Saucepan Man

For world book day my daughters got dressed up as the Saucepan man from the The Faraway Tree stories by Enid Blyton.

Saucepan man is her favourite character. She adores his silliness, and finds his riddles and the way he gets muddles up hilarious.

Here she is making her costume :) 

The Tiny Turnip

My children love  The Gigantic Turnip. It is one of their favourite story books.  I used this book as inspiration for last nights meal. It is very important to me to teach my children about healthy eating  but I try do it in a subtle way. My children watch and help me cook.  Its part of everyday discussions and I try to include it in some of our activities.

I read the story then asked my children to find a turnip in the fridge. They were very disappointed that it was very tiny unlike the gigantic turnip in the story.

'We can call ours the tiny turnip' - Macey

I don't like to just tell them fruit and vegetables are good for you I like to give them a reason why so I usually pick one item from our meals and give them one example of why its good for them. In tonights meal I told them the tiny turnip has lots of fibre to help our tummies digestive system run smoothly. 

On a fine March morning, the old woman sat up in bed, sniffed the sweet spring air  and said,

'It's time to sow the vegetables!' So the old man and the old woman went into the garden. 

They sowed peas and carrots and potatoes and beans. Last of all they sowed turnips.

We used the same vegetables that the old man and woman sowed in our recipe. We added peas and carrots with some mince turkey, parsnips, and vegetable stock and plopped some mini dumplings on top. We made turnip and potato mash and served with green beans. 

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmazingLittleMinds

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/littlemisskirst/

Usbournes very first reading

As a child reading was a passion from a very early age. My childhood was consumed by books and the dream of becoming an author. Although this dream did not go beyond the shed in the garden, where I sat with my little type writer typing stories about giant blob monsters and magical worlds I still have a special place for books.
My love for books is shared with my 2 year old son and my 4 year old daughter. My daughter loves listening to Roald Dahl, and Enid Blytons Faraway Tree stories. There is nothing I like more then to enlighten their imagination with the books I loved as a child

Bearing this in mind I believe the best gift you can give your children is the ability to read and after a bit of research I found the perfect set of books to help with early reading: Usbournes very first reading.
They are a set of fifteen books designed to introduce younger children to read together with a parent.  Parents and children take turns to read from the page (the text clearly marked for who should be reading) and as the books progress in the series the adults read less and less and the child more and more. Here is a video of Peter Usbourne the company founder introducing the range and explaining how they work.