Book Review: The Not-So-Wicked Witch

Witches tend to have a bad reputation in literature, especially children’s stories. From the Wicked Witch to Roald Dahl’s The Witches, they’re always scheming and trying to cause havoc, steal children (and sometimes even eat them) and other terrible things.

But sometimes a witch comes along who doesn’t want any part of all that mischief. What’s a not-so-wicked witch to do when she doesn’t want to do the things the other witches want to do?

That’s the idea behind The Not-S0-Wicked Witch by Bethan Stevens.

The naughty little witches (all the witches are portrayed as young girls) are always causing trouble, stealing socks, eating the last cookie, tracking mud everywhere. But the littlest witch wants to be helpful, friendly and nice to people.

While the other witches warn her that her face might get stuck with a smile and that she’s giving witches a bad reputation, she still just wants to be kind.

So when the witches come upon a human child’s birthday party — complete with their favorite food, marshmallows — the naughty witches want to make a sleeping potion to feed the children so they can steal the treats. But the littlest witch has a plan that will help everyone to get what they want.

It’s a sweet little story for preschool and early grades, with cute pictures also drawn by the author. This is a fun non-spooky Halloween tale that’s great for use in the classroom or at home. You can use it as a way to talk about what actions are naughty and which ones are nice, and what kind of people we prefer to be around. Because the kids are nice to the witches when they are nice to the kids, it serves as a reminder that it works that way with people, too.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2024 by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books. Suggested retail price $18.99.

A classic manipulative in the preschool and early elementary classroom is the snap cube, also known as math cubes, unifix cubes or unit cubes. These little one inch cubes often come in a set of 100 in 10 different colors, and they snap together so they’re easy to use for all sorts of math learning, measuring and more.

No Time for Flashcards has a cute robot printable to use with cubes to measure the height of each robot. That one is free but they also have other printable cube mats that are a paid resource.

Catherine & Co uses math cubes to teach kids about measuring volume. They make a letter from cubes and then measure the volume (there’s a printable worksheet in the post).

Pattern recognition is another fun and easy activity you can do with the cubes. You can use printables like these from Planning Playtime, or just make a pattern from cubes and have kids repeat it or figure out what comes next. There’s another good set of pattern printables at English Created Resources.

Because there are 10 sets of 10 cubes in a pack, these are great for teaching one to one correspondence, counting, sorting and basic addition and subtraction. English Created Resources has great printable number mats you can use to form the number from cubes and count out the number of cubes that corresponds to that number.

ParenTutor has a great collection of snap cube activity ideas, most of which are just pictures, but it’s work taking a look through the post for ideas for using them at home or in the classroom.

To give just a few of their examples, you can match linked blocks to the corresponding number of pieces, use blocks to find different ways to add up to 10, compare numbers and determine which one is more or less, skip counting and weighing different numbers of blocks.

You can also use unit cubes to learn letters, like with these super cute alphabet mats from Fun Learning for Kids. Kids can trace the letter, make it out of cubes and practice writing a word that starts with that letter.

Of course you can also use them to build things, since they are blocks, and there are tons of pattern mats on Teachers Pay Teachers. I also love these dinosaur themed mats from Lets Go to Learn on Etsy.

Have you read?

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