Recently we hit the annual Scholastic warehouse sale in our area, and since it was the last day, we even got an extra 50% off everything we bought—allowing me to make some true impulse purchases! One such buy was the cute book Wonderplay, Too: Games, Crafts, & Creative Activities for 3-to 6-Year-Olds by Fretta Reitzes and Beth Teitelman. Having never read the first Wonderplay volume, I didn’t really know what to expect, but I couldn’t pass up the price, and it looked fun, so into my shopping cart it went.
It turns out that it was a purchase that was decently spent. Sure, the book has some common ideas that we’ve all heard of already (think Ants on a Log for snack time, for example), but there are plenty of really creative ideas that we haven’t heard of yet, as well. It’s easily organized by chapters about science, dance, cooking, art, and music, with helpful little boxes that give readers a simple way to browse through quickly, finding fun activities for whichever subject they are looking for.
Some pictures would have definitely been nice, to at least break up all of that text (the boxes do this occasionally, but overall there is a lot of text) or to provide diagrams for more difficult projects; but overall the book is very straightforward and easy to implement, whether in a classroom or at home.
