Pinkalicious Soccer Star

By Victoria Kann

Oh wow I hate this book.  Guess who picked it out.

Dad gets the main character a pink soccer ball, and they play soccer against the mean angry girls who only wear black.  They say "Pink stinks!" because they are bullies.

You know, I've got this thing against asking kids what their favourite colour is.  They just say stuff because they hate saying, "I don't know".  And when they say, "I don't like green", like my daughter does, it doesn't mean anything, because there are so many shades of green.  I showed my daughter my new neon-lime-green sweatshirt and she was amazed and loved it, because, actually, she doesn't hate all shades of green.

 This shade of pink, however, is the same shade as Pepto-bismal.  And it's the only shade they use in the entire book.  Colours are exciting and this book about one specific ugly shade of pink that is already heavily marketed to girls is so dumb.

And kind of racist.

The message of the book is, I guess, to believe in yourself, but it gets lost on this weird trip across the world on a unicorn  seeing other girls who like pink.  Because the other message is that it's okay to like pink (like anyone is questioning that).




Look, I like pink.  I wear pink.  Heck, I even dress my son up in pink.  (pink on boys looks so rad.)

But look at that colour.

Of course my daughter loves this book.

Friday Post - Candyland

 I win.  I got the 2004 version of Candyland.  And I didn't have to drive to someone's house and pay them a whole $5 for it.  (Seriously craigslisters.  Just because YOU paid $7 for it 10 years ago and then lost half the pieces.  It isn't worth even close to that much.  Not even if you package it with a game I don't want.) I paid no more than $1 for this and there was nothing missing whatsoever.

Why did I want this edition specifically?  Well, the earlier editions are hard to find.  For a start.  And the newer versions just bizarre.

 But as far as game-play goes, Candyland is the only preschool game that uses cards to advance the players along the board.  It means that there's no counting and the game is super easy to play.  Newer versions have a spinner instead, which is so difficult to use.

The art is terrible, and the player pieces are ugly, and boy do I hate this game, overall.  But the reason I hate it is because the first time I ever played it, I was 12.  And really, my daughter loves it for the make-believe aspect.  So I play it with her because it makes her happy.  And when we get tired of trying to make it to the castle, I make my gingerbread man talk to hers and we make up a little story together.

But I'm getting reaaaaally impatient to play strategy games with her.

Friday Post - Waddingtons "Dix"

Waddingtons "Un Monde Des Jeux - Dix"

I found this at the thrift store and picked it up because my mum used to have a copy.  We never played it properly when I was a kid because we didn't know the rules and nobody sat down and explained it to us.  We lost the box and everything, so my mum got rid of it.

I read the rules when I got it home and it's basically dominoes, but you add to 10.  It says 5+ on the box, which is probably accurate.  I let my daughter play with it a bit and she happily moved them around on the coffee table in arbitrary pairings.

I hope this comes in handy down the line.  I've been looking up other games by this company, but I can't find anything so far.

Too Many Cats

 By Sindy McKay
Illustrated by Meredith Johnson

This was a fantastic book that I randomly requested from the library because my daughter demanded more cat books.

It's a "We Both Read" book, meaning that the pages on the left have story, and the pages on the right have one or two words with a picture.

 The story is a pretty hokey one about a girl who wants a cat and dreams that she gets ten instead, each a different colour.  It means that it's teaching kids to sight-read colours and numbers instead of learn phonetically, which is okay.  You kind of have to learn both ways, because some of those numbers are impossible to sound out phonetically.

This book was a real hit.  Before I give it back, I think I'm going to photocopy some pages and cut them up for a mix-and-match activity with my daughter. 

Blue Hat, Green Hat

 By Sandra Boynton

Everyone gets this one, right?  I think.

My daughter didn't mind this book.  My son was OBSESSED with it.  As soon as he learned to walk (just before his first bithday), he would find this book, rush over to me, place it in my lap and sit patiently while I read it.  When I finished, he would grab it, flip it, and throw it back in my hands for another read-through.

It was pretty impressive because otherwise he hated storytime and wouldn't sit still for anything.

He obviously didn't understand the content.  He liked it, and still does, because it's really simplistic and very rhythmic.  He still mimics the rhythm of the text with melodic nonsense words every time he picks it up.

Monster puzzle from the grocery store

I'm running or of steam on the Friday posts now that Halloween is coming up...

This puzzle was available at Superstore last year.  It's fantastic because you can mix and match the monsters, but you could also use it to teach colour matching.  It's provided us with hours of entertainment.  Definitely better than a lot of the Melissa and Doug designs.
It is very cheaply made, though.  It wasn't really sanded properly.  I would have easily paid a little more of it had been higher quality.