Disclosure:I was sent an e-book to review
free of charge from Aliona Gibson.
All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive
any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each
item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase
them.
You may remember last month for Around the World in 12 Dishes we "visited" Jamaica. I also joined a group of Multicultural Kid Blogs presenting Christmas in Different Lands and we chose Jamaica for that as well. I was lucky enough to have the very talented Aliona Gibson read my Christmas in Jamaica post. She contacted me about her newest book, Justice pon di Road, and asked if I would be willing to review it. I, of course, jumped on the opportunity. When she finished the final copy she sent me an ebook to review. It is wonderful!!
In this story, Gibson shares so much of the Jamaican culture - more than I learned in any of my previous research. The story is about a toddler and his mother going for a walk on the road (pon di road as Jamaicans would say) while on a trip in Jamaica. The story is based on her own family visits to Jamaica. As you read the story you feel like you are experiencing the walk with them and get to really know a bit about the people they meet. When I read it I felt like I was watching Justice learn about a new place and get more comfortable while on the walk. Gibson uses the language of Jamaica throughout the story, and the reader sees how caring the Jamaican people are. At the end of the story there are pages of information from a patois glossary for the terms used in the book to a map and information about Jamaica and Jamaican National Heroes and other celebrities. You gain so much knowledge just from these pages. Finally Andy Chou did a beautiful job illustrating the book. The pictures are wonderful and tell the story right along with Gibson's words. Chou did an amazing job showing details of the Jamaican culture.
This book is self published. Gibson used her own savings to finance the book and used Kickstarter to pay for the printing costs. You can check out her website to buy a copy of the book for $15 and the book's Facebook page to show your support.
This is truly a fabulous multicultural book. Hazel really enjoyed it as well and asked me if we got to keep our copy so we could read it again. Needless to say we are happy to be able to review it and share it here for you.
On Monday (the third Monday of January) the United States celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. His actual birthday is today, January 15th. To celebrate his birthday there are many events and most have to do with community service--doing for others. There are also parades, special breakfasts and all sorts of ways different people celebrate. With Hazel being five and just starting to really notice a difference in race, I thought we would spend some time learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. and how he helped change the world we live in.
Disclosure:I was sent this product to review
free of charge from Baker's Passport.
All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive
any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each
item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase
them.
Today I am going to share with you a wonderful experience and together time. Hazel and I tried Baker's Passport Little Bites in Spanish this weekend. We had so much fun. Now I will admit this is definitely meant for slightly older children (who can read and write), but we had fun reviewing our Spanish and baking cookies. Baker's Passport sends you a little packet that includes the recipe with Spanish lessons built in. The Spanish is the numbers, colors and some other phrases. They have places to read and write in the Spanish as well as trace some words. They offer Little Bites in Spanish, French and Japanese and I get to give one of each away, so three winners!!
We got to work. First of course the instructions are to wash your hands. We also put on our aprons (and Hazel put on her hat). Then we got right to work. Here are some pictures of Hazel softening the butter (in the microwave), measuring the brown sugar, mixing and scooping the cookies.
Then there were places with Spanish lessons like matching, a crossword and just vocabulary. Plus all the steps were numbered in Spanish. And the answers are available on their website, so you do not have to know the language to make sure you are doing it correctly!
Now this was a fun day of baking and learning. Even if you do not bake often or like to bake, this is a fun and easy recipe to follow. The instructions are very clear and easy to do. Oh, and I should mention
that we all loved the cookies. They were gobbled right up and Hazel
insisted on bringing some to Nonni's since she was going there for her
weekly playdate with her grandmother.
The even better part of Baker's Passport is for every purchase $1 is donated to Action Against Hunger. So there are three positives with every purchase, learning, baking and helping. Now if you do not want to wait for the giveaway to end, you can get 15% off today on your purchase with the code: BAKINGFUN14. This code is only good through February 7, 2014.
Now for our fun giveaway!! Please follow our Giveaway Rules and do what the Rafflecopter asks. There will be three winners!! Each winner will get one of the Little Bites. a Rafflecopter giveaway
Today we get to share a Laura Numeroff book as part of the Virtual Book Club for Kids. For those that do not know, Virtual Book Club for Kids is a monthly blog hop where an author is picked for the month and a group of amazing blogs shares one of the books by the author with an activity or craft to go with it. Anyone who has an activity or craft to go with a book by the selected author is welcome to share it at the blog hop. The bloggers presenting the blog hop are:
I had so many incomplete ideas for my post today. Since they were all incomplete, I considered just not posting, but then I remembered I wanted to do a winter round-up since so many of you have not been following since 2011 when we began. So here it is, our past winter activities, crafts and books and a movie. Enjoy!!
