Three Great Board Books for Littles

Hi friends! Last month Zonderkidz sent me free copies of three board books to review: Ready, Set, Find Noah’s ArkThe Beginner’s Bible Daniel And The Hungry Lions, and The Beginner’s Bible My First Book Of Prayers.

Three great board books for young children: Ready, Set, Find Noah's Ark, The Beginner's Bible Daniel And The Hungry Lions, and The Beginner's Bible My First Book Of Prayers. | Review by Running With Spears #christiankids #zonderkidz

Smiles and Apple both love these adorable books!

Smiles, who is three, LOVES to pore over the pages of Ready, Set, Find Noah’s Ark  and try to find all the pictures. It’s a simple book telling the story of Noah’s ark in terms little kids can understand. Each little section of the story includes a page showing a set of eight things to find in the full illustration on the next page. There are so many cute pictures of animals, it’s very endearing! 😀

Three great board books for young children: Ready, Set, Find Noah's Ark, The Beginner's Bible Daniel And The Hungry Lions, and The Beginner's Bible My First Book Of Prayers. | Review by Running With Spears #christiankids #zonderkidzThe Beginner’s Bible Daniel And The Hungry Lions  encourages little ones to be brave like Daniel. It’s a great short and simple introduction of this classic Bible story for tiny tots. The art is in the style of the popular The Beginner’s Bible  series of books.

Apple has taken to walking around the house clutching The Beginner’s Bible My First Book Of Prayers.  It’s adorable. This book is in the same style as the Daniel one. It takes you through a handful of stories from the Bible with a picture from the story and a title about what’s happening, plus one simple verse. For example, it starts with a picture of Adam and Eve and says “God Created All Things.” Beneath the title we have the verse Genesis 1:31 “God saw everything he had made. And it was very good.” Then on the next page we have a simple prayer titled “Gratitude” that thanks God for everything He made. The very last page of the book has The Lord’s Prayer. This is a great little book to begin teaching little ones about prayer. 🙂

My preschooler and toddler have both been really enjoying these books and they are fun additions to our little personal library. They would also be great for a church library or a preschool Sunday School class.

5-Minute Adventure Bible Stories

Hey friends. This summer has been super busy for me, so I was excited when Zonderkidz sent me a free copy of 5-Minute Adventure Bible Stories to review. This lovely book written by Catherine DeVries and illustrated by Jim Madsen is filled with over thirty Bible stories with bright, colorful illustrations. As the name implies, each of these fun stories can be read in five minutes or less making it the perfect fit for my hectic schedule.

I’ve been reading this book to my two middle daughters and they love it! Boo (in the picture) always begs me to read this to her multiple times throughout the day, not just at bedtime…and how could I say no? I love that each story doesn’t take long, so I can take a short break from whatever I’m working on and read one to her easily!

We’ve been enjoying this book a lot. Thanks Zonderkidz!

The Bedtime Book

Hey friends. Are you familiar with Mary Engelbreit? She’s a beloved New York Times bestselling illustrator. I’ve loved her art for ages so I was thrilled when Zonderkidz sent me a free copy of  The Bedtime Book by Mary Engelbreit to review.

The Bedtime Book by Mary Engelbreit - sweet stories and poems with lovely whimsical illustrations | Review of free copy by Running With Spears

This precious book is the perfect choice for a short and sweet bedtime story for my little ones. These pint-sized stories, poems, and prayers are all quite darling in and of themselves, but what really makes this book shine are the charming, whimsical illustrations. This is the type of book to treasure and hand down to future generations. 🙂

I absolutely love this sweet book and definitely recommend it to friends with young children.

Kindergarten Reading Curriculum

We love the Learn to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook from The Crafty Classroom- A Kindergarten language arts curriculum for Beginning Readers | Review by Running With Spears #CraftyClassroom #LearntoRead #HomeschoolCurriculumHello friends. 🙂

Last month I received a free copy of the Learn to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook and the R.E.A.D. Review Pack from The Crafty Classroom to review. This language arts program is designed to be a fun, hands-on curriculum perfect for children who have just finished learning their letters and letter sounds.

I’ve actually been using it with my first grader, Boo, because reading has been quite the challenge for her. I only recently realized that was she needs in order for reading related lessons to stick is fun hands-on  material. I imagine the Alphabet Curriculum Notebook or Bible ABC Curriculum Notebook that are also from The Crafty Classroom would have been great for her to use in preschool. In fact, I will very likely buy one of those to begin using with my three year old soon.

The Learn to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook has been the perfect  next step for Boo’s learning-to-read journey.

We love the Learn to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook and the R.E.A.D. Review Pack from The Crafty Classroom- A Kindergarten language arts curriculum for Beginning Readers with lots of hands-on instruction for Phonics and Word Families | Review by Running With Spears #CraftyClassroom #LearntoRead #HomeschoolCurriculumThe Learn to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook is a 36-week Curriculum that’s intended to be used four days a week. We’ve actually been moving at a slighter faster pace because Boo will often beg to do two or three days at a time (which is a good thing, since she also spent a week at camp, and half a week at her grandparents house).

Each day, Boo begins with a warm-up that we slipped inside the plastic cover of her notebook so she can use a dry-erase marker. The warm up includes activities like drawing hands on a clock to show what time it is, and determining what the weather is that day. We rarely do ALL the warm up activities, but it’s a great way for her to go ahead and get started with her school while I grab myself a cup of joe.

The downloadable PDF for the Learn to R.E.A.D. Curriculum Notebook includes 785 pages of activities. The curriculum begins by introducing one simple word family like words that end in am  then at  the next week, followed by atEach week so far has also introduced a few new sight words.  In each of the first four weeks we also worked one part of speech each week, nouns, pronouns, verbs, and so on. Each week, we go through a set of activities that are different each day, but repeat every week, with the new words we’re working on. Every day includes multiple fun activities that Boo loves to do, such as a word search, connect the dots, a maze, making a paper crown, or phonics bingo. In week five we hopped over to the R.E.A.D. Review Pack and worked on letter blends for a week, with some fresh, new fun activities.

We love the the R.E.A.D. Review Pack from The Crafty Classroom- Printable Early Readers with great Phonics and Word Families review | Review by Running With Spears #CraftyClassroom #LearntoRead #HomeschoolCurriculumThe R.E.A.D. Review Pack is a set of twenty-eight early reader booklets. We spend a week going through four booklets (one a day). Each of these corresponds to word families and sight words that we worked on in the previous weeks. After the time we’d spent learning these, Boo was able to read the booklets confidently, which she was super excited about.

All in all, I feel like this is an excellent program for young kids! 😀

I asked Boo her thoughts and she said, “I love it. It’s actually  fun.” When asked her favorite part she replied, “Reading the words. I love that I can read them.” Which seriously gave me all the feels…even if there’s about a 97.2% chance she just said that because she thought it’s what I wanted to hear, especially because she gets super excited every time she gets to do a maze or connect the dots page.

Be sure to hop over to the Homeschool Review Crew link-up to see what other reviewers have to say about this curriculum as well as other products from The Crafty Classroom.