Se7en’s Fabulous Friday Fun #253…

A Friday Fun Post, on a Saturday. A busy week, a fun week… we didn’t post much, we have been creating post materials and some craftiness for our December blogging… I am planning on a relaxing December… filled with books and beach days.

It is GiveAway season over here… heaps of GiveAways over the next couple of weeks!!! Click on the images to enter and win these fabulous books…

The closing day for this week’s GiveAways is end of play on 30 November 2014.

These two Classics, republished by Penguin Books South Africa will find themselves creeping into the hearts of many young readers… they are both favourite family read-alouds over here. These books are beautiful, repackaged gift editions of the classical classics. With fabric spines and ribbon book marks, the pages are crisp and they have that lovely new book smell as you creak them open.

We have an incredibly tatty copy of Winnie the Pooh next to our family dinner table, it is our go to book when a little person is lingering over dinner. Or the book that we turn to and read when someone is out and we can’t continue with our current book because we never want the person that is out to miss an instalment. Each chapter is a complete story, and stands alone so we just cycle our way through the book over and over again. I know this is marketed as a children’s book, but honestly as an adult I love to see the characters and how A.A.Milne created an entire character cast of folk that are very like folk that we all live with and know. As our kids grow up, that they start to recognise the crew from The Hundred Acre woods as so much more than a collection of delightful soft toys, it is so fun to be a part of that transition. Piglet and Pooh and all the others are so very much like real people that we know… it adds a new dimension to the tales and I have to say – the truth is that a good book is a good book for every age and not just children. I am very glad to have a beautiful fresh copy of this book, filled with the familiar E.H. Shepard illustrations, to place beside our dinner table.

Another family favourite is A Christmas Carol, we read it every December… a family tradition and a christmassy classic. We started reading it to our children when they were infants… just a snippet everyday and so the drama has grown. There is rich and beautiful language to hear that flows over little ears and as they get older you would be surprised at just how much they glean. I know some folk are saying, “is it not a bit scary?” It is scary in parts, but in the very well written book kind of way that our kids really enjoy, and honestly I have never met a primary school child who wasn’t riveted with intrigue – “read on, read on…” The story of course has a happy ending and a good life-lesson. This book is just as beautifully presented as the Winnie the Pooh book, with pen and ink illustrations by Arthur Rackham and the occasional colour plate. These books form part of the Heritage Collection of Classical Books for Children and are well worth taking a peak at.

We were given these books for review purposes by Penguin Books South Africa, we were not paid to write this review and the opinions expresses are as usual entirely our own.

1. If you look at nothing else this week then you have to look at this video: High School Teacher Taught His Class A Simple Yet Powerful Lesson About Privilege.
2. The Story Warren on Tenderness and Cuddling, share this with the Dad’s in your life.
3. The Boardgames Cafe – I love this and I have to play Risk with my kids before the year is out.
4. A post on the socialisation of Homeschool mums on Simple Homeschool, I am convinced that most homeschool groups gather together so the moms have someone fun and their own age to chat with, I have no problem with that… I can chat with the best of them!!! But I do prefer to say to my kids that we are going out to chat, rather than “marketing” it as it as an educational event.
5. And well this fine, fine read from Playing by the Book: Do We Care About Children’s Non-Fiction.
6. Natural Crafty Christmas ornaments, I am loving these!!!
7. My love for Usborne Books is fairly universally known… and they are posting post after post of wonderful gift ideas at the moment… scroll down, scroll down – I am loving these!!!
8. Now that I have shown you piles of wonderful books… here are 9 Things that Shopping Can Never Deliver from Becoming Minimalist.

Different years have different focus’s, but one tradition that has stood the test of time… we will always create some sort of Advent calendar… so this is a fun blast from the past… Meanwhile we are creating our Advent Calendar to post tomorrow… so looking forward to it…

• 2008: Se7en do Advent

• 2009: Se7en Create an Advent Village Calendar out of Envelopes…
• 2010: Se7en’s Advent Adventures.

• 2011: Se7en’s Easy Advent Banner…
• 2012: Se7en’s December and Free Printable Advent Calendar.
• 2013: Se7en’s December and a Free Printable Advent Calendar…

All the entries…

All mixed up…

And picking and choosing…

And the winner is:

Raynard Nov 24, 2014 at 10:22 am The flat white at The Annex in Kalk-Bay is by far the best coffee I’ve ever had!

We would like to thank MapStudio who supplied us with the GiveAway book. We were not paid for the review and the opinions expressed in it are as usual, entirely our own.

That’s us… Hope your weekend is a fabulous one and we are so looking forward to another week of blogging with you all…