Children's Rhyming Picture Books

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a technique you can learn to be fully engaged in situations around you. It can help improve your thoughts, feelings and focus…

Why is mindfulness good for our children?

Growing at any stage is a learning process and sometimes feelings can become overwhelming as we develop at any age! Teaching mindfulness can help develop emotional regulation, concentration and can also relieve stress in overstimulated environments

Sitting Like a frog!

A very popular mindfulness book for teaching mindfulness is ‘sitting like a frog’ there's a lot of audio books and youtube videos on guides for both at home and in the classroom!

Do you have young tots or children that love everything sensory? Well this might be for you… Feel free to skip to the Directions below…

I hope everyone liked Thursday Throwback and is looking forward to finding out all the exciting things we have planned this year!

TODAY IS FRIDAY FUNDAY!!!

Who is ready for the weekend? I hope everyone had a wonderful first week back since the holidays!

Today's Friday Funday is all about messy play!

What you’ll need for dinosaurs in taste safe mud:

2 cups of corn starch
Water
1 cup of powdered hot chocolate mix or cocoa powder
Assorted dinosaur toys
Container
Spoon

Directions for Disonsoars in taste safe mud:

First, combine the corn flour and the cocoa powder in a bowl. You can choose how firm or how runny you want to make the messy mud by adding small amounts of water to the bowl. The general guideline calls for one cup of water to two cups of cornflour and one cup of cocoa powder, but there’s no rule. You can always firm it up a little bit with some more corn flour if the mixture becomes too runny. Finally, add some toy dinosaurs or farm animals and you’re set for muddy fun.

With the New Year Just turned, how about a new us!

Now don’t worry everything will be the same but how about a change of design? A new weekly structure?

Every day, apart from Sunday, there will be a new post in a specific category, So let's dive in and let me know what you think!!

Today is Thursday Throwback where we remember all of the work and memories over the past few years. So let's spend today with our kind hearted, welcoming soul Harley Hound.

Harley has many struggles and looks at others in envy. She lacks confidence and struggles to see the beauty in herself.

She changes to be like the others and ends up losing herself which makes life very difficult but at the end of the book Harley looks in the mirror and realises the truth…

True beauty is the beauty that's within all along!

In light of nearly hitting 1000 followers! We’d like to run a competition.
So who loves Kids Books!! Do you want to get your little Christmas elves an extra special present? If so read the entry requirements below!

There will be two winners and the full list of prizes will be announced on the 10th so stay tuned!

The competition winners will be pulled from a hat on the 15th just in time for Christmas so if you have kiddies this is the competition for you!

There's three ways to enter!

Number One:
1) Follow us

2) Like this post and tag 3 friends who you think would love to enter

3) Comment "Done😋"

Number Two:
1) Follow our Instagram page!

2) Comment “Instagram ✅”!

Number Three:
1) Share this post!

2) Comment “Shared ☺️”

Each Completed task is 1 entry so if you complete all three that's 3 entries! And who knows there might be more ways to get extra entries just before the winners are
announced!!

Delighted to share with you the cover for my latest book which will be published in 3 weeks! I think so many families will love this story and I’m so proud of it! Huge thanks to my amazing illustrator!

We've created a free Kindle download deal on Harley Hound today and tomorrow. Please go to Amazon and download a copy - and if you like it, please leave a review! Thank you!
P.S make sure to click 'Buy Now' not 'Read Now' - otherwise Amazon will subscribe you to Kindle Unlimited.

I wanted to share this review we received for Harley Hound. As I'm sure all children's book authors will agree, we're not doing this to "get rich" or "be famous" - the satisfaction is from making a small difference to (young) people's lives and helping them to better understand the world. So reviews such as this give us authors the impetus to keep going and invest more time and money into it. Thank you so much Phoenix for making my evening!

For tomorrow and Saturday, I am going to make Harley Hound free to buy on Kindle. I really would welcome you downloading a copy and if you enjoy it, please leave a review!

Our story ends with the best outcome - Charlie can be part of the tour!

I hope you've enjoyed reading my story? I've written and published each verse in an improv 'day-by-day' style. Its quite an unusual experience, as you can't undo any mistakes if the story needs to go in a different direction!

As we come towards the end of our story, Barry is realising that it's friends and family that make things truly special.

Not wanting to stand in the way of his best friend's dream, Charlie knows he'll let him down in the troupe. So, as only a great friend would, he removes himself from the tour to avoid forcing Barry into a difficult position.

Reality bites for Barry as he realises that Charlie (perhaps naturally) assumes he's going to be part of the tour.

Finally Barry gets the big break he's always hoped for - a chance to dance on an international stage. Things are finally falling into place...

So now we're getting a sense of Barry's quandary. His best friend Charlie badly wants to be in his dancing troupe. But Charlie isn't exactly built for dancing. Should Barry put friendship before his dreams and omit him from the troupe...?

Every day this week, I'll post a new verse about a badger named Barry. In truth, I'm not entirely sure where the story is heading. All I can promise is plenty of dancing and no roadkill!

Another limerick I'd love to share with you. Again I've chosen to personify an animal. I think there's something magical about imagining animals having human qualities. It's a child-like innocence that should never leave us.

Dancing animals is a bit of theme with my limericks. But frankly, what's more fun than an animal dancing? Happy Friday everyone!

This one's for everyone with a noisy non-musical neighbour!

Hello! After taking a break from writing, I'm back with some more limericks. A bit rusty, but it's nice to be be back rhyming!

Walking the dog and running are my best times for dreaming up new stories and rhymes. Yesterday I composed this as a potential opener to my 3rd monster story in the series I’m writing. What do you think?

No title yet and no illustration naturally - just a raw rhyme and an idea around outsiders coming into the town. My plan is to explore the challenge of being new to a group and different cultures. The Peruvian family will try to fit in, but encounter setbacks, until kindness wins through. There’ll be moments of humour too no doubt!

Our third (and possibly final) house that looks likes a face is ... Angry Angus the Annexe.

Time for a new limerick...this time it's about a goat named Capote.

For those who love rhyming, I had a tough choice between "imagine how..." and "oh how...". Using "oh" would've rolled off the tongue a little better. But "imagine" hopefully involves the reader a little more in the story? - and 'on' and 'oh' looked slightly odd beside each other.

Thanks to Dan Fagan for the artwork.

I’d love to share my favourite sequence of pages from my recently published book Harley Hound. Feeling sad and dissatisfied with her life as a basset hound, Harley’s attention is caught by a hypnotist on the ‘talking box machine’. And so begins her adventures with super-canine powers.

Thanks to the brilliant Becca Wain for bringing my words to life! ❤️

📚

A week of extreme toothache has caused me to take a break from rhyming. I thought I'd show my appreciation for all the years I've taken them for granted - by writing a little verse for teeth. "THANK YOU TEETH", all 32 of you - that nearly became 31!

Our next house that looks like a face is….Thelma Thatch! And what a beauty she is!

The word again is

Tommy Townhouse.

Pareidolia is the name for seeing faces in random things. It's a brilliant quirk of life and nature and we'd like to share it with you.

So, we tried to re-create the front cover of our book Harley Hound using the real Harley. But sadly, basset hounds are just not that animated in real life!

We recently came across Tara’s picture books and are so glad we did! They’re great fun and hugely entertaining 😊

This one weaves number sequences into a delightful and imaginative story - so it’s educational as well as brilliant. Really looking forward to her next book ‘Bloop’ which I think is released soon - especially as it’s about dogs! 😍