Look and Look Again (pages 16 and 17)
- Encourage children to describe the differences and similarities in these two illustrations.
- If you record children's observations, you can refer back to your list when you revisit these pages. Perhaps you'll discover differences that you missed the first time around!
When children talk about these pages, they are learning to look carefully, to pay attention to small details, and to use words to explain what they see or think. These are important early-literacy skills.
*Speaking & Communicating (Uses an increasingly complex and varied spoken vocabulary.) *Approaches to Learning, Reasoning & Problem Solving (Develops increasing abilities to classify, compare and contrast objects, events and experiences.)
Banana Dippers (page 28)
- Have children use the pictures to read the list of ingredients and explain what happens in each step.
- If possible, make this recipe together.
When children help cook, they learn to measure and work with fractions. They also observe how mixtures are formed and changed. In this recipe, children discover that heating the peanut butter and honey mixture makes it thinner. If you make this recipe with children under the age of four, eliminate the raisins. They can be a choking hazard.
*Mathematics: Number & Operations (Begins to associate number concepts, vocabulary, quantities, and written numerals in meaningful ways.) *Science: Scientific Knowledge (Shows increased awareness and beginning understanding of changes in materials and cause-effect relationships.)
Time for a Nap (pages 29 to 31)
- Before you read the story, ask children to explain why they do or do not like to take naps.
- Ask them to predict what might happen in this story.
- Read the story and then ask children to retell it. Encourage them to use the pictures to recall the sequence of events.
When children talk about their own experiences before hearing a story, they will use what they have experienced to better understand the story. This helps develop children's ability to comprehend what they hear. This is critical to later reading success. Learning to retell a familiar story is another important early-reading skill that children can practice, even before they learn to read.
*Literacy: Book Knowledge & Appreciation (Demonstrates progress in abilities to retell stories from books and experiences and to predict what will happen next in a story.) *Language Development: Speaking & Communicating (Develops increasing abilities to understand and use language to communicate information, experiences, ideas, feelings, and opinions.)
*Early-childhood standards based on the U.S. Head Start Child Outcomes Framework.