In The Book Bag...

Ebi-kun has a new fad, thanks to his sensei. The books are called Deltora Quest by Emily Rodda, he has been reading them in Japanese but wants to read them in English too so he can compare the translation!

They are exciting fantasy books, I think 8 in the first series. He is ploughing through them, a book a day! Thankfully we joined the library a couple of weeks ago otherwise I might have to get a second job to keep the boy in books!

I know it seems odd that we have only just joined the local library but the reason is two-fold. Firstly, it's miles away! Secondly, it's all Japanese books and I have always encouraged him to read more English at home. They have a reading card for school where the kids are supposed to keep track of how many book they have read and how many pages. Ebi-kun has finally started using it! He was already 5 books down, 5 days into the month, all with 205 pages each.

We did discover that that there is a drop off point at school so he can just post the books there when he is done with them and the library truck comes round to school once a week so he can now borrow books from there too - he is like a kid in a candy store when it comes to books.

We have just finished Harry Potter and The Goblet Of Fire, it's fun reading them again, it is so long since I first read the series that I don't remember what half the story is about anyway! Ebi-kun wants to watch the film before we start on the next book, I think we might take a HP break over the summer and start again after we come back from the UK.

Now we are reading Beowolf by Micheal Morpurgo, illustrated by Michael Foreman and the illustrations are beautiful, fit perfectly with the text. Beowolf was one of my favourite books as a kid so I'm hoping Ebi-kun will fall in love with it too, might have to get him the old English version to read, then he can compare those two texts too!

Another book that is popular with him at the moment is Girls Who Rocked The World, this is a great book to dip in and out of since the stories are short. I also love the questions that they bring up, in fact when we were at the Magritte exhibition Ebi-kun asked why most of the famous artists were men. I'm happy that it's on his radar and he is noticing these things.

As for me, I have picked up E3 by Pam Grout. We had fun doing the experiments in E2 so I want to have a go with her next book. It's about abundance, manifesting money and woo-woo stuff, quite interesting when you start doing the experiments!

What's in your book bag at the moment? How about the kids?

Now I'm reading....

Well, not me, Ebi-kun. He has been working with the Starfall books and the online books for a couple of weeks and doing really well so I wanted to get him some easy readers. I considered the Bob books for a while, someone had recommended them on another blog somewhere but when I started looking at the reviews they seemed to have as many negative ones as positive. So after some more research I settled on these, Clever Critters.

As soon as they arrived, (they come in a handy little pack, 10 books and a parent guide), Ebi-kun opened them up, took at the first book and read it all by himself, he was so chuffed!

The books have a mix of phonics and sight words and get more difficult. They use simple repetitive text and is written in a building block pattern, each story starts with 2 words and builds up to phrases, short sentences and long sentences. At the end of the story there are some comprehension questions for you to ask the child and reward stickers. Plus at the back of each book there is a list of phonic sounds and which sight words are introduced in that book. That means you can prep your child if you feel it necessary.

The stories are silly, which is good, kids like silly and Ebi-kun likes the illustrations too.

So, if you have kids getting to that starting to read stage, these books get a big thumbs up from me!

On a completely different note, I have finished most of my presents that have to me mailed out, I just have to wrap them and post them! I also started Ebi-kun's advent calendar, I didn't get round to it last year. I have made 24 felt stocking and now I am working on the numbers and trying to figure out where and how to hang them.

I also had a bit of a panic because I completely forgot about a little friends birthday, we are going to have a birthday tea here today but I didn't have a present - so I rustled up a dinosaur apron and a puzzle block with pictures of the birthday boy, Ebi-kun and two other good friends. He will leave for Malaysia in the near future so I thought it would be a fun keepsake.

Right, I have to get myself organised, I am off for a coffee/lunch date with a friend I haven't seen for ages, we have a lot to catch up with, like her wedding in Bali for starters. Then we are rushing back for the birthday tea.

For those who celebrate Thanksgiving, hope you have a lovely few days!