GIFT IDEA

by Papa

Title: Homemade Gift Card Set

Recommended Age: 6-10

One year, for Christmas, we made Kid A a set of gift cards that he could redeem throughout the year.

He loves getting to choose what restaurant we will eat at for lunch or dinner.  So, we have a Dine Where You Like card.

He also loves his screen time, like most kids his age do.  We only allow him 20 minutes of screen time Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (except during summer).  With a 30 Minutes Screen Time card, he can increase his screen time (still only on the weekends) with no questions asked.

Finally, we all love boba, and he always asks if he can get some.  So, we added a One Boba Drink card.

FAMILY GAMES

by Papa

Title: Money Money Money

Summary:

A lot of kids are interested in money at an early age.  This game teaches them how to count money in a fun way.  Kid A invented this game after receiving a play money kit as a gift.

Recommended Age: 6-8

What you will need:

• A set of play money
  
• The set should have a good amount of all the different values:

-10 dollar bills
-5 dollar bills
-1 dollar bills
-Quarters
-Dimes
-Nickels
-Pennies

• A stack of note cards
  
• A white sheet of paper
  
• Player pieces (you can borrow them from a board game that you own like "Sorry" or "Monopoly"
  
• A small ball that anyone can hold in their hand
  

Instructions:

1. On the white sheet of paper, draw a table with the number of players as the amount of columns and between 10 and 20 rows.  This will be the board.
   
2. Label the bottom side of the table as Start and the top side as You Win.
   
3. On each note card, write an amount of money.  Try to make the amounts under $20 and make them all vary for different degrees of difficulty.
   
4. Shuffle the note cards and turn them face down in a pile.
   
5. Place the player pieces on the Start row of the board.
   
6. Distribute the money evenly.
   
7. Take turns flipping a note card over to show the amount.
   
8. All players get the amount showing from their stash.
   
9. The first player who puts the correct amount from their stash and grabs the ball wins the round and gets to advance one row on the board.
   
10. Once someone grabs the ball, all players stop and check if that player did indeed get the correct amount.  If you grab the ball and you don't have the correct amount, you move back one row.
    
11. The first player to get to the You Win row wins!
    

Optional Instructions:

If you want to give the younger children a better chance, you can have the player who turns over the note card roll a set of dice.  The amount shown is the amount all the players except the young child needs to count to before accessing their money stash.  You can use multiples of the dice number if you need to make the amount of time higher.

BOOK REVIEW

by Papa

Title: Peter and the Starcatchers

Authors: Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson

Recommended Age: 8-12

Pages: 451

Read-Aloud Time: About 3 weeks (20 minutes a day)

Rating: 8/10

Peter and the Starcatchers is a great read for both kids and adults.  Even when you know how everything turns out at the end of the book, getting to that point is a quite an adventure.  I had never read the original Peter Pan story.  I only knew what the movies Peter Pan, Hook, and Finding Neverland wanted me to know.  So, I don't know if this prequel is accurate for how it all began, but it didn't really matter.  It was easier to just imagine the characters as completely new ones.  Instead of the comical Captain Hook from the Disney movie, this one was quite serious and nasty.  Instead of the cocky and slightly annoying Peter Pan, this one was brave and selfless.

Favorite Thing: Kid A and I got a kick out of the way that Molly and the porpoises spoke - especially when Molly wasn't saying what she thought she was saying.  We also really liked Mr. Grin for some reason.  Maybe it's the name.

Least Favorite Thing:  I think the Tinkerbell introduction could have been cut and saved for another story.  I guess I'm skeptical that a bird can turn into a fairy from starstuff.  She seemed tacked on at the end to make the story all tidy.  Also, the description of the food the boys were given on the boat was pretty gruesome.  It gave me a bad taste in my mouth which, I guess, is the point.

Questionable Material for Kids:  There are battles with sailors, pirates, natives, and sea creatures that result in blood and, of course, the loss of a hand.

FAMILY GAMES

by Papa

Title: The Backwards Word Game

Summary:

Someone says a word pronouncing it backwards.  The other person guesses what the word is.  For example, if you say "T-A-B" the answer would be "Bat".  This is a great game for kids to learn what letters make what sounds and gives them practice imagining the word in their heads and reading it back.

Recommended Age: 4-6

What you will need:

• Nothing! 
  

Instructions:

1. Take turns who is the speaker and who is the interpretor.  If you have a more than 2 people playing, go around in a circle with the last interpretor switching to speaker.
   
2. You can stick to 1 syllable words for younger kids and move up to multiple syllables gradually.
   

FAMILY GAMES

by Papa

Title: Geography

Summary:

This game is taken from Cam Jansen and the Catnapping Mystery by David A. Adler.  Cam and her friend, Eric, play this game as they walk around town with Cam's parents.  One player says the name of a place (country, state, city) and the next player has to pick the name of a place that starts with the last letter of the previous place.

Recommended Age: 8-10

What you will need:

• Nothing!
  

Instructions:

1. Take turns saying the name of a place.  The name of the next place has to start with the last letter of the previous place.  For example, if the player before you says "Seattle," you have to come up with a place that starts with the letter "e".
   
2. Some letters are more difficult to start with than others.  If you get stumped, look at a map or a globe for some suggestions.  It's a great way to learn about more geographical places.
   

BOOK REVIEW

by Papa

Title: The Secret Garden

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Recommended Age: 8-12

Pages: 274

Read-Aloud Time: About a month (20 minutes a day)

Rating: 8/10

The Secret Garden is a classic for good reasons.  Kid A and I really enjoyed it.  Even though the main character is Mary Lennox, the main relationship the story deals with is Colin Craven and his father.  This made the book more interesting to me as a father.  The book also made us both appreciate the outdoors more.  So much of the book was dedicated to describing the gardens and the animals and I realized how much I take nature for granted living in Washington.

Favorite Thing: Probably my favorite part of the book is where the kids are pretending not to eat so that Colin can keep his condition a secret.  They sneak in food with the help of their friend Dickon and they refuse to eat the food that a private cook provides for them.  Since Kid A is quite skinny, I told him that we should try to fatten him up and keep it a secret from his mama.  He didn't take to it though.

Least Favorite Thing: Reading Yorkshire aloud is quite difficult for me.  I'm positive that it doesn't actually sound the way that I read it.

Questionable Material for Kids: Mary's parents die early on in the book due to some kind of plague that isn't really explained.  This might be a tough issue to understand for younger kids, but the book moves ahead quickly from this scene and the bulk of the text deals with Mary living in her uncle's house.  Colin also speaks of dying a few times because everyone around him thinks that he's going to die.

FAMILY GAMES

by Papa

Title: The Map Game

Summary:

Someone hides a "treasure" in a room and draws the location on a map.  The other person uses the map to find it.  This is a great game to teach kids how to use a map.

Recommended Age: 3-7

What you will need:

• Sheet of paper
  
• Pencil
  
• Small toy (we like to use a plastic Easter egg)
  

Instructions:

1. Draw a map of a room.  We've used living rooms, family rooms, and dining rooms.  You can even make a map of a few rooms that are connected.  You can use a pen for this.
   
2. You can label the objects in the drawing if you want to.  We find that it's more fun not to label the objects so that it's not too easy.
   
3. The seeker waits in another room where he or she can't see what the hider is doing.
   
4. The hider hides the special toy somewhere in the room or series of rooms.
   
5. The hider draws a X with a pencil where the treasure is hidden.
   
6. The hider gives the seeker the map.
   
7. The seeker finds the special toy.
   
8. The seeker becomes the hider and the hider becomes the seeker.
   

BOOK REVIEW

by Papa

Title: The Sword of Shannara

Author: Terry Brooks

Recommended Age: 10-14

Pages: 726

Read-Aloud Time: About 6 months

(20 minutes a day)

Rating: 4/10

I had read The Sword of Shannara for the first time when I was 10 years old and I absolutely loved it.  I had read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Rings, but I actually found The Lord of the Rings trilogy a bit boring at times - especially when they started singing songs.  Anyway, I had never really noticed a parallel between The Lord of the Rings and The Sword of Shannara until I read it to Kid A this year.  It's pretty much The Lord of the Rings For Dummies.  Shea and Flick are Frodo and Samwise.  Allanon is Gandalf.  Balinor is Aragorn.  Hendel is Gimli.  And Menion and the Elf brothers are kind of combined to be Legolas.  There's even a psychotic gnome named Orl Fane who is Gollum.

It's not merely that the story is a copy of another story that leads to a low rating.  I just thought the writing was really bad.  The author recounts the events that have already happened numerous times.  A character will separate from the group for one reason or another and then there will be page after page of that character thinking back to what got them there even though we just read the details a couple of chapters earlier.  And it's incredibly long and dense with words.  Instead of just saying "Menion" or "he", the author chooses these other aliases for the characters that are longer than their original names, like "Highlander" and "Prince of Leah".  The aliases are then mixed in as if on a find and replace in random order.  Eventually, while reading it aloud, I would just say "he" instead of the alias.  It worked just as well.

Favorite Thing:  There's an awesome map at the beginning of the book.  I know that this is just like The Lord of the Rings too, but we kept referring to this map throughout the book to see where the characters were and where they were headed.

Least Favorite Thing:  There was only one female character in the entire book, Shirl Ravenlock.  I mean, the book is 726 pages long and there's only one girl mentioned?  It just doesn't make any sense.

Questionable Material for Kids:  There are lots of battles and fights where people or creatures die.  A couple of the main characters even die.  Some of the scenes will probably be a bit scary for young kids.