Spring Swirls (pages 12 to 15)
- Before you read this story, help your child find some swirling lines in each illustration.
- As you talk together about the illustrations, teach your child the meaning of words like sap, fern, and frond.
- Point to the images in the illustrations as you read the text. This will help your child understand what he or she is hearing.
Although the vocabulary in this poem may be a bit of a challenge for our youngest readers, they will enjoy the sounds of the repeated letters and finding the images described in the text in the illustrations. The author, Michael J. Rosen, has written many children's books, including A Drive in the Country (Candlewick, 2007). He's also the author of You, Me, and the ABCs: 100 Ready-for-Reading Activities for Kids and Their Favorite Grown-ups (Ohio Children's Foundation © 2009). It's a great resource for both parents and teachers.
*Language Development: Listening & Understanding (Understands an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary.) *Literacy: Book Knowledge & Appreciation (Shows growing interest and involvement in listening to and discussing a variety of fiction and nonfiction books and poetry.)
A Silly Day (pages 21 to 24)
- Encourage your child to listen for the rhyming words as you read this story aloud.
- Use the illustration on the last page to help your child retell the story. You'll see that all the "characters" in this tall tale are sitting on the shelf above the boy's bed!
When children are able to identify words that rhyme, they demonstrate their ability to distinguish ending sounds in words. Learning to recognize the small sound segments in a word is an important early-literacy skill.
*Literacy: Phonological Awareness (Progresses in recognizing matching sounds and rhymes in stories and poems.) *Literacy: Book Knowledge & Appreciation (Demonstrates progress in abilities to retell stories.)
The Hippo and the Mouse (pages 26 and 27)
- After you and your children have enjoyed reading the poem and looking at the illustration, use the questions to explore some basic math concepts.
- After hearing "Look at the Cheetah," children will have more information to help them decide which animal might win the race!
Both "Fun with Coins" (pages 16 and 17) and "The Hippo and the Mouse" are designed to help children discover how a number can be divided into smaller subsets. Another way to explore this concept is to give children a set of five or more objects. Ask them to make two small groups with the objects. Then ask them to make two new groups. (For example, if a child makes a group of 2 and a group of 3, help her discover that she can also make a group of 4 and a group of 1.) If your child enjoys playing this game, boost the complexity by using a larger number of objects.
*Mathematics: Number & Operations (Demonstrates increasing interest and awareness of numbers and counting as a means for solving problems and determining quantity.) *Approaches to Learning: Reasoning & Problem Solving (Develops increasing abilities to classify, compare, and contrast objects, events, and experiences.)
*Early-childhood standards based on the U.S. Head Start Child Outcomes Framework.