I'm a full-time mummy

I have been cutting down on doing product reviews ever since our 3rd kiddo came along in end of Sept 2013. I do still accept review pitches but only when time permits and if it is something that I can see it being useful and beneficial to our family. Also, as busy as I am with 3 kiddos, home cooking, taking care of hubby's administration site of the business and swamped up with managing my FB page and blog, I just can't say no to reviewing good books! Reading is my passion and coupled with books that are of parenting or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: Believe, Belong, Become
Author: Nick Vujicic
Illustrator: Dreamergo
Publisher: PMA Music Foundation
ISBN: 9789881278760
Paperback: 93 pages 

Description from the product page:
"A story of faith on how Nick overcomes his limitations and gains strength through God."

Firstly, this is the 3rd book from the 'Give Me a Hug' series but having been just able to review the 3rd one without the earlier 2 series, I don't think it matters which series you are reading on as it can be read on its own as well. I don't seem to see any continuation from previous series but I think it would be great to have collected all the books in this series!

Okay, back to the review of "Believe, Belong, Become" - the illustration is very very nice. Soft, gentle yet comical illustrations coupled with pastel sweet and soothing color choices is very easy on the eyes. I love the details drawn and reading this book together with our 5.5 years old boy and 3 years old girl is just a wonderful delight!

I started off with a brief introduction to our 5.5 years old boy on who is Nick Vujicic and why he is born without limbs. Honestly, I have not been talking about people with physical disabilities with our kiddos as I just don't know how to approach this subject. So I'm very grateful to be able to touch on this subject through this book.

This book comes with 8 chapters, going from the time Nick was a young child, pondering and wondering on why he was born this way, to how he suffered the looks and questions etc from people who came across him to how he overcome and uses his disability in a positive way to bring people closer towards God.

Reading to our young kiddos, there are some instances where I rephrase the sentences in the book for easier understanding but I still make it a point to deliver the message of each chapter to our kiddos.

Our boy particularly enjoyed seeing the illustrations on how Nick was portraying himself as an alien (see picture below). Our boy asked me whether Nick was an alien or a monster and why he looked like that, so I used the opportunity that sometimes we tend to see something that does not look common or normal as something scary or creepy looking like how this girl in the book thought of when she saw Nick.

As our boy started his pre-K this year, I also reminded him that just because Nick does not have hands or legs, it doesn't stop him from doing normal things like us. Nick can continue his studies, teaching and inspiring other people.

A chapter that struck my heart is chapter 5 page 52 '... make use of our abilities and experiences to light others' flame of hope!' It reminded me of the time that I learned to comfort and prayed for a stranger whose mum will be undergoing an operation while my own mum lies on her bed in ICU fighting for her life.

I can see our boy especially being interested in this book as it touches on something different. I use the opportunity from this book to teach our kiddos to:

- Be grateful with what we have been blessed with.

- Not throw tantrum when things doesn't go your way or we are not like others. Just because whatever you wished for doesn't materialise, it doesn't mean the end of the world. We should pick up ourselves and move on and make the best of what we have.

- Not judge a book by its cover. We should not be influenced by first impressions or assumptions.

- Trust God in His purposes for our life.

- Make the best use with what we have to inspire and enrich other people's lives.

- Be patient when seeking answers or help for our worries, troubles and so on. That God answers our prayers no matter what, we just need to lean on him and trust on His will for us.

In summary, it is a very inspiring book with educational and moral values which can be instilled in our children. I can definitely see this book being read over and over and over again. Highly recommended and I hope I get to check out the other books in the series as well!!

The book is available at all major bookstores. So far for Malaysia, only MPH Online carries the Chinese version.

I received no monetary compensation for this review, I was provided with a copy of the book in order to facilitate my review. All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Please do your own research when purchasing products, as your opinions may differ from mine. And if you'd like to read my previous book reviews, you can do so by reading this post of mine called "My Book Reviews"

I wrote about what to do when your child gets distracted earlier, and today, I want to share on one of the ways I do to get our kiddos to concentrate hehehe...

We went for the Big Bad Wolf Preview Sales on 4th December and bought lots of books. You can take a look at the pictures I took during the preview sales on my FB fan page album. Anyway, one of the books that caught my attention was this:

Yup... Disney Super Look & Find Activity Pad. I got this originally for our 3 years old girl who is very into princessy stuff and pink colored stuff. So I thought why not? This activity pad is very pink, has princesses on the cover and inside as well and most important, I get to let her play and teach her concentration skills hehehe...

So I started with the easy ones, looking for bigger and easier to find clues. Get her interested in looking for the hidden objects and complimented her with shocking surprises that she can find them (she did find them fast really!) and we moved on to harder ones where the clues get smaller and the picture gets smaller and more objects inside as well. Even our 5.5 years old boy can't resist and joined in the search as well!

In this situation, our kiddos get to play while learning to concentrate and focus longer by looking for the hidden items. Win - win?

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

In October this year, I brought our 3 years old Alyson to her 1st Sunday school for age group 3-4 years old. Children in this age group are supposed to be independent and parents can leave them in the class while they attend the main service. However for new children in this group, parents can hang around in the class (at the back, not participating with child) so that they can slowly adjust to being in the new class.

She was quite nervous and had separation anxiety at first and clung onto me not letting me go anywhere. So I sat next to her throughout the class, gently telling her how other children enjoys the class, dance and sing and do their crafts.

When it was crafts time, I sat behind her and slowly guide her to do the activity for the day. At first, she happily doodles away on a coloring paper. And then she got distracted by the many color pencils there. She started playing with the color pencils there.

So what is a mother supposed to do when her child gets distracted?

I decided to use the opportunity to teach her. Don't let any moment slipped away and waste a good teaching moment.

I saw her arranging the color pencils by the color group. So I taught her the colors. I also counted with her the number of color pencils in each group. She can count up to 10 so far so it was pretty fun for her to be counting instead of coloring at that moment. As for the coloring activity, she didn't continue on but she did continue to sort the pencils by its color group.

In this situation, she gets to continue playing while I get to include some teachable moments for her. Win - win?

** Note: I have disabled the commenting feature on my blog engine thanks to all the spammers who happily spam my blog every day. If you wish to ask me any questions, you can find me at my Facebook page (I'm there almost everyday) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.