Early Years

Each month we receive a book through the post from Parragon publishers, who send us releases they would like us to review. This month was particularly exciting for the boy as the book in question has buttons and MAKES NOISES!

Now I have a long history with ‘noise button’ books which tended to be of the twinkly princess and fairy variety when my girls were little; certainly I have grim memories of repeated pressing of the “bears like hunny and I’m a pooh bear” singalong button. So, I can’t lie, my heart sunk a little – I do prefer my books to be colourful, interesting but SILENT! However, with the boy now hitting the stage where they become insatiably fascinated by a particular topic and a book about wild animals has ignited a huge interest. So I swallowed my desire to run away and this week we’ve been reading the book – repeatedly.

In fact it’s a really nice little book with plenty to recommend it. It covers 10 animals (wolf, bear, whale, dolphin, hyena, toucan, frog, gorilla, hippo and lion) across a number of different habitats and with just enough information on each page to make it interesting and start off conversations. The noises are real and don’t go on too long and the pages brightly coloured with a shapes top representing an animal from each double page spread. The board is thick and the sound panel sturdy and it isn’t too loud or too annoying 😉 so ticks all the boxes it can really. I like the fact that we can press buttons at the right time in the story, encouraging him to think about timing, listening and engaging properly rather than getting wild or turning over the pages too quickly.

This got me thinking about other books we’ve liked over the years.

Monkey Puzzle is a huge favourite and the cry of “I want my mum!” is something the boy will often do when he wants me RIGHT NOW. I love that he makes jokes from books.

Another popular one here is The Monkey with a Bright Blue Bottom which roughly cover the same type of idea as some of the Just So Stories, all about a naughty monkey who paints designs on the jungle animals.

ANd then there are the Just So Stories themselves, a home education and childhood classic and a book that features on lots of Charlotte Mason Living Books lists.

When sleep is hard to come by (and this boy has a lot of trouble settling down at night, he sometimes drifts off to the sound of the Barefoot Books YouTube channel. We had this particular book when the girls were little with a CD – YouTube is much easier though! We love The Animal Boogie (A Barefoot Singalong)

Disclosure: we were sent books and links are affiliate links.