Show Me How! Book Review

My little 2 1/2 year old son is a little bundle of excitement and curiousity. I have been feeling kind of bad over the last few weeks since my little Kailana was born, because I feel like I haven't been able to spend as much time alone with him teaching him and playing with him to his heart's desire.

Then, I received this great book, "Show Me How! Build Your Child's Self-Esteem Through Reading, Crafting, and Cooking." The book is a shortcut for today's busy parents and teachers. It helps parents build self-esteem, develop pre-literacy skills and create a life-long parent-child bond. Just as important, the simple fun-filled educational acitivities, easy-to-use format and gentle parenting tips give parents a newfound sense of confidence and competence in their own parenting abilities as well. If parents of a new baby(like me) have preschoolers at home, the book will provide instant activities that don't need to be planned by the harried new parents.

Hooray for less stress!

The author, Vivian Kirkfield, was a kindergarten and Head Start teacher in NYC for many years. While raising her own three children, she owned and operated a home daycare for teacher's children. I love that her and I come from similar backgrounds, since I used to be a preschool and pre-kindergarten teacher. She has many years of creativity under her belt and it shines through in this book!

The book is divided up into six chapters that are centered on children's feelings and thoughts. In each chapter, there are fifteen or more picture book suggestions with matching arts and crafts projects and cooking activies. As a mom and past teacher, I know this is perfect for children and will get them very excited!

I especially like that each arts and crafts project is environmentally friendly and geared toward recycling items already on hand. This is so great, not only for the environment, but also for busy moms who don't have time to run to the store just to get items to make a quick craft project. It makes it SO much easier to just find the items in your own cupboards.

The other thing that I especially loved was the way she features healthy recipes that are low fat, low sugar and high in fiber. I didn't like that margarine was listed in the ingredients, but I noticed that in the introduction to the book she does mention that you may want to substitute a more healthy non-hydrogentated spread, which I would hope all parents would do! Organic butter is a much better substitution.

I would definitely recommend this book to parents who want to have meaningful, positive, and fun experiences with their children that don't take much planning. The book is recommended for ages 2-5, but I think that these activites would also be fun for the whole family to do together.

You can find more about this book and order it right from the website for $35.00 plus shipping!