New books....

The lovely ladies at Glottogon sent us some books to review. Glottogon is a newish interent site based in Australia and they specialise is selling top quality books for kids in several languages, if you live in Oz and are raising a bilingual child then you should check it out, they also ship overseas to some countries. The books arrived all beautifully packaged, it was like getting a birthday present! The photo isn't great due to having to take it at night, Ebi-kun couldn't wait until the morning to open it.

I am just going to review a couple of the books today and do the rest next week.

The first two are Aboriginal stories and illustrated by children, Ebi-kun loved both of these stories and they led to many questions, he wanted to know if they were true and we ended up talking about stories and legends that are passed down through the generations. He has already asked for one of the other books from the series! I think these would be perfect for those who use Montessori style culture boxes, a great way to introduce the weird and wonderful animals of Australia. The text is simple and easy to read, engaging enough for little ones to be read to and not too long for those just started out in reading books by themselves. Ebi-kun also liked the illustrations, he thought it was 'cool' that kids had done the pictures. 

We both give these books five stars ☆☆☆☆☆

The next review is for a CD and song book 'Sing and Learn English', I think this book is more suited to those learning English as a second/foreign language. It is the kind of CD I would have used back in my ESL teaching days and for those who are teaching, it has the standard themes, colours, ABC's, days of the week etc. so it would be good to supplement the text that you are using. I can't say how good all the songs are because Ebi-kun told me to turn it off after two because it was so annoying. There you are, the honest review for you! It would be interesting to see if he enjoyed it if it was a different language. 

As a mom of a native speaking child I wouldn't buy this, as an ESL teacher or mom of a child that enjoys singing and is studying English I might do. 

I should point out that I do not fall into the category of 'jump round the classroom singing and dancing like a prat' style of teaching, I didn't use music much in class, singing in public is not my thing unless laced with alcohol and unfortunately that is frowned upon in class! Maybe teacher who use a lot of music in class (but not necessarily jump around like prats) would like it more.

Ebi-kun gives this a 'what? I have to give it a star?'

I give it two stars ☆☆