Mini Nerdling's Mischief Makers Summer Reading Challenge 2018 - Reviews

This year was the second year of Mini Nerdling taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge hosted by our local library. If you don't know what this is, it's an incentive to keep children reading throughout the six weeks holiday (summer holiday here in the UK), they have to read six books and give them a score out of three stars. As they go through they get rewards and stickers and there are other activities to keep it interesting. Once they complete it they get some goodies, a wristband, a medal and a certificate. If you want to find out more, the official website is here. 

As Mini Nerdling has helped me out with book reviews before, he knows I give my "score" out of five stars and he knows I have to write about what I thought of the book, so although there is only room to score out of three stars on the form, he wanted to do it the way I do it. I thought it would be fun to keep a record of his reviews and share them with everyone. It's also good practice for when he helps with reviews and for school in the future. So without further ado, onto the reviews - 

Animal Fun! Touch And Feel - Tracey Radford

My favourite part was the elephants and I enjoyed feeling the pages.

5 stars

In-o-saur, Out-o-saur - David Bedford and Leonie Worthington

My favourite part was the cover and I liked that it was the same as a page in the book.

5 stars

Fortunately, Unfortunately - Michael Foreman

My favourite part was the aliens.

5 stars

100 First Animals - Dawn Sirett

My favourite animal out of all of them was the snake.

5 stars

But Excuse Me That Is My Book - Lauren Child

I liked the first page when the brother and sister were sat reading together

5 Stars

Meg And Mog - Helen Nicoll and Jan Pieńkowski

I liked the witches and I liked the page when all the witches looked the same and I spotted the differences.

5 Stars


And that's it! What do you think? Do you think he did a good job, because I do but I am biased. Have you and you kids read any of these books? What did you think?

Local Library - Zoolab Session

Today's post is another one talking about a super fun activity that we participated in over the summer holiday and that I wanted to share with people. As you can probably tell from the header/title I'll be talking about a Zoolab session myself and Nerdish Dad went to with the Nerdling's.

This year our local library, really knocked it out of the park with the activities that they had scheduled throughout the holidays. One of them we went to which I won't be blogging about because it was only a mini session, was a Mad Science session where the children could make slime! When I saw the animal handling session with Zoolab, I got the Nerdling's booked in immediately (tickets were only £1!!)

In our library there is a separate room which is the children's library and this is where they hold any of the sessions aimed at children. We got there early and got ourselves seats and I'm glad we did as it was very well attended. There was room for everyone, but I wanted a good spot for the pram.

Our Ranger was called Laura and she instantly took control of the room and had the children sat down and quiet, with no effort at all, which is incredibly impressive with a room full of excited children! She gave the low down on being quiet so as not to worry the animals and how important it was to wash our hands after touching any animals and she promised stickers at the end as long as the children promised to wash their hands.

I wish I could tell you word for word the whole story that Laura told to introduce each of the animals that she brought out, but the short version is that the animals had heard about Hippos (I'm pretty sure it was Hippos) that were in need, so they decided to enter a talent competition at the carnival down the road so that they could send them things they needed.

The first animal that came out was a Madagascan Hissing Cockroach. In the talent contest the cockroach had eaten all the cakes in the baking competition! The cockroach the children were handling, Luna, was actually heavily pregnant and I have been reliably informed by Laura herself that she had her babies that very night!!

The second animal that came out was a Chilean Rose Tarantula. The children couldn't handle the tarantula as they were very nervous and we didn't want to stress them out, but Laura showed them round and made sure everyone had a good look. In the story, the tarantula was throwing balls through hoops and had heard a whispery voice, giving them hints as to how to win. 

The next animal we learnt about was a white tree frog, now this we definitely couldn't handle because they tried to escape the minute Laura opened the lid. Can you imagine the carnage of loads of kids trying to catch an escaping frog!! Again though we got a really good look and the story continued with the frog taking part in the singing competition. 

The final animal was my absolute favourite and he was absolutely gorgeous! He was a corn snake called Ozzy. He wasn't the usual gold colour either, he was a silver and it was beautiful. The kids at this point needed a reminder to keep quiet so Ozzy didn't get stressed, but considering how long we'd been there, they'd all done really well. 

Throughout the session we learnt loads of facts about each animal and it was done it such a wonderful way, the children wouldn't have even noticed that they were learning. As an adult I loved the story and it really kept everyone engaged and it certainly made me at least laugh out loud more than once! 

I'm really hoping the library keep up with the excellent bookings that they have been making as I'm loving the fun and education it's providing for the Nerdling's. If you get chance to go to a Zoolab session, I would 100% recommend that you do because they are incredibly interesting and fun no matter how old you are! 

As an aside, I was so proud of mini Nerdling as originally he didn't want to touch the animals at all. He then agreed to at least stroke them, but when the animals started to come out, he was so excited and wanted to hold all of them and did a really good job of it as you can see above! 

For more information about Zoolab, check out their website - here!