Set of DVDs from Little Pim in the language of your choice!! Just scroll down to enter the giveaway! Best of luck to all of you!
There are oodles and oodles of Thanksgiving books out there so this is by no means an exhaustive list. These are just the ones we have and love as well as a few I’ve come across this year for the first time and am excited about. I’ll let you know whether each one is “tried and true” or “new to us.”
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