Book Review – Read and Share Toddler Bible by Gwen Ellis, Illustrated by Steve Smallman

Let me say right away, I highly recommend this Bible if you have small children who are young toddlers to pre-school age.
The illustrations are colorful and very well done; I especially like the facial expressions, which could easily tell the stories by themselves!
The stories are kept short and are written in very toddler-friendly language. While they are simple, they are still biblically accurate. This book holds my son’s attention, and helps carry the messages of the Bible stories home to him. We will definitely be using this book for some of our Sunday School on Fridays posts!
For a closer look, check out this great little flip book!
A one hour DVD comes with this Bible and it is perfect for a toddler. The pace is just right, the narration is spoken clearly (so important for a young child), and the animation is fun to watch. M was captivated by the story about Noah’s Ark, and would have happily watched the entire DVD!
I love several things about this Bible, and at the top of the list are the activity suggestions written at the end of each story. As you know, I love finding ways to help M internalize Bible stories and remember them. This book is full of inspiring ideas to help me do just that!
All in all, we greatly enjoy reading this Bible together; it is a wonderful addition to our bookshelves!

Art Time - Mixing with Yellow

The Open Ended Art theme for this week was “mixing with yellow”.  You can check out other works of art here.

I am cheating a little with this post because it’s more of an activity than actual artwork.  And we did this as part of our Noah’s Ark theme for Sunday School on Friday this past weekend (the post about Noah’s Ark will be coming this Friday).  However, it includes yellow and there was plenty of mixing involved, so I am hoping it qualifies! :)

M had a great time with this.  It seriously kept him enthralled for an entire hour.  There was a higher than usual danger of messiness, so I had to stay right there with him, but I really enjoyed it too.  It could’ve (should’ve) been done outside; I was just too lazy to take everything out.  There’s a towel on the table for obvious reasons.

I set up several glasses and jars on our kitchen table and filled them about halfway with clear water.  We started with six and ended up adding one or two more as we went along.  I put red, yellow, and blue food coloring into an ice cube tray, gave M some pipettes, and he started mixing. 

Here he is with yellow in his pipette (it’s looking a little green; I think this is due to my camera for some reason):

And… Yellow + Red = Orange:

 

Then he filled 2 ice cube trays with the colored water so he can have more outside ice fun one of these days.

This was such a fun activity for M, and it was fun for me to watch him be a little scientist.  I highly recommend doing this with your kids – just pick a day when you are feeling brave and very, very patient!  I had to remind M several times that this wasn’t an activity we could be silly with.  I didn’t want broken glass and food coloring all over my kitchen! 

Have a beautiful day! :)