Read: Lift the flap books (and a giveaway)

Recently, Junior J wanted to make a dinosaur book as a birthday present for his friend who also loved dinosaurs. He had a good time drawing different types of dinosaurs on pieces of coloured construction paper. He then pasted these down as flaps using washi tape, in a little book I made. (The book was just made using pieces of art block that was halved, folded, and tied together with twine.) 

We hunted for pictures of the dinosaurs on the Internet, and we printed them out. He cut out the pictures and stuck them at the side of his drawings so that his friend could see how the dinosaurs looked like. (I love how he manages to incorporate the main features of each dinosaur in his drawings!)

He then carefully wrote down the names of these dinosaurs under each flap.

I was quite amazed at how carefully he did each step, and how he took the initiative to finish up the book when I was busy putting baby to sleep! We're hoping that his friend likes the book, and would be able to fill up the remaining pages (we prepared 12 dinosaurs) with other dinosaur pictures.

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Speaking of lift-the-flap books, the boys have been pouring over these interesting reads that MPH kindly sent us from Usborne's "Look Inside" series:

I used to prefer regular storybooks with a good storyline, and with Junior J we read a lot of those. However, when it came to Lil J, we found that he just couldn't sit through a story. He would wriggle and squirm and run off half-way. He's much better these days, but I've observed he has a much longer attention span when he has something to fiddle with while he listens to a story. We've figured he's probably a kinesthetic learner.

These board books have managed to capture his attention, simply because there's so much to manipulate in each book! The two boys love lifting each flap to see what is underneath. One interesting thing about this series is how they not only incorporate flaps, but sometimes flaps within flaps, or tabs you could pull to move certain pictures across the page. 

Once you get past the novelty of the flaps, you'd find that the contents of each book is pretty well-organized. Each book introduces various aspects of the topic, for example, the book on cars not only introduces various types of cars, but also describes how a car works. It also lets you take a peek at a garage, the race track and the scrap yard. All information is included in bite-sized bits on various flaps, and lifting each flap introduces more interesting facts. The illustrations are attractive and clear, so it really engages visual learners too!

I must say I did enjoy reading these books with the boys, and I am excited to share that we have a copy of "Look Inside Cars" and "Look Inside An Airport" to give away this week! Just follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget below to enter in the giveaway (please remember to leave your name and email address in the comments so we can contact you if you win!):

a Rafflecopter giveaway

MPH stocks some of the titles from the "Look Inside" Series, so you can check out the titles at their bookstores too! (The Parkway Parade branch is also having a promotion for the "The Young Scientists" collectors' sets. You can view the details here.)

PS: We received a copy of the three titles for purpose of the review. No monetary compensation was received, and all opinions are our own.