Any Room For Me?

Several years ago we bought this adorable winter book by the name of Any Room For Me? to add to our winter book basket. Around the same time, I found an etsy seller, which I featured here, who had an adorable handmade wooden animals and felted wool mitten set to accompany the story. The story and toy set have remained one of our favorite winter book basket treasures.

Fast forward to homeschooling Finn this year and my decision to order a couple of magazines for Finn and I to leaf through during our reading time each morning. One of the magazines that I decided to order for him, after great consideration because the magazine was on the expensive side, was Ladybug magazine. This magazine is truly a treasure for young children. With finger plays, folk songs (with links to the audio file online), poetry, beautiful gentle illustrations, and seasonal story goodness, this magazine is chock full of so much to enjoy that it generally takes us 2-3 days to wade through the entire issue and even then we frequently come back to the stories or songs for the rest of the month.

How delighted were we to discover that the Nov/Dec issue, which just arrived, contained the story and beautiful illustrations to our beloved Any Room For Me? But even more exciting, the sheet of paper animals, mitten, woodpile and a cottage to be cut and assembled and played with ALL. DAY. LONG. Needless to say, we didn't get any further in this issue. ;)


Finn did most of the cutting of the paper animals by himself, with a little bit of help on the cottage. He did have to tape a couple that tore in inconvenient places, but that's part of the scissor-learning process.


And he was able to match the mouse, frog, hare, fox, wild boar and huge bear to all of his wooden pieces from his mitten set. How exciting!


All day Finn alternately narrated the story with his paper animals,


and wooden animals. What a sweet kind of play to capture his imagination!


I'm sure we'll get more use out of both animal sets, the magazine, and the book over the coming months as we head into winter.

And I can't wait to see what other good bits are in this issue of Ladybug. I already saw a peek of knitting, sheep, mittens and hot cocoa on other pages. As Finn excitedly says, "more to come! There's more to come, Mama!"