My sister-in-law had a copy of The Siblings' Busy Book and I really liked it,so I bought my own. Basically, it is 200 activities that children can do,...moreMy sister-in-law had a copy of The Siblings' Busy Book and I really liked it,so I bought my own. Basically, it is 200 activities that children can do, with sections in each activity focusing on what you can do with a baby, toddler, pre-schooler and school age child. It's an American book so some of the activities are quite US-focused, for example making paper hats for Columbus Day, but the only one that you really couldn't do in the UK (unless you lived in Dartmoor) is letterboxing, as this doesn't seem to take place here (I may be wrong).
You might say, as some have, "surely you can just think of things to do with your kids anyway", and it is true that, especially in the "let's pretend" section, many of the games are things you might play anyway - shops, doctors, and so on. But even here, it is helpful to have new ideas to prolong a game, or make it relevant to different ages, or just save your sanity from having to go through exactly the same motions for the nth time. While we play shops all the time, for example, I wouldn't have thought of playing "libraries", which has become a great game to play when I am feeding the baby ("Baby would like a book about squirrels. Do you have one you can recommend? What happens in this book? Is it short or long?").
It's also useful for when your brain is entirely blank at the end of the day. Other sections include music and movement, outdoor adventures, learning and exploring, in the kitchen and rainy day fun. As well as libraries, we have played "mail for you and me" (again, I would have thought of playing post but this gave added ideas like making postcards and using stickers for stamps), Diddle Diddle Doo, and apple printing. The next thing I want to do is make ice bricks and build with them, and do bark rubbing.
A lot of the activities are really for babies over six months ("your young baby will like to watch his siblings during this activity" it says quite often which is not true for HB for any reasonable period of time) so I'm hoping that the book will really come into its own over the next few months.
Funnily enough, my two year old keeps wanting me to read him the book itself, rather than do any of the activities. "What is this game called? How do you play it?" he keeps saying. Me: "Would you like to play it?" "No." (less)
**spoiler alert** It took me forever to read but that's because I had a baby in the middle. Last time I had a baby I was reading the same author's A F...more**spoiler alert** It took me forever to read but that's because I had a baby in the middle. Last time I had a baby I was reading the same author's A Fire Upon The Deep so I thought it appropriate to follow up with the prequel. I preferred the first book which I found kind of hallucinatory but that was probably due to lack of sleep. This one was brilliant too but the first was more ground breaking in its view of the universe I thought. I read a review that complained that the aliens in Deepness were too un-alien, but I think that is the point - you do find out in the end why that might be, that the book is basically filtered through another point of view and not everything the Spiders do is to be taken literally. I found the depiction of ordinary (and not so ordinary) people living under a dictatorship, and how they come to terms with that, to be very interesting, and I enjoyed the portrayal of the ultra-market-led Qeng Ho and Pham Nuwen, although I'm not sure I would enjoy living in a society so driven by market forces. There are many moments of genuine horror here as well, and they slap you in the face unexpectedly - such as what happens to Qiwi's mother and how Qiwi finds out. All in all, great book, easier to read than Fire I think (or possibly I have an easier baby this time). I hope Vernor Vinge is writing more novels, and I would like to read his short stories now.(less)
I bought this back in the mists of time when I thought I would be learning more Russian than "my brother is an engineer". It has the Russian...moreI bought this back in the mists of time when I thought I would be learning more Russian than "my brother is an engineer". It has the Russian down one side of the page and the English translation down the other side, and is designed to make it easy for the student so the translation is pretty literal rather than literary.
I avoided reading this for a while (15 odd years) as I thought all the stories would be about tractors and collective farms. But actually I enjoyed them, as examples of writing from a particular culture and time, and I found the notes useful. My favourite was Making Snowmen, where a teacher supervises her class making, well, snowmen, and is led to muse on their futures after a sullen child proves to be an artistic genius in the making.
"It is true they are no good at making snowmen, but there is some other thing which they can do splendidly and inspiredly, something as yet unknown to me or to themselves. At the moment they have in their hands snow, plasticine, coloured pencils, building bricks, wooden pieces of construction kits - so little! The time will come when they have at their disposal all materials and all the elements, the open spaces of the earth and of all creation, all words, all sounds. And who knows what it is given to them to create!"(less)
I thought this was a gentle, evocative book which I enjoyed for its descriptions of the Canadian Indian (there may be a better word but I don't know i...moreI thought this was a gentle, evocative book which I enjoyed for its descriptions of the Canadian Indian (there may be a better word but I don't know it) culture.
At first I thought the book lacking in dramatic conflict - the main character the young vicar is so nice, and seems to be accepted pretty readily by the village even though the book suggests tension over whether he will be or not. But the drama actually comes from the conflict betwen young and old in the village and the village culture and the outside world. The key message comes when the vicar goes to see the salmon returning upstream to spawn, and one of the girls cries at their death, but the vicar says that they have fulfilled the purpose of their lives so their death is not sad.
So, a lovely easily read book which I may read again; I just feel there could have been a bit more conflict in the main character rather than making him all good and other characters who are clearly set up to be his foils, liek the teacher and the anthropologist, all bad. Maybe the character of Mark could have had some of those traits internalised in himself. But then maybe the book would not have been so gentle.(less)
When a book is called A Bit of Earth and the main character has the surname Misselthwaite (spelling?) it is obviously trying to link itself to The Sec...moreWhen a book is called A Bit of Earth and the main character has the surname Misselthwaite (spelling?) it is obviously trying to link itself to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (the hall is called Misselthwaite and there is a chapter called A Bit of Earth, as that is what Mary asks her uncle for). So I was expecting a book about the healing power of nature, which isn't really what this is about. There is less about the garden than I thought there would be.
But although there are obvious similarities with Secret Garden (a man whose wife dies (not in a garden) neglects his son) I preferred the grand strokes of the children's book to the quietness of this book. It was OK. I just wasn't that enthralled. I didn't like Guy, I thought his treatment of his son was worse than the book seemed to suggest (perhaps because I have a little boy). (less)
Loading...
