Thanks to Homeschoolers of the Phililpines, a homeschooling Facebook group I belong to, I found out that the 37th Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) was scheduled this September at SMX and got free passes too! :)
I love books (and now even children's books) so I practically "begged" Daddy A to clear up our very tight schedule just so we can go and bring along Z. I knew that as a little bookworm, it'd be such a treat for her to experience her first book fair :)
So we went a little bit early and took a stroll along SM Mall of Asia's bay walk.
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| Exercising by the bay |
We had a quick bite at Starbucks too while waiting for the book fair to open its doors at 10 AM.
When we arrived at quarter to 10, we were a bit surprised with the already zigzagging line of people going inside SMX. Had we known about this queue, we would have wrapped up our breakfast much sooner.
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| Grabbed a quick bite |
We only had a couple of hours to spare to "get lost inside" so it was really a good thing that I chanced upon the recommendations of Ms. Donna Simpao Pangilinan in her HomesCool blog. I just went through her list and visited the booths that would best suit the season we are in. We were a group of 6 and we went in 4 different directions 😜 Myself looking at preschool/kindy products, hubby over at the Architecture books, FIL I guess looked at Agri books and my MIL went to the Grolier booth with the kids :)
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| Hubby's books - Diksiyonaryong Biswal ng Arkitekturang Filipino & Three Centuries of Binondo Architecture |
First stop for me was Pauline's..
At this point I was still mindful of the budget. Well, more like keeping in mind that most booths I visited only accepted cash payment.
I was able to score 5 books at a discount of course and the booth-keepers were really nice. I even overheard one sister comment something along the line of "hindi sayang ang pag-join nila sa fair". Whether it was due to monetary gains for their products or the fact that they are able to evangelize thru joining the fair or both..I was actually touched (and really happy that the Lord provided for them) when I heard her utter those words.
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| At Pauline's, I'm a Paulinian after all :) |
Second I went to Bookmark and purchased 4 packs of "Original Artwork created by a boy with autism" each pack has 8 Notecards and 8 Envelopes. I was reserving these for Christmas or even just a "how are you" letter to friends. I ended up using 2 right away for reasons I will share in my next post.
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| Original artwork by a very talented child |
Third stop for me was the Sing, Spell, Read and Write set of books although they ran out of packages already. I hope I can see them once more during the Homeschooling Conference this October! :)
Fourth stop, now with hubby in tow was the Jolly Phonics booth. First time I've heard about them from Ms. Donna's blog but when they explained each book and package to us, we decided this is a must-try for our toddler. Although it is really on the expensive side (even with a discount hehe), to us it is worth it for our homeschooling plans. 2 weeks from having the book with songs CD, Z already knows most of them and more importantly, is able to recognize the sounds each letter / phoneme makes. We're not rushing her to read at this point but we also want to expose her to different modes and mediums for learning. And I say we need to give our Leapfrog DVD's a rest too! :)
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| Some packages are PHP 30-70+k, these are for schools, I believe. |
We got The Phonics Handbook & Jolly Songs with CD from them, luckily we were given a discount. Otherwise these 2 books alone would've cost us about PHP 5,000.00 already (what?!?) Hehehe. Daddy A gave me "the look" as if to say, you better make this worth if for the children 😂 The nice thing about this handbook is that I can make copies (legally allowed) for our home so that means I can really use this for more than 1 child :)
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| The snake is in the grass, the snake is in the grass... |
The fifth and final stop - actually my MIL's stop - was the Grolier booth. I thought they were just looking at the products until I realized they actually bought a whole cart-full of children's educational books like the following series - Talking English (with talking pen), How Do You Know (with talking pen) & Fun-Thinkers with Match Frame. Wow!!! It was an advanced and truly merry Christmas gift for the kids because we had to make sure the pens were working :) Thank you so much Amah M & Angkong D!
Now I know what (and how much! hahaha) I have to prepare for next year's book fair! :) Just kidding Daddy A....but not really! :p
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| Knocked out baby in the Lille |
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| Grolier books and talking pens from Amah M & Angkong D..thank you!!! :D |
