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

Do your grandchildren live far, far away?  Do you pine to celebrate their birthday with them but can’t?  Here’s a way that you can sort of take your grandchild out to lunch for his birthday.

Purchase a gift card for her favorite lunch spot (Arby’s, Wendy’s, Burger King).  Wrap the card in a box.  Put that box inside another box with birthday presents.  Then, mail it off!

Now that Christmas is over and now that our sweet granddaughter has opened her present (as much as a 7 month old baby can open Christmas gifts . . .), I can show you the fun blanket that I made for her. It is made out of the softest material called Minky.  I wish that I could have a blanket that soft to wrap up in on bitter cold days like today . . .

This fabric was rather challenging to sew because it was heavy and bulky.  And the mitered corners were tricky.  (I think I need to practice on scraps of material to perfect my corner making skills!)  But I think it turned out rather cute if I do say so myself.

Here are the blanket directions in case you are interested in making one for your grandchildren.  You’ll notice in the directions that it says to sew rick rack along the edge.  I didn’t do that with this blanket because I thought that adding rick rack would make it really thick to sew through. The fabric store had sample blankets made out of flannel and they had rick rack on them.  Cute, cute, cute.

It you decide to make a blanket like this one, please send me a picture and show me how it turned out for you.

Happy sewing!