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: JJ's Science Adventure: Magnets
Author: Aurelia Tan & Jonathon Koh    Illustrated by Nicholas Liem
Publisher: Harvest Edutainment Pte Ltd (2013)
ISBN: 9810776322
Paperback: 84 pages

Description from the product page:

"JJ's Science Adventure is a series of educational comic books designed to help readers master key learning objectives stated in the Singapore Ministry of Education's Primary School Science syllabus. After receiving their birthday presents from their grandfather, Joyce and Jonathon find themselves in possession of two bags which transform into a talking robot (Robo) and a teleportation portal. With a set of keys from Robo, the kids open the portal into sub-dimensional world created by the 'World Maker', an incredible invention by their grandfather to help them learn science.

In this adventure, the twins journey into the World of Magnets where they discover the physical properties of magnets and solve challenging puzzle traps laid by their grandfather. Will they survive the constant sabotage by a Minion sent by Mr Sinister and win the prize, a piece of puzzle key which unlocks yet another secret?"
When I first received the email pitch to review this book, I was quite hesitant as I've never let our kiddos try out comic books like this before. I also thought that the words are a bit tough on our 6.5 year old boy but since we've previously touched on the topic of magnetism before in the family, I thought of just giving this a go and worse comes to worse if our kiddos are not ready, I can just keep the book and try again some time later when I feel they are ready.

The book arrived shortly after and I gave a quick check through the book. The illustrations is gorgeous, love it! The fonts are easy on the eyes as well.

I waited for the right time to show this book to our kiddos. I let our oldest flipped through the book and checked out the book before I suggested reading the book to them in the afternoon during their playtime.

I started out slowly by introducing the characters in the book and once in a while, I would subtly ask our oldest kiddo to read some shorter sentences in the pages. We also paused every now and then throughout the book especially in the pages where it explains on how magnets work. I can see our boy getting interested and curious at the same time. In fact, we paused quite a long time in the pages where it explained how to magnetise objects and how an object loses its magnet force.

I can totally see our 6.5 year old boy loving the illustrations in this book. We were laughing at the antics of the main characters and the jokes in the storyline as well.

Size of the book is just nice, not too short and not too long story for the kiddos to digest through. Once, a few weeks after we have gone through the book, I heard our boy mentioned to me saying 'Did you remember the book on the magnet when it says one part is north and one part is south?' as he shows me his Lego creations that looked like a magnet stick.

That was when I told myself 'He remembers what we read in the book. Not bad, not bad!' And that was just after reading one time. Definitely will go through the book again and again with kiddos for sure!

I would totally recommend this book for any parents wanting to educate their kiddos on the topic of magnetism while yet having fun at the same time.

The book is available at Harvest Edustore or Amazon. You can also find it a retail stores in Singapore such as Elm Tree at Funan, Star Vista, Downtown East and Paragon, MPH at Parkway, Raffles City and Robinson, Junior Page at ARC

There is another volume entitled 'Heat and Light' as well in case you are interested!

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"

** 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.

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

"Fathers should make a special effort to tuck their children in at night, according to research which shows that bedtime stories are better for youngsters when they are read by men.

A study at Harvard University in the US into the effect on infants’ language after a year of hearing stories read by their parents found that girls seemed to benefit particularly from being read to by a male. Elisabeth Duursma, who carried out the research, said: ‘The impact is huge, particularly if dads start reading to kids under the age of two.

'Reading is seen as a female activity and kids seem to be more tuned in when their dad reads to them – it’s special.’ Men and women also approach the task differently, she found. Mothers tended to ask ‘teacher-like’, factual questions, such as ‘How many apples do you see?’ Fathers favoured more abstract questions, which sparked imaginative discussions. ‘That is great for children’s language development because they have to use their brains more. It’s more cognitively challenging.’

Parenting expert Justin Coulson added: ‘When we read to our children we expand their vocabulary. We help them to feel safe and this can have a profound impact on their capacity for learning. 'Research has consistently shown that parents reading to children improves the quality of relationships, academic outcomes and resilience.’"

Firstly, I think we should safely agree that reading to our kiddos is important and beneficial to them. Now, back to this article, from my personal experience of reading news articles instead of bedtime stories to our kiddos (I know, weird but it works and our kiddos love it!), I do combined both approaches as mentioned in the article. Meaning, I asked ‘teacher-like’, factual questions and also abstract questions as well, depending on the articles we read.

For example, just earlier before bedtime tonight, I was reading some articles on the supermoon (blood moon or whatever names they have for it), I was reading slowly and at the same time explaining why this happened, what is eclipse, and then reminding our oldest kiddo on some earlier conversations we had about eclipses to jog his memory a bit and why in an article it shows tons of birds flew past the bright moon.

I guess as parents, be it a mother or a father, we do what we think is appropriate for our kiddos using the best approaches that can get them to listen attentively and yet keep their interests level high. I mean, it might not make sense asking your young toddler how many objects in the book if they have yet learn to count etc.

So I think age appropriate and as parents, you should know your child the best, should not be influenced by articles that says dads are better or moms are better LOL. But then, I do feel that a mother's soothing voice might be a better choice for bedtime story, but that's just my personal thoughts haha..

What do you think?

** 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.

I came across this article which I must definitely share with you guys as I'm very interested to know your thoughts on this. For your convenience, I have copied the excerpts from the article here:

"As part of the practical skills curriculum at Montessori schools, children as young as 18 months old are given a butter or jam knife for spreading condiments. Then they move on to chopping soft fruits like bananas. Eventually the child graduates to a serrated knife. (Supersharp chef knives are not part of the program.)

The process is slow and supervised. "Kids are shown early on, even when they're using the butter knife to cut the banana, how to hold the handle, where to put the other hand, how to stabilize the banana," says Anna Perry, executive director of Seton Montessori Institute and Schools in the Chicago area.

Giving young children knives is a small component of Montessori education, Perry says, but it complements the central philosophy of fostering independence. "This drive to 'do it myself' — we're squashing as a society," says Perry.

From a health and nutrition standpoint, studies have shown that getting kids cooking makes them more open to eating healthful foods, such as fruits and vegetables. Both the Mayo Clinic and the American Heart Association suggest that getting kids involved with grocery shopping and food prep can reduce picky eating.

There's also an evolutionary argument for allowing children to learn how to cut their food themselves. A child's world, David Lancy, an anthropologist at Utah State University in Logan and author of The Anthropology of Childhood, tells me, used to be filled with tools, such as hammers, rakes, mortars, pestles and machetes to break open foods like coconuts.

Nowadays, though, the only real tools many kids use on a daily basis are spoons and forks. In an article titled "Playing with Knives" to appear later this year in the journal Child Development, Lancy writes that contemporary parental overprotectiveness is linked to rising incomes and declining family size, factors that have turned children into "precious treasures rather than future helpers."

Historically, it appears that humans not only gave the littlest members of society access to tools but also let them sort out the danger for themselves. Even now, in many communities around the world, young children still have access to sharp tools.

Lancy says that this laissez-faire approach to parenting has several explanations, among them parents' unwillingness to impose their will on another, even a child, and the belief that children must learn through exploration, regardless of the risks.

Here in the U.S, parents don't seem to be denying kids access to knives entirely but rather delaying it. A perusal of cooking classes for kids online, for instance, shows that the earliest knives are allowed in the kitchen is around age 7.

Yet Lancy and others argue that delaying knife use until then hinders the child's natural development and inhibits curiosity. It's akin to delaying potty training until elementary school, says Elizabeth Norman, director of advancement at Brickton Montessori School in Chicago."

I personally feel that as long as it is age appropriate and you think your child is ready for it, why not? I let our 6.5 year old boy and 4 year old girl use the butter knife (heavy for the metal material but not sharp that it can hurt anyone) and let them practise cutting fruits like mangoes and papaya after I sliced off the outer skin layer. Very nice to watch them being happy and accomplishing a big task (to them!)

What do you think?

** 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.