Books for Upper Elementary

McCalls Golden Do-It Book

July 11, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

I can’t recall where I picked this book up or even if it’s a hangover from my childhood, all I know is that every time I go a cull of my art books and ask,”Do I REALLY need to keep this one?”, somehow this book ends up back on my shelf. 🙂 Ergo, I thought it was about time for me to share it with you. My copy of McCalls Golden Do-It Book is getting a bit battered, the spine is loose, the pages a bit worn, but still the ideas are as real as anything. So much make and do within the pages of this book.

What do you get?

A number of different sections divide up this tome. Each section containing 2-8 projects, great for children 6-14 years old. (or later if so inclined). Littles might like to try their hand as well but will most likely need some older person’s help to make the projects turn out well.

Crayons, Paint, Paper, and Paste
Printing
Sculpture
Toys
Weaving
Needlework
Dolls
Music
Puppets
Gifts
How-to Section

You may be wondering, have we even completed any of the projects? Well we’ve made cars and houses out of boxes, the lad for a while was big into paper craft, we’ve made boats and done some weaving. Do I have pictures? Um… no. That would have been on my hard drive (external) that crashed last year and we’ve been unable to recover the data. And well.. that’s that!

One thing I do want to try yet with my lad is making a seed painting and a yarn painting. I just think they’d be rather neat to do and see what we could each come up with… or maybe I should save those ideas for co-op days. 🙂 Even to making sample kites to fly over enemy territory…hmm.. the ideas are endless.

What do I think?

Some of the instructions could be a bit clearer and some items are used which aren’t as common today (for instance, I’ve never used rubber cement with my lad). I’ve not heard of excelsior… which when I google it is a woody twine all mixed together. Where to find I dunno. It does sound neat to play around with just to see what one could do with it. Most of the instructions are just enough while leaving the rest to common sense. Will it make the cut next spring? I dunno, we’ve done most of what we want to in it, so we may just need to pass it along to another family with a creative keener. 🙂 It’s a good book with oodles of images and ideas to go along with each art project.

McCalls Golden Do-It Book

Hardcover, 160 pages, 6-14 years

Art, crafts, creativity

Where to find Amazon.

Self-Destructing Science

June 7, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Raincoast Books sent me this tearing, folding, cutting, drawing, constructing and experimenting book called Self-Destructing Science: Space book to review. It’s a neat book about 8 x 11 inches filled with different ways to explore outer space. When you are finished with the book, the book will finished!

Contained within the 64 pages are activities ranging from framing the stars, to starting a colony of alien space bugs. How about challenging a friend to a Mars rover race or building a rocket?

Learn about the planets, and space gear. Being an astronaut and how to make a big bang. The sheer variety of activities will delight and amaze children age 8-12.

Be do be warned. The pages of this book are packed full of run and exciting science-based projects that use up it’s pages. You will tear, fold, bend, cut, experiment and scribble your way through exciting discoveries of outer space. All you need is your imagination, the pages of this book and a few simple household ingredients. You’ll find easy to follow instructions and great illustrations to guide your way. Why not have fun learning?

My Thoughts:

I loved that each experiment/activity was self-contained. In other words, doing one page wouldn’t prevent you from doing another. Only one activity per page. The sheer variety… games, experiments, cut and paste. This book is not just worksheets or similar types of work. There is excellent variety. I didn’t find all of the projects easy to understand, for instance the galaxy one left me feeling befuddled. For the most part though they were easy to understand and should be easy to complete. Working through this book (if you bought one per student) would be a great way of studying space together with a group of students in a co-op setting.

My Son’s Thoughts:

I think this would be a fun book to do. I think some of the activities I would have to figure out by doing them. It would be fun to do some of these with other children as well.

Self-Destructing Science: Space
Isabel Thomas
Illustrator: Nikalas Catlow
Bloomsbury
64 pages, Cardstock
Reviewed for Raincoast Books
Outer Space, Activity Books, Science
ages 8-12 years

Review: Lions & Liars

May 10, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Lions & Liars is an intriguing read for your upper elementary to middle school students from Kate Beasley. Surprising character qualities in boys, hair-raising adventures, and scary weather makes for a fast paced read. The hardest part of this review for me is not giving away the story as I tell you how much I enjoyed it!

It was actually quite funny as I started reading this book as my lad headed into his hour long karate lesson. The class let out and I continued reading expecting my boy to find me. He apparently walked right past me, out to the car, waited for a while and then came back to find me…and I wouldn’t leave until I read the last five pages. He was so impatient with me until I said “I think you’ll like this book!” Then all was forgiven. 🙂

From the Back of the Book

Frederick Frederickson has a food-chain theory about life. There are lions, like the school bully. Gazelles, like the bullied kids. There are meerkats, and the fleas that live on the butts of meerkats. Frederick’s a flea.

Fifth grade is off to a terrible start when Frederick arrives at a disciplinary camp for troublesome boys. His fellow troop mates – Nosebleed, Specs, The Professor, and little-yet-lethal Ant Bite – are terrifying. But in between trust-building exercises and midnight escape attempts, a tenuous friendship grows between them. Which is lucky, because a Category 5 hurricane is coming and everyone will have to work together – lions and fleas alike – to survive!

My Thoughts:

I received an advanced readers copy so not all the illustrations were done yet, but the ones that I did see were simple line drawings that nicely conveyed the story. Not having the drawings allowed me to use my own imagination, wondering what the artist may have wanted to illustrate, so it would be interesting to see the final rendition.

Don’t those simple pencil drawings covey the story well? Lost and tired on a boat. What will Frederick do?

It was a book of growing up and realizing important truths about yourself and those in your life. I found it a good read with parts that caused me to laugh, and parts that made me (as a mom) wince with worry. I can well imagine by boy just enjoying the read and watching the well-developed characters change and become something more than what they planned. Friendships blossomed and what it means to be a guy well learned. Boys need to be boys and they need to learn to be men too.. so it was a fun read watching them grow up a bit.

I do have to say this… it is a boy focused book and some aspects of it would not appeal to most girls, though some girls might laugh. Encourage your boys to read it. It’s a fair decent book.

Lions & Liars
Kate Beasley (author)
Dan Santat (illustrator)
Farrar Straus & Giroux
Softcover, 304 pages
Ages 8-12 years
Friendship, Fear, Discipline, food chain,
Reviewed for Raincoast book.
Where to purchase: Amazon Link.

Review: Not One Damsel in Distress

April 14, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

Not One Damsel in Distress is a fun read with girls as the heroines in the story. The stories contained within the pages of this hardcover book come from all over the world. They are folktales for strong girls.

What you get:

Jane Yolen has done an excellent job of collecting these stories from Greece, Niger, Germany, Argentina, China, Scotland, France as well as others. There are 13 stories in all. The hardcover makes the book durable, with the well illustrated fly providing an instant way to bookmark your page. The hardcover itself is a plain blue backing. At the close of the book Ms. Yolen gives more information about the stories she included. In this section she mentions things that she changed from the original story (or made more clear) and any variations in the stories found (sometimes a story will have multiple versions). She will also mention where she found the story (often in old folktale books time has mostly forgotten).

How I used it:

To be honest…I just had fun reading the stories. Some of the stories I found more appealing than others, but that is the nature of books filled with stories, you rarely like them all the same. It was neat to read a folktale book filled with strong girls, they aren’t that common. I think my favourite story was Pretty Penny. A lass that could have badly been taken advantage of turns the tables of the miscreant. 🙂 Good to see a girl with her wits about her in a time of crisis. I did as I always do and ignored the forward (at least until I read another review about the author’s mindset presented). I don’t know the age of Jane Yolen, but I remember tales of heroines as a child, so don’t know why she think they were hidden away not to be found. Different experiences in life eh?

Some of the finer details:

The font size is lovely. If you wanted to sit and read the book with a group of children, the larger font size makes it easy to read without having to strain your eyes.

As you continue reading, you’ll find at least one image per story. They are all done in black and white and convey the story nicely. Aren’t the details nice and clear? I found they drew me into the story, and as I leafed through the pages they brought me easily back to my favourites.

Since these are tales from all over the world, they would be fascinating to read as part of geography or history series don’t you think? Giving glimpses into the history of a land as each story carries the flavour of the land it comes from. It would just round out the study nicely I think. 🙂

My Overall Thoughts:

It’s a well done book. Illustrator Susan Guevara does an excellent job with black and white images to convey the story. She helps us picture in our minds eye the story we are reading. Could the stories have survived without the images? Yes! The images fit so well though, they helped to tell the tale! I can easily see young ladies thoroughly enjoying the stories contained within the pages. The only issue I had was that sometimes she changed who the hero was in the story… sometimes it was originally a fellow. Are there not enough old folktales with girls/women as the heroine that you need to change the story included in this book? I don’t know the answer to that, just part of me is bothered by the changing of history to suit a present day mindset.

Not one Damsel in Distress
– World Folktales for Strong Girls
128 pages, hardcover, age 7-10
Folktales, girls, history, geography
Reviewed for Raincoast Books.
Where to buy: Amazon Link.

Review: Around the World in 50 Ways

April 5, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

My lad is really enjoying reading through non-fiction books as part of his required reading time. He’s not a huge reader (as videos are totally his thing). I like to cultivate his ability to read by giving him interesting books he might not otherwise consider. Around the World in 50 Ways is one book I gave him to read.

In Around the World in 50 Ways, you are to get ready to take a trip. You start in London, England and are invited to take a train, a bus or a boat…where will your adventures take you?

Will you end up in Kolkata? Or perhaps Toronto? What about Sydney or Victoria or even Havana? 50 different ways to travel, will you continue your journey or hit a dead end?

What do you do when it comes to a dead end?

You start your adventure all over again. Right back to the beginning planning a different trip around the world, maybe this time you’ll take in a canoe ride, or go on a gondola, a camel anyone? Along the way you’ll learn interesting tidbits about the cities/countries you are visiting.

Around the world in 50 ways is a choose-your-own travel adventure book. The reader makes a choice about which trip option they want to take to get from point a to point b. The full colour illustrations are filled with details about the location, from the shape of an island to the canals of Venice. The question is always presented “where next?” The choice in the hands of the beholder.

The Lad’s Thoughts:

“It was okay. I liked learning about all the different places in the world. I liked doing the adventures. But I really just wanted to learn about all the places in the world. I recommend that you do the adventures 3 or 4 times, and then just read it like an ordinary book.”

My thoughts:

I liked the variety of places visited, there wasn’t a continent not visited as far as I could tell. My lad just came in and said loudly “I visited everywhere!” So there you go. He liked that he got a chance to see glimpses all around the world. No one country was favoured over another. There was good variety in transportation, though admittedly most visits were done via plane (how else are you going to cross large bodies of water quickly?).

Around the World in 50 Ways
Dan Smith, author
Frances Castle, illustrator
Lonely Planet Kids
Flexibound, 164 pages, 9-12
Series: Choose your own travel adventure
Geography, middle school, travel, 
Reviewed for Raincoast books.
Where to purchase: Amazon Link.

Books from My House to Yours

March 16, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

It’s been a while since I did a books I read post and thought it about time that I did so. I haven’t read as much as sometimes I do because life health-wise has fragmented my time. But I’ve done some outside of review and thought I’d share them with you. I’m also going to link back to some of favourite reviews over the past bit.

Books the lad and I read together

The Scream of the Hawk I wanted to show you a picture but I think this book went out with the latest “gift to the school” set because I can’t find it to take a picture so I thought I’d do a picture link so you can see what it looks like.

Scream of the Hawk was a good read about a young lady who moved and HATED IT, every single moment of it and didn’t want to cut her mom a break and then life intervened in the life of a boy needing a friend and a minder. Events led to traumatic changes for that young man, and life became some easier for a young lady. My son said “I liked it” when we were done. He asked oodles of questions and we learn more about hawks, and double checked some native American factoids and overall enjoyed the read. Not really a middle school read… more upper elementary, but still enjoyed.

The Canada Geese Quilt. Oh my but we enjoyed this book. Full of conversation and Canada, this book intrigued my lad. We often read more than one chapter. The, I think, ink drawings added nicely to the story and should delight many students in upper elementary to middle school. As one reviewer said “a small gem of a book, a beautifully written, engaging celebration of life…” The copy we have is older and evidently well loved.

Books I read because I wanted to:

Bonnie .If you are in search of a mystery… Iris Johansen will not disappoint. Not for the faint of heart, but I like a good suspense on occasion. 🙂 There were aspects of the book that I could have passed up but overall it wasn’t a bad book. I could tell it was part of a series which I hadn’t read, but the book did hold it’s own.

The Overlook by Michael Connelly. I like Connellys’ books. 🙂 He tells a good tale, sometimes surprises me, but always keeps me reading. And Bosch is an interesting character well worth the read to get to know. 🙂 If you like police based mystery novels… this one will fit the key. It’s has good twists and turns and keeps a person interested and moving along.

Favourite reviews

Egyptomania. This was a fantastic lift and flap and fold out the pages book. Just fantastic. I learned so much and managed to intrigue the lad as well.

Bizarre Space. I actually haven’t read this book, but my lad happily filled me in on many of the details. He read this book very quickly. He would happily read more like this.

Bold Women of Medicine. Just a good book digging into the history of women in medicine.

Deep Water. I enjoyed this middle school book of survival.

Becoming Madeleine. Learning about the Madeleine L’engle was a highlight.

Tiny Infinities. I still like this book. It was interesting.

Doll Crafts. Great book, I’ll be using it in my co-op class coming up.

Books I’m just starting to dig into.

Full disclosure by Dee Henderson. Mystery to solve anyone? Toss in a side of romance in a not annoying way? I’m game to read it. 🙂

Fighting Parkinson’s and Winning. I know too many people with this illness and thought it might be an interesting read. So far it’s not disappointing me.

Linking up at:

Review: How Animals Build

February 17, 2018 By Annette1 Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but I have a lad who is fascinated by a variety of animals and insects. He enjoys focusing on different how they are the same but different. How sometimes what they do relates to what people can do, and how they can often do it better than we can. A book like “How Animals Build” is a book that appeals to him. Burrows, tunnels, nests, towns and much more. Come learn with us won’t you?

Lonely Planet Kids brings us another fascinating book to read, How Animals Build. Within the pages of this delightful read you will see termites town, penguin rock nests. bee hives, birds weaving nests and bowers, seeing fish living in rocks, bears hiding in ice packs, and beavers living in a lodge. So many different animals, and so many different ways to build.

I loved the illustrations contained within the pages, bright and colourful, reflecting well the variety of colour found within the animal kingdom.

I loved the fold out pages and the lift the flap elements. It’s just a lovely way to cram more information into a book in an interactive manner that helps the reader retain the information. This is a book you can go through several times, being amazed at the variety in the animals around us.

Did you know that a spider went into space and learned to adapt to lack of gravity?! We were both surprised. You can find a video showing the web creation here.

What I thought:

I thought the book was well done, but felt that they missed a crucial couple of groups: the sheer variety of insect and spider nests, and reptiles were scarcely covered. My son had hoped to see crocodile mounds, and bees that nest in hollow tubes, and spider webs of a variety of sorts. He was impressed with the variety of animals nests that were included and we even looked up the inside a termite town.

The rest of the book, with it’s fold out pages and lift the flap elements was fantastic. Brightly coloured pages that were loaded with facts. We both learned much! Which is an excellent thing to do eh? Leaf rollers “I’ve seen those before mom!” The bunny tunnels “They do a lot of damage in towns don’t they mom?” The beehives brought back memories of going to Clovermead and seeing the bees in action. Just a thoroughly interesting book with lots of talking points. Well done.

How Animals Build
Moira Butterfield & Tim Hutchinson
Lonely Planet Kids
Hardcover, non-fiction, pull-out, lift the flap
Animals, activity book, elementary, animal homes.
12 pages (plus fold outs), 8-12 years.
Reviewed for: Raincoast Books.
Where to find: Amazon Link.

Some other animal books you might be interested in:
Animals at Night.
Animal Camouflage. 
Building animals from Lego. 
Magnificent book of Dinosaurs. 
The Animal Book.

Books for Upper Elementary

McCalls Golden Do-It Book

What do you get?

What do I think?

Self-Destructing Science

My Thoughts:

My Son’s Thoughts:

Review: Lions & Liars

From the Back of the Book

My Thoughts:

Review: Not One Damsel in Distress

What you get:

How I used it:

Some of the finer details:

My Overall Thoughts:

Review: Around the World in 50 Ways

What do you do when it comes to a dead end?

The Lad’s Thoughts:

My thoughts:

Books from My House to Yours

Books the lad and I read together

Favourite reviews

Books I’m just starting to dig into.

Review: How Animals Build

What I thought:

Amazon Affiliate information

Tinker Crate Affiliate

Books for Upper Elementary

What do you get?

What do I think?

My Thoughts:

My Son’s Thoughts:

From the Back of the Book

My Thoughts:

What you get:

How I used it:

Some of the finer details:

My Overall Thoughts:

What do you do when it comes to a dead end?

The Lad’s Thoughts:

My thoughts:

Books the lad and I read together

Favourite reviews

Books I’m just starting to dig into.

What I thought:

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