Interactive Books

Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (5/08)

"101 Quick-Thinking Games and Riddles for Children" is a collection of games and riddles designed to "encourage concentration, reasoning, patience, an understanding of numbers, the use of logic, and working with letters and words. They enhance memory skills. They help to develop social abilities and teamwork." (p.1) The activities in the book are designed for teachers of children age six through ten.

From a quick glance in the corner of each activity's page you can tell whether or not this activity will work for you by the icons pictured there. There are icons telling the size of the group needed, whether or not props or space are required, if there is physical contact involved or if it is an outdoor activity. The icons are very beneficial in that you do not have to take the time to read through each description in order to find out if the game is something that would be applicable to your situation.

The first part of the book has 101 games and then the second part of the book has 65 riddles. The games start out fairly simple with one called "Quick Lineup" in which children are split into two groups. Each child writes down a number on a piece of paper and then everyone in each group lines up in numerical order. The first group that completes the task is the winner.

The games become increasingly more challenging and end with an activity called "Mystery Letter" in which one child goes outside the room and the remaining children decide on a "secret letter." When the child comes back into the room he asks the other children up to ten questions which the children answer using the letter somewhere in the word. The guessing child attempts to find the connections and guess the letter.

The author, Allison Bartl, is the author of many books for children, some of which are of similar format to this one. She is an experienced elementary-school teacher so she definitely has the background necessary to create fun, educational activities for this age group. Though most of the activities are geared toward children in a classroom setting the majority of the activities can be modified so that parents can utilize these ideas at home with their children. "101 Quick-Thinking Games and Riddles for Children" contains a lot of creative, fresh ideas and I think that any teacher, parent, or group leader would find numerous activities inside that they would be able to use!

This is a great product for parents who wish to help their kindergartener build on what they are learning in class. Lets face it, it's been a while since we adults have been in Kindergarten so we can easily mix in inappropriate leasons from higher grades thinking they are what is covered in Kindergarten. This book removes those questions of appropriateness lesson objectives and lets the parents focus on what counts the lessons themselves.

This book is also great for the pre-kindergarteners to get a heads up on what to expect from school and not to be surprised by the lessons. As the lessons are designed to take 30 minutes or less, it is not to hard to hold a child's attention span for the lessons.

The book even gives permission of copyright to be able to duplicate the lessons for multiple student use. (Guilt free usage, can't beat it.)

If you are looking for a tool, designed by teachers to help your child in an easy to understand daily lesson format, then buy this book.

Best of luck to you and your young student(s).

This is such a fun book for kids. It has great ideas. I teach a craft class at my church and we have all really enjoyed these projects!

This book is very helpful for animation but you need also a hernashing max5 this is also a good one

Pros: The book is small in size (approximately 7 1/2" by 7 1/4"), making it easily transportable. Content of author's chapters are concise and well laid out with easily understood explanations and directions. Graphics are excellent, although some a tad bit small. However, in keeping with the size of the book it makes perfectly good sense to have the graphics fit proportionately!
Cons: None.
Moose Rating 5

The authors combine the 40 techniques into 9 chapters with a beginning introduction to the iPod and ITunes. Since the latest iTunes is now up to 7.0.2 there are some differences. However, the opening Introduction covers both the Mac and Windows side of installation.

Chapter 1 is Getting Started and covers the basics of the iPod and goes into iTunes. There is opening page to each Chapter which describes what you will find in the chapter. They give good suggestions about the use of your iPod as far as battery usage and what to not use to conserve battery life. This first chapter is 55 pages and covers 10 techniques including Technique 11. Transcoding Audio which becomes a little more technical, but still useful especially when one wants to convert an audio file from one format to another.

Expanding Your Audio Collection which deals with the iTunes Music Store, Podcasts and even free music which is Technique 15. While the iTunes store is great it is nice to know and find that you can download music for free and do so legitimately.

A chapter is devoted to the iPod Nano (not including the latest IPod Nanos recently released from Apple.

There is a Chapter for the IPod Shuffle [p.108 DO THE SHUFFLE. - older models obviously, however there are good suggestions and uses for using your Shuffle as a flash drive.

A chapter is devoted to accessories (Chapter 7). This shows just a small amount of accessories and even then a book unto itself would be needed at this juncture to reflect all of the various add ons and what not which have come about with the introduction of the iPod.

Chapter 8 covers the Maintenance and Troubleshooting, which also includes the Windows information for those folks who haven't or do not own a Mac. I was reading the book at my part time job and an individual stopped and asked me a question about an iPod. I went to the chapter, read him the solution and he walked away, a very grateful individual. I suggested he acquire this book to help him and his friend for future answers.

All in all I would say this is a great little book and I enjoyed reading this and applying the suggestions offered by the authors. Another aspect of the book was the way it included those items for the PC, not that I have any desire to own one, however I thought it was fair to cover both I will probably go and acquire some of the other books which are displayed in the inside back cover.

My parents bought this book for my younger brother and it was one of the best things they've ever done , it managed to keep him buzy for hours(and give us some peace and quite for a change)this is a totally great little book

This book was so informative and delightful to read. I loved making all the crafts - the directions were perfect. Thanks!

I purchased a set of these ABC flash cards for a niece's child and she was thrilled. The fact that the cards actually open made the child even more interested to see and learn about each card. She is only 3 1/2 years old and already had a good handle on what each card said.

This is the book to learn this particular Music Program, by all means, this is not a substitute to the Ableton Manual but merely a companion to that, to get the best results out of this book, you need first to have the actual software install on your computer to follow through with the tips and trick it teaches, basically giving you a basic definition of the feature in question followed by a suggestion example to apply to your musical projects.

The illustrations shown here are quite clear throughout the book with big snapshots showing where you need to be around Ableton at all times which is very helpful, this is the area where most books fall short, drowning the user with endless text with not enough visuals to follow through.

The author (Mr. Delaney) obviously knows the subject matter very well, with the graphic ability to show not just the basic operations, but additional tricks to apply to your piece of music. Ableton Live 7 Tips and Tricks is really what it is, additional ways to use the program to your advantage beyond the Manual. I've been using Ableton Live since version 5 for Multimedia projects and even I've learn different ways of applying effects, dynamics and using hardware keyboards and controllers and better implementing Ableton Live with different Audio and Midi interfaces along with other Software's as VST or Rewire

Conclusion:
To get the best results out of this book, I suggest reading the Manual first and the built-in Tutorials that comes with Ableton Live to get real world satisfying results out of your Multimedia. Newcomers, Intermediate and Advanced User will all benefit greatly from this book.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Part of my job as a Web designer/developer is to stay on top of current best practices, technology and software. This book covers all of that in a comprehensive but concise package.

The author goes a step beyond discussing what you can and can't do with a Web site, and offers practical, understandable reasons why, and specific examples of when a particular technique or technology is appropriate.

Like a well designed Web site, the book is well organized and easily readable. The links to the author's own website and others are well chosen, adding depth to the subject, and demonstrating an effective way to create a multimedia approach in which each medium plays a specific role, each complimentary to the other.

This is, by far, the best book of its kind that I've seen.