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, children, family or religion or educational genre, all the more I gotta say yes!

Title: Little Paper Crate: Crafting Stories 
Publisher: MPH Group Publishing Sdn Bhd (Aug 31, 2015)
ISBN: 9789674153021
Paperback: 66 pages

Description from the product page:

"The Little Paper Crate book is a home-grown project dedicated to children with a penchant for creating. It features various chapters with activities and materials parents can easily obtain, and each project has been tried, tested and enjoyed by children of different ages. The aim of this craft book is for kids to make an imaginative mess through creativity, and we hope this book will kick-start an inspiring, artful adventure! Happy crafting!"
I'm glad I get to review this book! The first thing that caught my attention was the first project in the book! Foosball table using shoebox! I don't have some of the materials listed in the book (single hole puncher, cloth pegs) so I had to improvise from there with whatever materials I have on hand. I used my double hole puncher and colored ice cream sticks instead.

The book's layout is simple and easy to understand. Materials and tools required are neatly arranged for you to refer to. I would prefer if there are suggestions of alternatives for materials / tools in case you don't have the ones shown in the book. That would be nice hehehe... Also I'm a stickler for books with step-by-step tutorials, it would be awesome if there is close-up shots of the major steps taken to DIY the projects in this book. Picture below is the outcome of my DIY project.

I explained to our girls how to play this game but being both under 4, they can't really understand the rules of it so I ended up just telling them to hold on to the chopsticks, to adjust left and right, and 'kick' the ball front or back. At least still can teach them about directions (left, right, front, back)

One other thing that I can suggest for the improvements of this book is to add in some teaching and learning moments from the projects made. For example, by doing this project, children get to learn about the science of it or how things work and being applied to real-life scenarios and stuff.

I appreciate that the projects are separated by different categories in the book: games, fun with nature, party favorites and gifts by kiddos. The last category is interesting as it doubles up as a DIY project that the kiddos can make and give away as presents!

In summary, a fun book that you can count on to DIY something awesome with your kiddos!

The book is available at all major bookstores such as MPHOnline.

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"

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I recently did a little DIY sewing project while still incorporating some teaching and learning moments for our kiddos as well. I used to play this game, it is called 'Batu Seremban' in our country (Malaysia in case you don't know) or five stones in English. This game is usually played by girls individually or in groups of two to five people. You can watch this tutorial on how to play the game. I remembered playing this game during my schooling years, so much fun!

I initially tried to sew using my sewing machine but it doesn't turned out nicely as the sizes I made is a bit too small and I feel really clumsy working on such a small piece with my sewing machine so I abandoned the idea and decided to hand sew the pieces myself.

So what we needed to make the batu seremban are:

- Cloth (any scrap cloths you have)

- Scissors

- Pen and ruler

- Needle and thread

- A small spoon

- Grains or beans (I used rice grains as I can't find any beans at that time)

Tutorial:

1. Using a pen and ruler, draw out 5 pieces of equivalent sizes (my measurement was 2.5 inches by 2 inches for each piece)

2. Cut out the respective pieces.

3. Take one piece, fold the piece into half (make sure the ncier looking surface is facing inwards) and start to sew along the edge leaving the last side for you to pour in the grains/beans.

4. With the thread still uncut, turn the piece inside out so that the nicer surface is facing outwards now.

5. Use the small spoon and start to scoop bits of grains/beans into the piece until about 70% full (I prefer a bit space in my pieces)

6. Sew off the remaining side to close up the piece and ensure no grains/beans are leaking or falling out.

7. Repeat the above steps for the remaining 4 pieces.

Teaching & Learning Moments:

1. I let our older 2 kiddos (6.5 years old boy and 4 years old girl) take turns to help me fill up the pieces with grains/beans. Get them to practise their concentration and motor skills.

2. I get to impart the knowledge of this traditional game in my country to our kiddos and let them have a feel of one of my childhood games.

3. At this early stage, I'm just teaching our older 2 kiddos to just throw 1 piece and try to catch it back with 1 hand. They get to practise their balancing, focusing and being able to juggle back the same piece that they bounced up in the air. It was quite fun to watch our kiddos trying to bounce off the piece from their palm.

4. I noticed that our 4 year old girl is still mostly throwing up the piece and not able to catch back the piece while our 6.5 year old boy tried to hard to bounce his piece. I had to get him to slow down and start with small height, to bounce by few centimetres from his palm and catching it back on the same hand and guiding him to increase the height as he gains confidence. Our 2 year old girl who didn't want to be left out tried to follow her older siblings as well but only managed to grab on tightly to her piece, hahaha, need more practise for her to learn to release her grasp of her piece.

And oh boy... my fingers are really rusty, can't juggle and throw and catch as good as when I was a kiddo playing these last time! Need loads of practice!!! But at the same time, I'm happy I get to impart this fun game to our kiddos as well  :D

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I had started to teach our 4 year old girl how to write number 1 in late September 2015. She has been nagging me to include her whenever she sees her 6.5 year old big brother doing his kindy schoolwork.

In early November, I started her on number 2. In between we do other activities and once I feel she's comfortable with writing number 1 and letter A/a, we moved to the next level.

I am not a big fan of buying workbooks as I feel it is wasting money to just have our kiddos to scribble and write on it. Of course you can always make a photocopy or laminate the worksheets but I was too lazy for that and also some worksheets found in the workbooks that I have seen are just too simple or too advance for her age, so I ended up scouring through the Internet and customizing some or at least, looked for some that is as close as it can be to meet my expectations.

I started off by explaining to her number 2 and how to write the number 2. What I said to her as we draw the number 2 was 'Climb up a bit, oh no, we're falling! Go inside! Phewww... okay come outside!'

** 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.