Highlights High Five™ January 2009 Parent/Teacher Guide

My First Hidden Pictures (pages 10 to 11)


My First Hidden Pictures
  • If children have difficulty finding an object, offer hints. For example, you might say; "The lollipop has a round, red top. Let's look for round, red things in the picture."
  • After your child has successfully found all the objects, read the poem. Explain that "dame" is an old-fashioned term for a married woman.
  • Talk about the illustration. If you ask "What do you see?" there will be many things your child can say and no wrong answer. Older children can think more critically about the illustration with questions like, "Why do you think the sheep is wearing a coat?"

If your child is beginning to recognize individual letters, use the object labels to help focus his or her attention. Here are some questions you might want to ask:

  • "Which word has four letters?"
  • "Which words begin with the letter L?"
  • "Which words ends with the letter L?"

That's Silly (pages 18 and 19)

That's Silly
  • This feature invites a great deal of talking and laughing. At times, stop and ask why something is silly. This encourages children to use language to share their thinking. This is an important literacy skill.
  • For younger children, you can take turns describing what's silly. As you speak, you model how to describe and explain what's silly.

As children make sense of this illustration, they discover that they can "read" the picture. Their ability to grasp the meaning embedded in the pages of High Five will heighten their pleasure as they read "their" magazine.

Let's Play (bonus pages)

Follow the directions on the bonus pages to play a matching game.

Let's Play
  • After you've made the book, ask children to describe what's happening on each page.
  • Read the book. Ask what they noticed about this book.
  • If they can hear that words rhyme, reread the book and stop at each rhyming pair and record those words. Once you've found all the rhyming pairs, ask children to think of more words that rhyme with each pair.
  • Whenever you reread the book, invite the children to chime in on the parts they remember.

These little books are just the right size to share. Once they've heard this story several times, encourage them to share the book with a friend. Explain that they can use the pictures to help them tell the story. Beginning readers will probably enjoy tackling this book on their own.