I have always thought that two of the best things you can surround your children with are books and games. Growing up I loved going to friends homes that were full of these things and that is what I want for my children.

So anyway, ramble aside, what games can you recommend for a 5 year old and a 2 year old? So far we have mouse trap, down fall, snakes and ladders, max the cat, bingo, memory games, The Enchanted Forest, Ludo, Orchard games Space rocket game.

What do your children like playing with and what are they enjoying reading at the moment?

I am just nosey.

I still play Guess Who with my DD and she’s 11 - it’s a firm favourite. It sounds like you have loads already; we only have 2 LOL!

Have fun finding new ones.

SC x

shadow in the woods, dominos, rory’s story cubes.

reading wise its so hard to say! a big hit with mine at that age was anything by dorothy edwards (check out her books about boys, joe & timothy), the dorrie books (out of print, but wonderful), the findus books, milly molly mandy, the aurora books (anna cath vesty, again, out of print but wonderful), of course astrid lingren but especially the bullerby children/noisy village, and little house in the big woods and farmer boy (laura Ingalls Wilder).

Just to say re the Laura Ingalls Wilder books: the first two books, Little House in the Big Woods and Farmer Boy, are both wonderful, a year in the life of a young pioneer child. However I’d avoid the later books in this series with young kids as I’m really not comfortable with their portrayal of native americans. I think I’d leave them til you can have a bit more of a conversation about them and for me that means reading up around the subject so I was confident to deal with it. The main book at issue is “little house on the prairie” itself which I seem to remember we skipped over and came back to. The gist of it is that the ingalls family, along with a lot of other white settlers, colonise native american land and then act the defenceless victims when the native americans are rather unhappy about it. Emotionally tricky stuff. It starts something like “there were no people in the land at all, only animals and indians”, and goes downhill from there.

Quirkle: like scrabble but with colour/shape sets.

Quorridor Kid: like simplified mouse trap crossed with Blokus!

The Little Orchard is the kids’ favourite of all time.

Jenga.  You need Jenga!

Morgan loves Pikky which is a mosaic game, she is also into the mandala cards and those old fashioned swap-heads-bodies-legs type of card sets.

Jenna loves Uno.

Reading: I still recite Goodnight Moon daily for Roo, and Morgan adores Mr Men.  I am reading Anne of Green Gables to Jenna, we just finished What Katy Did and Ballet Shoes.  We were just given yet another anthology of poetry “for kids” and we’re dipping into that a lot, Jenna is very into poetry at the moment which suits me fine (my current go-to read is Emily Dickinson’s collected works).

I have Rory’s story cubs and quirkle on my Amazon List so that is good. I am really excited about them now. We have been given a travel Guess who, I had forgotten about that. Yes, it is good.

Thank you for the ideas and he book suggestions too, I will have a look at them.

Perhaps it is this wintery weather that is making me feel like hibernating with puzzles, books and soup.

Don’t forget about Connect 4, kids always like that as well as Hungry Hippos and Buckaroo.  We have most of the games mentioned but our children have always liked card games such as snap.  Also love normal playing cards such as pontoon/21 which is good for addition practice.  We bought Twister from the charity shop the other day and dd finds it hilarious.

Reading wise, we like a lot the Enid Blyton books. Brambley Hedge, Fern Hollow.  DD still loves all the Julia Donaldson books.  Her favourite is Stick Man and she more or less recites it by herself now.  She also loves the “Naughty Little Sister” series.