Visiting the Farm (pages 6 to 9)
- Before reading, ask: What are the children and adults doing in each picture?
- After reading the story, reread the first two pages and ask the children to listen for words that rhyme.
- Some children may hear the rhyming words right away, and some may need help.
- If they don't recognize the rhyming words, point out that day and hay, and plow and cow have the same ending sounds. Explain that when words have the same ending sound, we say they rhyme.
- Before turning the page, ask them to predict what will rhyme with feet. Turn the page to find out! (eat)
Helping children learn to listen for and identify similar sounds at the ends of words is an important early reading skill.
Goldfish Town (pages 12 and 13)
- Begin by talking together about the picture. Some children may notice that there are G's hidden in the illustration. If so, read the words inside the goldfish, and look together for the hidden G's. (We found 9 G's hiding in the picture.)
- After reading the poem, look for the G's in the words. (There are 18 g's on these pages. Adding the g's inside the words Highlights High Five makes 24!)
As children look for and find even some of the g's, you will be helping them learn that both upper- and lowercase g's have the same letter name.
As you point out the g's at the beginning and end of words, they will be learning that words are made up of groups of letters, and where a word begins and ends.
Learning these conventions of print is another important early-reading skill.
Make Art with Yarn (pages 22 and 23)
- Some children don't like getting glue on their hands. Instead of putting each piece of yarn in the glue, children could coat a piece of a paper with glue, and then make a design by dropping or arranging the yarn on the paper.
When children first explore art materials, it's important to begin by exploring with line, shape and color to make designs that are pleasing to them. Encouraging children to just make designs will free them to explore without worrying about making it look exactly like something they see or remember.