Other articles in Highlights High Five Parent/Teacher Guides

• Highlights High Five™ May 2009 Parent/Teacher Guide
• Highlights High Five™ April 2009 Parent/Teacher Guide
• Highlights High Five™ March 2009 Parent/Teacher Guide

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Highlights High Five™ June 2007 Parent/Teacher Guide

Five Little Cowhands (pages 6 to 9)

• Before reading the story, ask: What do you see in the pictures?
• After reading page 6, help the children count all the cowhands but the one standing by the yellow horse. At the end of each verse, help them count the correct number of cowhands.
• After finishing the story, talk together about how the cowhands cared for the horses and why they kept them. (They raked out the pens. They used horses to herd cattle. They probably liked to ride horses.) Then discuss other things that people must do if they keep animals.
• The second time you read the story, children could use their fingers to show what happens as each cowhand leaves the group. You could also listen for and list the words that rhyme. (gate, wait; pen, then; hay, stay; bow, now; one, none; anywhere, there)
• The third time you read the story, children could use checkers or other small objects to model how the group of cowhands gets progressively smaller.

The story will help children practice taking away one object from a larger set. This real-life example of subtraction will help children begin to understand subtraction.

Build It (page 15)

• Before trying this month's building suggestion, take children on a short walk. As you talk together about what you see on each side of the street, they will be gathering ideas for their block buildings.
• Encourage children to decide how they will make their paper street. You could ask questions like these to help them get started: Will you tape sheets of paper together? Will you cut a narrow strip of newspaper for a street? What will you use to draw a yellow line down the middle? What types of buildings will you make?

As children use open-ended materials to build, they will be developing their problem-solving abilities, learning how to organize a task, and if they are working with others, learning how to collaborate and share their ideas as they build together.

Five Signs (pages 28 and 29)

• The text on the right-hand side of page 29 is actually a poem. As you read it aloud, listen for the rhyming words. (zone, telephone; trespass, grass)
• As children look for the signs that are in the poem and in the illustration, they will develop confidence in recognizing when letters and words match.
• When you go for walks, help children look for and read the signs in your neighborhood.

Children can use the shape and color of signs as clues to help them read. For example, if they see an outdoor sign that is red with 8 sides (an octagon), they can be pretty sure that the word in the middle is STOP. If they see a rectangular sign indoors with the letters EXIT written in red, they might be able to guess that the word is EXIT. This beginning recognition of particular words and phrases will help children discover that they will be able to read.