Choose Your Own Adventure Books

~ Posted on Saturday, September 21, 2019 at 11:44 AM ~

I like to get books for my kiddos. If the topics are too advanced, I will read it to them during bedtime otherwise whenever I noticed any particular interests from them in any topics, I will try to get the books to further ignite their fire. My personal opinion is to ignite my kiddos' reading passion, we have to make books available to them easily. And I honestly think my strategy works for our kiddos!

Anyway, I was telling our kiddos months ago that I used to read this type of books during my early teenage years, whereby after we read a certain page, there are options available at the bottom for the reader to choose to do this or that. If you choose this option, you will be directed to a page to continue on from the option you make, so on and so forth until you reach the end of the story from your many decisions made along the way.

I told my kiddos it was so intriguing that while reading a book, we can also play a part in it by making our own decision, choosing our own paths and then see how our decisions affects the direction of the stories. They were curious and seem excited there is such books available. Little did they realised that mummy also want them to be able to apply these techniques in their real life too. To choose wisely, and cause-effect-consequences.

So I set out to search and scour the website for such books and found them! Now since I'm in Malaysia, the options are quite limited to order online. Amazon doesn't cater shipping to Malaysia for quite a lot of books so I always go to my reliable backup option which is The Book Depository.

After much research and price comparing of the many books titles available, I settled for the "Choose Your Own Adventure Books 1-6: Box Set". I felt it was the most value for money and has the interesting titles which I think will be suitable for my kiddos.

These books just arrived after over 1 month of waiting (I’m in Malaysia). Ordered on 30th July 2019, books were dispatched from UK on 2nd August 2019 and finally arrived on 21st Sept 2019.

Kiddos are so excited and looking forward to bedtime to hear the story!! I'm excited too! Yayyyy!!!

Below are some of the books I got for my kiddos so far... you can see the theme/genre goes from classic comics to educational magazines, and then to illustrated chapter books and comics with more words and in other languages (local comics by Lat)

 

 

** 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 every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

LEGO® Friends LIVE Show Event

~ Posted on Saturday, July 20, 2019 at 12:03 AM ~

As a busy mum with 5 kiddos between 8 months old to 10-years old, I have started cutting down on doing product reviews to focus on my childcare and family life, home cooking, education, helping with hubby's administration site of the business and sharing informational articles on my FB fan page so I am only accepting and prioritizing products that can fit into our family dynamics (especially books on parenting or educational stuff, family products, something along those genre)!  

Our family is a big fan of all things LEGO, so when I received an invitation to attend the LEGO® Friends LIVE Show Event with my family, how can I say no?! We quickly arranged for our trip down south (our first family holiday for 2019!!!) so that we can catch the show on time!

I'm a full-time mummy

Just a quick info on the LEGO Friends for those who are not familiar with them: LEGO Friends revolves around the everyday lives and personalities of 5 girls in Heartlake City. These girls (Mia, Olivia, Stephanie, Emma and Andrea) team up together to help their new friends to make the world a better place. Each girl has their own unique personality of being bold, funny, creative, kind, courageous and caring, reflecting how true friendship with a beautiful heart means.

We reached LEGOLAND Malaysia’s Theme Park on 12th July 2019 and were so excited to be the first group of people to watch the LEGO® Friends LIVE Show about the Magic of Friendship! While waiting for the show to start, our girls spent some time in the Heart Building Activity. Picture below is our 7.5-year old girl with her LEGO heart creation.

LEGO Friends LIVE Show

We took our seats in the front row near the stage and eagerly waited for the entertaining show. Not long after, all 5 LEGO Friends characters appeared on stage with their eye-catching colourful costumes and the show just got everyone dancing, singing all the way!

LEGO Friends LIVE Show

My family and I thoroughly enjoyed the show as we joined along with the rest of the audience in singing and dancing along to some favourite hit songs such as "BFF" and "Friends are Forever". There are many more other songs which is catchy to sing and dance along to as well. Check out the picture below, see how engrossed the audience were? All fully captivated and eagerly taking in the energetic and fun performance!

LEGO Friends LIVE Show

Since we were seated at the front row, our girls even get to high-fives some of the LEGO Friends characters during the show! I really appreciate this gesture as I feel that the younger children will be super thrilled to get the extra attention and really up-close action with their LEGO characters! The show lasted for about 20-minutes, and yes, we enjoyed every minute of the show!

LEGO Friends LIVE Show

After the show ended, we made our way out to have our photo opportunity with the real life LEGO Friends characters. Our girls were so thrilled to have their pictures taken with their favourite LEGO Friends characters!

LEGO Friends LIVE Show

If you are planning to visit LEGOLAND Malaysia Resort, do keep a lookout for character appearances throughout the park as well as joining in the fun in the activities provided.

I personally enjoyed the show and embarrassingly admitted that I might be one of the loudest cheering parents during the show LOL! I do think that the LEGO Friends are a positive role-model that young children like ours can look up to and with a world we live in now, every bit of positive traits are welcomed, right? 

I'm a full-time mummy

 The LEGO Friends LIVE Show happens every day at 11.00am, 1.00pm, 3.00pm and 5.00pm in the LEGO City Stage.

Visitors can purchase the Triple-Park annual pass on the LEGOLAND’s official website to enjoy the all new LEGO Friends LIVE Show. Also, with the annual pass, guests get to enjoy 12 months of unlimited entries to LEGOLAND Malaysia’s Theme Park, Water Park and SEA LIFE.

How awesome is that?! Now, if you want the latest scoop on promotion and activities, do stay connected with LEGOLAND Malaysia Resort via Facebook and Instagram.

I'm a full-time mummy

I received no monetary compensation for this review. I was invited to the event with my family 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.

** 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 every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.

Reading Changes Everything...

~ Posted on Wednesday, February 27, 2019 at 7:56 PM ~

I've been so so so busy with my family... you see,  yours truly have given birth to her 5th kiddo (recently turned 4 months old!) and I'm now slowly getting back into the swing of my old self so for my regular fans who have not been reading much updates on my blog here, do check out my Facebook page as I'm still very much active there as it is easier to just share interesting articles on FB.

Every now and then I do order take-away foods especially when I'm just too overwhelmed and caught up with my work as I need to help hubby in the administration side of the business since Nov 2018 when our admin staff broke her arm and is currently on long medical leave. Anyway, I was really surprised when we received free books in our Happy Meal order early this year.

Turns out McDonald’s is using its Scale for Good approach to instil a passion for reading and to provide a moment of closeness for families. How nice is that?! I think this idea is so cool and beneficial and I'm very happy to know the books we got for free was authored by Cressida Cowell, who is well known for her bestselling ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ books.

Happy Meal Readers Programme

As we live in Malaysia, I think it is cool to know that the books are available in both English and Bahasa Malaysia which caters specifically for the Malaysian market. I like that each book comes with a fun fact page about the dinosaur featured in the book.

Happy Meal Readers Programme

For those tech-savvy parents, there are also digital versions of the books which you can find through the Happy Studio app that can be downloaded on both the Google Play Store and Apple Store. My 2 older kiddos (between 7 to 10 years old) seems to prefer the app and enjoyed playing the games and activities in the app.

I believe that reading changes my children's lives positively, that knowledge is key and never harm anyone if we read up more and know more. Every time I stumbled into books that are age-appropriate for my kiddos, I snapped them up and am very encouraged to see my kiddos getting all excited to read the new books in our collection. If the books are a bit advanced for any of my kiddo, I will either read together with them or read aloud before their bedtime. That way, they get to hear the right pronunciation and the way sentences sound as we read along.

I remembered reading an article on what reading aloud to your children does to their brain. Excerpt from article below:

"When parents read to their children the difference shows in children's behaviour and academic performance. And according to a new study, the difference also shows in their brain activity. The researchers saw that, when the young children were being told a story, a number of regions in the left part of the brain became active. These are the areas involved in understanding the meaning of words and concepts and also in memory. These same brain regions have been found to be active when older children listen to stories or read. 

The brain develops rapidly from zero to six years of age, and the more exposure, the more you enrich and nurture these brain networks that are related to social and academic ability, the more the kid will gain the future."

Happy Meal Readers Programme

There are benefits of parents reading to their children beyond the child's performance, too. "It's one of the most pleasurable activities that you do with your child -- there's physical closeness but it's probably the most unhurried time that children have with their parent and it is focused on them."

Reading helps in spelling, grammar and pronunciation, the benefits multiplied many times more if we as parents are there to guide our children as they read along. Even our 4th kiddo learns by observing his elder brother and sisters reading most of the time and tried to emulate them as well.

Although he is just 2 years old, that does not mean we should stop him from reading. At this age, what I usually do is teach him about colours, shapes, naming of objects, anything interesting for his age right now. It is up to our creativity to know how to make use of the reading materials in our kiddos' lives.

Happy Meal Readers Programme

As McDonald’s will be releasing one book every month throughout the year 2019, please don't miss out on these books since they come free with the Happy Meal. We have this poster of Dr. Seuss's quote which said, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.


** 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 every day) or just drop me an email if you wish to maintain some anonymity.