30 Aug
Thank you so much for your visit!!! Your visit means a lot to me! Please do come and visit again here or amend Google Readers/ Bookmarks
X4FU9GAAXM9G
I hope you find the new site easier to navigate!
Maggy
X4FU9GAAXM9G
30 Aug
Kid’s Book and Kid’s iPhone App reviews continue. For my “reasons” behind “Why Apps?!” look here. Type “Kids” or “children” or “educational” into the Apple iStore and you get bombarded with Apps. Which to get?! Look no further… As well as our usual Monday Morning Book Club review!
All previously reviewed books can be found on my Amazon store:
Red Ted Arts Book Recommendations on Amazon
Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak. Read together age: 2.5yrs – 5yrs, Read alone age, 6yrs – 9yrs
For me “Where the wild things are” is such a classic children’s book. Max is a naughty boy and gets sent to his room without supper, there he embarks on a magical story to where the wild things are.. My favourite line is “Let the wild rompus start!”. Eventually though he misses his family and heads home… I am a huge Maurice Sendak fan and have many of his other books, so it is only natural that this book should be on my list!
Peekaboo Farm. No Kid’s iphone App review is complete without the inclusion of Peekaboo farm. Everyone I know seems to have it! It is lovingly designed, so the images are hugely appealing to both children and, erm, me. What it does: you hear an animal sound and get a chance to guess what animal it is. When you tap on the barn door it opens to reveal an animal behind. A child’s voice (American) then tells you the name of the animal. We like how all the animals go to sleep at the end of the “cycle”. Red Ted loved it, though is getting slightly bored of it now (he is 2.5yrs), but Pip Squeak (9mths) is fascinated by it. So it really is a fabulous App for the tiniest amongst us – Red Ted does still play with it, just not as often. It also has a Spanish language option…
28 Aug
I love the colours in this photo. Not the “sharpest shot”, but not bad for a photo taken on my phone? Red Ted on his first “Bouncy Slide”.
And surely that slide is classed as “Indigo”? What a difficult colour to find….
For 
Summer Rainbow – Indigo.
More Photos:
Blue Hands – Memory – Yellow (& a bit of water) – Playtime – Green & Black (Nature) – Broken Mirror – Zoom – Holidays – Pip Squeak learns about Emotions – Creatures – Motherhood (Yacht) – Who needs the beach when you have a ball? (Up up and Away) – Still life: Life’s Lovely Laundry – Symbol of Friendship (Xenophile) – Self Portrait by Red Ted – (My) Men – Enchanted Woods (Violet Woods) – Portrait – 7 Sins – Pride – Joy – Spring – Ugly – These should be in a Tim Burton film – Outside my front door (Watering Can) – Me – Colour (Red Ted’s Bunny)
27 Aug
I am VERY excited to bring you Clara from amieggs and her most adorable Amigurumi or Crocheted Small Things. She makes wonderful creations, that are normally available for purchase. But she has decided to be VERY generous and share two of her patterns with you. Below you will find the most adorable teddy and then hop over to her blog for a bunny (get it – “hop over”? ahem). She has inspired me to learn to crochet. I have never been interested before.. but now, my crochet hooks are on order! Woohoo. Over to the lovely Clara and her fabulous creations:
Hello! My name is Clara and I run the amieggs blog over at http://ami-eggs.blogspot.com/ =)
As you can see, in my patterns I draw diagrams to explain the difficult parts of a project and include many pictures to make your work as easy as possible!!!
No Sew Tee Rescue, make a new Tee out of an old one (Guest Post)
Super Cute Flannel Cupcake (Guest Post) – stocking fillers, baby showers or new home gift!
Delicious No Sew Lavender Bags
From T to Halterneck (Guest Post)
Felt Strawberries & Gingerbread Men (Guest Post)
How to make a No Sew Tea Towel Kid’s Apron
Simple but effective paper frames (vlog)
How to make a Flower Pom Pom (guest post) – simply gorgeous – use as wedding decor!
How to make a No Sew Bib (out of an old shirt)
How to make a Fabric Mâché Bowl (from old scraps of fabric!)
How to make a Paper Flower (from newspapers) (guest post)
How to make a Paper Boat (vlog)
How to make a Paper Cup (vlog)
How to make Swedish Hearts (Paper Baskets) (Guest vlog)
How to make a Balloon Poodle (vlog)
How to make Seedling Pots (out of newspapers) (vlog)
Funky comic party bags (Guest vlog)
25 Aug
This week’s craft was inspired by our “Holiday @ Home” holidays… as part of this, we visited a brand new beach about 1.5hrs drive from here – we had never been and it was a FABULOUS day out with friends. Lots of running around. Jumping into dunes. Getting covered in sand.WONDERFUL. What was quite special too, is that Red Ted now “knows what a beach is” and when at the end of the day, I dragged this book out for him again, he understood it that little bit better:
The Red Book, Barbara Lehman. We had already seen this reviewed by Playing by the Book and LOVED the sound of it (Zoe is much better at reviewing books, so do read her review too!). This book is a book without words. So it is brilliant for our bilingual family, as I can “read it in German” and The Englishman in, well, English! Also wonderful for “getting into” story telling as the pictures serve as a great prompt! So, I digress.
The book is about a little boy who finds a Red Book on his way to school. He can’t wait to take a look. He opens the book and sees a map. The next page shows the map in close up: an island. The next page he sees a beach (aha, here comes the link to our post today). On that beach is a boy…. reading… a book. A Red Book, that he found on the beach. And as he closes in on the Red Beach Book, the city boy sees himself! Oh! The two boys connect through their respective books and then embark on an adventure… and find each other. The Red Books are left behind for new people to discover them and connect. This is a lovely story of friendship described through pictures alone. Fabulous.
Interestingly, in Zoe’s review and she describes the city boy as a girl! Goes to show, how you make the story your very own…
I have been wanting to take part in beach art ever since Nature Get Crafty where I linked to a worldwide beach project hosted by the V&A. Shortly after this Jude from Artful Adventure also submitted an article about Beach Art in Summer Get Crafty. So off we went and collected lots of stones. I (!) couldn’t wait. Red Ted loved collecting stones with The Englishman and they came back to our “patch in the sand dunes” with two buckets full.
We sorted the stones into colour piles. They looked gorgeous. At this point one of the children emptied all the remaining water that was in the bucket into the sand. Never mind, I thought. But actually, mind we did. The stones quickly got covered in “sticky” sand and there wasn’t much to do with them. *sigh*. So we collected them again (having made a face) and took them home for painting.
Much better!
And once Red Ted had painted some, we played with some googly eyes. (Note: the googly eye playing wasn’t until 1-2 days later, i.e. the paint may take a little while to dry!). I put blutack on the back and together we explored the different expression ONE stone could make, just by the placement of eyes. Quite amazing really. Here is our Ghost Stone and our Yellow Stone in different poses!! Just moving the googly eyes apart creates significant change!!
Other Kid’s Craft & stART projects:
stART – Story Telling, Bunnies & Stars
stART: Giraffe’s can’t dance – a Giraffe Loo Roll Marionette
stART: Chick – a Pop Up Card
Book & Cook: Alphabet Cookies – Learning through play
stART: Busy Airport – Cotton Wool Clouds and, erm, PIGS!
stART: Hit &Myth – a mix & match book for older children (>5yrs)
stART: Story & Thank you time – inspirational thank you cards
stART: Hurray for Fish – one for babies or messy toddlers!
stART: Bedtime Star – Red Ted, makes a starry night for Pip Squeak’s nursery
stART: The Way Back Home, Oliver Jeffers – Red Ted makes a plane and a UFO
23 Aug
Kid’s Book and Kid’s iPhone App reviews continue. For my “reasons” behind “Why Apps?!” look here. Type “Kids” or “children” or “educational” into the Apple iStore and you get bombarded with Apps. Which to get?! Look no further… As well as our usual Monday Morning Book Club review!
All previously reviewed books can be found on my Amazon store:
Red Ted Arts Book Recommendations on Amazon
Hooray for Fish!By Lucy Cousins. Red Ted’s “first” favourite read – I picked up a hardback copy at Tate Modern Bookshop. He really enjoyed it the most 9 months – 12 months, though he does still enjoy it now, especially since I have brought it back out for Pip Squeak. We love all the different, bright and colour fish! Our favourite bit is probably the very rhythmic “Eye Fish, Shy Fish, Sky fish, Fly Fish” page, but that is just us. It is all lovely! I now know all the words practically off by heart!
From a parental perspective, it is great, as it has lots counting going on, lots of colours to identify, stripes, spots etc etc so they are definitely learning too!
One of my (!) favourite Lucy Cousins books.
We were lucky enough to be given this iphone App for review. I ADORE Dr Seuss, I love his books and we already have a number of the other Dr Seuss iphone Apps. So I was chuffed to bits to receive this brand new App for Red Ted and me to enjoy! Hurray. Especially, since I haven’t read the book yet!
What do we think? Well, we ADORE it (almost a given). There are so many things we like:
1) I like the voice over – voice can be so irritating, but they have this one spot on
2) The intro music – very “Dr Seuss” – cheeky, quirky and fun
3) The way, as with all of Dr Seuss’s apps, you can tap on the images and you see the word appearing and being read out – great for additional vocab learning (e.g. “Hill” or “Ears”)
4) How you have Read To Me, Read My Self and Auto Play modes
Because of these different “Modes” (point 4), this App has appeal to a number of age groups. Red Ted (2.5yrs) use the Read My Self mode like a book when we are on the go and I didn’t get a chance to pack a book. I get to read and gets to tap and scroll. Older children learning to read (5-8yrs), can assist their reading skills with the Read to Me function or go it alone in Read My Self. OR, you can just relax, sit back and use Auto Mode.
The story itself is about a Bear and a Rabbit engaging in a “Big Brag” of who is the best animal in the world. The Rabbit has fabulous hearing abilities. The Bear has amazing smelling abilities.. and then a little worm comes along and shows how he can see right around the world – we get a wee less in geography and foolish animals… And a little lesson on bragging! All excuted in the well known Dr Seuss drawing style.
WE LOVE!
That way we get to read it at our pace (which you can anyway by just scrolling through), but also to tap at all the pictures.
Previous iphone Apps reviews:
I Hear Ewe (free) – All 5 Duck Duck Moose Giveaway + Giveaway + mini review – Face iMake (free at time of posting) –KidArt – Dr Seusss ABC –The Wheels on the Bus – Duck Duck Moose
21 Aug
For Summer Rainbow – Blue.
More Photos:
Memory – Yellow (& a bit of water) – Playtime – Green & Black (Nature) – Broken Mirror – Zoom – Holidays – Pip Squeak learns about Emotions – Creatures – Motherhood (Yacht) – Who needs the beach when you have a ball? (Up up and Away) – Still life: Life’s Lovely Laundry – Symbol of Friendship (Xenophile) – Self Portrait by Red Ted – (My) Men – Enchanted Woods (Violet Woods) – Portrait – 7 Sins – Pride – Joy – Spring – Ugly – These should be in a Tim Burton film – Outside my front door (Watering Can) – Me – Colour (Red Ted’s Bunny)
