Master C is a logical thinker. With him the “why?” stage never quite ended, as he just kept asking why questions, but as his understanding of right world around him developed it just meant that the questions developed too. Now that he’s five the questions keep coming thick and fast, but they are now punctuated by him thinking in incredibly detail about things and they are often very, very specific questions.
There’s absolutely no doubt that it’s a wonderful skill for him to have, but as a parent at times it can be so incredibly frustrating when all you want to do is get out of the house on time and instead he’s still processing what happened 30 minutes earlier and delving into the depths of a sequence of events or trying to understand exactly how something works. As an engineer I can see that this logical thought process is a brilliant starting point for him to have a future in something like engineering, but I just need to learn how to channel his questions a bit more and help him think for himself about things. And not get too frustrated when he doesn’t understand something first time, or when things doesn’t work in exactly the way he expects them to.
Just as soon as I saw Romeo’s Big Book of Clever Ideas I knew it was the perfect book for Master C. Romeo is about to go off on his first camping trip and he’s incredibly excited. He gets up extra early to pack his suitcase with everything that he needs for the trip, but once he’s done so he realises that he has a bit of a problem. His suitcase is so heavy that he can’t possibly lift it.
He realises that he needs to come up with a new way of getting his suitcase to the campsite, so he starts to think about how that may be possible and goes off to the library to look at books that may be able to help him. With inspiration from books he tries a varied of modes of transport – wheels, on water, in the air – but each time his experiments show him that he’s not yet found the right way of getting his suitcase to the campsite.
What I love about this book is that it shows children how they sometimes need to try lots of different ways of doing something before they come across the best way to solve a challenge. And even then, you sometimes need to turn things on their heads (and think outside the box if you’re going to use business speak!) to come up with the perfect solution. I’m also a big fan of the fact that there’s a nod in there to using books and libraries to find out things rather than just asking someone or looking things up online. I’m old fashioned like that.
The story in Romeo’s Big Book of Clever Ideas is just perfect, and also reminds me quite a bit of the learning heroes that my son’s school teach all the children about, to give them role models for their learning. Alain Greé’s illustrations are as beautiful as ever – having a delightful vintage feel to them that I find utterly entrancing. The book works brilliantly for children who are logical thinkers, or who maybe need a little bit of encouragement to think about things a bit more in terms of how things work and don’t work. It’s almost a first engineering text book in disguise!
Romeos’ Big Book of Clever Ideas is available to buy online here. Published by Button Books. ISBN: 978-1-90898-598-9 Priced at £7.99
Disclaimer: We were sent a copy of Romeo’s Big Book of Clever Ideas for the purposes of this review. All opinions remain my own. This post contains affiliate links.
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