Reading is very important to me. I enjoy reading.  Lots.

I made sure my children could read.

Now, I want to be supportive in helping my grandchildren learn to read.  So I was very excited when I learned about the great site Starfall.com.

A young father told me about this site.  He said that his 7 year-old son was struggling with reading.  Because he was struggling, he didn’t want to read.  He didn’t want to try.  The young father spent time with his son on Starfall.com.  After a few time, his son improved his reading and now loves to read.  Once he got over the struggle, once he gained confidence, once he had some successful reading experiences, there was no stopping the son.

This is a pretty amazing site.  If you have a grandchild that is learning her ABCs, there are activities that will help her learn to recognize the letters and their sounds.

If your grandchild is a beginning reader, there are simple stories for her to read. There are fun activities: all about me (creating a little “journal”), go to the art gallery to learn about famous artists, create a magician and do magic tricks, listen to music (Beethoven, Scott Joplin, Peter Tchaikovsky), and learn tongue twisters.

There’s a download center where you can print out a reading and writing journal, cut-up and take home books, puzzles, and ABC printouts.  If your grandchildren live far away, you could print some up and send them in a package with fun pencils, crayons, or markers.

I think that the key to this site is sharing it WITH your grandchildren. They spend time quality time with grandma doing fun activities that will help the learn to read.

Check it out.

And most importantly, spend time reading with your grandchildren!

(This is what I wrote March 9)

Dear Fabulous Readers,

I am taking a small little vacation to the warmth and the sun in Mexico. I will be gone 8 days. I won’t be posting any material until I get back. I do hope you understand.

Sincerely,
Ms. Gad-About-The-World

(This is what I wrote moments ago.)

Dear Readers,

I tried a new plug-in for my blog.  It was supposed to post what I wrote above.  It didn’t.  I’m not too happy.  I guess it’s back to the ol’ drawing board — or the PHP code to see what my lil’ brain did wrong.  Sigh.

Sincerely,
Ms. Lived Through Horrible Turbulence on the Flight Home

Dinosaurs. My pets when I was growing up in the Mesozoic Era.

So it is only natural that I was delighted when I learned that our grandson’s birthday party would have a dinosaur theme.

His party started out with a dinosaur ‘dig.’ Pieces of a toy dinosaur was hidden in a container of rice.  We dug around to find the pieces and then assembled them into a small dinosaur.  It was great fun — and a challenge to figure out how to put the pieces together. (We had a race to see who could assemble their dinosaur first. I’m sorry that I made my partner come in last. Sigh . . . )

As part of our meal, we were served a ‘nest’ (lettuce salad) with a dinosaur egg (a hard boiled egg that was cracked and put for a while in food dye.) Isn’t it just the most clever thing? (Click on the picture to see a bigger and better view.)

Making a dinosaur egg with grandchildren would be a hoot! Whether you’re doing a birthday party or just wanting to do something fun, this would be an activity that grandchildren would love — especially boys!

Tomorrow is our grandson’s third birthday.  How exciting!  We’ll be driving to his house for his birthday celebration. I can’t wait. I’ve got a pocketful of kisses to give him and his cute sister — and the other grandchildren who will be there.

Since I’ve got birthdays on my brain, I thought that I would share this idea with you.

Have you seen cakes with pictures on them?  I’ve always wondered how they do it.  Here is a website, Icing Images, where you can send in a picture and they will turn it into a frosting photo that can be placed on top of a birthday cake.  How cool is that?? It only costs $15 for an 8 X 11 inch picture.  For $20, you can get pictures to go on top of a dozen cupcakes.  This could really make a grandchild’s birthday special.

There’s another option for those of you who own Cannon or Epson printers.  You can print these pictures up yourself! How cool is that? You can find frosting sheets (that’s what they print the pictures on) online.  Price ranges around $28 for 24 frosting sheets (or edible frosting sheets).  If you have very many grandchildren, this would be the way to go. It’s a lot cheaper than having someone else print it up and mail it to you.  Cheap is good.

There is a slight drawback.  You also have to have edible ink.  I don’t think anybody wants to eat the regular ink from their ink-jet printer.  At least I wouldn’t particularly want to.

I don’t know how many edible frosting sheets you can print up with the edible ink cartridges.  Sheesh, I don’t know how the frosting sheets get through your printer without getting frosting smeared all over the place.  And now that I think about it, even if I could print it up okay, could my clumsy hands put it on the cake without wrecking the frosting picture? If I can’t make cake pops, how good will I be at making frosting sheets . . . ?

Edible ink cartridges cost over $50. If you don’t have a Cannon or Epson printer, dash over to your local Staples store and pick one up for a mere $340.  Then, make sure you have the right software. It looks like you’re into this fun-frosting-foto-for-grandchildren business almost $450 smackeroos.

Maybe I’ll just go to my local grocery store and see if I can buy a cake with photo frosting on it.  They probably can do it. And it would be lots easier and lots cheaper . . .

How cool is that?