At the Moment #1

BookBairn is truly fascinated by ladybirds at the moment. It started when we had a ladybird themed week to our daily activities and we made a What the Ladybird Heard map, and then watched a drawing tutorial with Lydia Monks and BookBairn is now thrilled with her ability to draw a ladybird that she seems to be drawing them at every opportunity she gets. We also have spotted several ladybirds in the garden and the road that we live on seems to have an abundance - we counted 45 on our daily walk yesterday. We alos read up about ladybirds in two fascinating books - Bug Hotel by Libby Walden and illustrated by Clover Robin which has the most incredible cut paper illustrations and also in Slow Down by Rachel Williams and illustrated by Freya Hartas which features 50 two-page spread natures stories, one of which is all about how a ladybird takes flight and BookBairn loved it and both her and her (nearly) three year old brother can now tell you all about a ladybird's elytra. Also an American blogger friend pointed out that they call ladybirds 'ladybugs' (which I knew) but it made me wonder why they are called 'ladybirds'. So I googled it! They were originally named "our lady's bird" or "our lady's beetle" after The Virgin Mary who is often depicted in artwork wearing a red cloak in early paintings and the seven spots on a ladybird (common ladybird's have seven spots - as The Wee Page Turner can tell you) were connected to her seven joys and seven sorrows. The things you learn. Every day's a school day!

One of the benefits of my husband having to work from home is that we can all eat dinner together early in the evening. Normally (and doesn't that word feel like it has new meaning!?!), I cooked and fed the kids their dinner around 5pm and then my husband would return home from work about 6.45pm, just int time for bedtime but it was often 8pm by the time we cooked and ate our grown up dinner. But now we can all eat together! At about 5.30pm. Sitting round the dining table together and it's so lovely. We talk about our favourite bits of the day, spend time together and everybody seems to eat better too. It also means that my husband and I can now sit down and relax much earlier in the evening so have more time for ourselves and to pursue our own hobbies, like reading and blogging!

Thank goodness for continue deliveries and post. I would caveat this by saying how much I miss my daily chat with our lovely postman. He is such a nice bloke and always has a kind word to say. But now he has to stand on the drive and drop things off and it feels very strange to have an invisble barrier. However, I'm so glad he still comes to our house daily and we are still getting lots of lovely books to review as well as some other goodies like a wardrobe treat for each of us (since I never got my big American Outlet mall shopping experience!) and also It's The Wee Page Turner (and my) birthday this month so I'm glad his presents are still winging their way to us in plenty of time for his birthday!

BookBairn is just fascinated by encyclopaedias and anthologies at the moment. She loves flicking through them and identifying the images as well as letting us read aloud some of the facts for her to absorb. I remember loving looking at my DK encyclopaedias as a child so I understand how much she enjoys just exploring the images by herself without actually being able to read the words. Her favourites include: Slow Down by Rachel Williams and illustrated by Freya Hartas, An Anthology of Intriguing Animals by Ben Hoare, The Wonders of Nature by Ben Hoare and Encyclopedia of Animals by Jules Howard & Jarom Vogel. Interestingly I've also had a few requests on social media for a list of encyclopaedias and I have been keeping some for BookBairn to 'grow into' in my book archive (storage boxes in our shed!) as couldn't justify the shelf space until she got a little older so think I will dig those out and get working on a blog post/list on that topic!


So that's the things we have been loving at the moment! I'm hoping to be able to get back to writing. And finding my passion and enjoyment for blogging again so it's been great to highlight our favourites of the moment. I've popped a few links below to things I've mentioned in case you want to find them yourselves. And would love to hear of any little favourites below which have brought you a twinkling of joy!

  

  

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