This is an adorable book about all of the animals on the farm and what the farmer feeds them. It all seems pretty typical until you get to the cow who, as you may have guessed, likes cookies. This is a great book for young ones because it rhymes and it has repetition, both of which are stepping stones to helping young children become readers themselves. The clever ending of this book will leave you smiling, too.
Oh my goodness, this book would have been a hit in our house about seven years ago when I had little ones running around. It rhymes, it has animals in it and it talks about body parts. I loved that age when our boys were into pointing to their ears, eyes, mouth, nose, belly…oh, the good ol’ days. 🙂
When children are ready to start exploring the shapes of letters and numbers, Wikki Stix are a super fun way for children to practice, especially if Wikki Stix are new to them. Wikki Stix are essentially wax covered yarn that you can bend and stick into whatever shape you’d like which is why they are great for practicing letter and number shapes. Some kids may be able to figure out how to manipulate the Wikki Stix into letter and number shapes without having an example to follow. Others, however, may need the shape to follow either just to look at as a model or they may need to have an example that they can place their Wikki Stix on top of to follow. Then, when they are done practicing their letters and numbers, they can use them to make whatever they want.
For older kids, they can be used to practice sight words. They can also be used to practice writing their name or family members’ names.
Barnes & Noble has a summer reading program for kids to help encourage children to continue their love of reading over the summer months. Barnes & Noble will give your child a free book if they read eight books, fill out this form and bring it back by September 6th. This book club is geared towards children from first grade through sixth grade.
Your kids are reading anyways, so why not get a free book while they’re at it. Borders is giving children 12 and under a free book this summer. All they have to do is read ten books, fill out this form, have their parents sign it and then bring it in to redeem for their free book. The books they are giving away are definitely geared towards the 2nd grade and up crowd.
This book is perfect for the toddler/preschooler in your life. It has animals, it rhymes and it has counting. Each animal in the book tells their mom or dad a certain number of kisses they need before they can go to sleep. Then a little girl asks for 100 kisses, one for each curl and a boy tells his mom he wants a million kisses. How many kisses do you think your child will ask for?
We have been using our fire pit on the back porch to make s’mores this past week. My seven-year old decided that we should add some scary stories to our s’more making. We went to the library and found some books that looked WAY too scary and then we found this little gem. It is scary but in a Hansel and Gretel folk tale type of way, not a blood and guts type of way. This book is also great because it doesn’t just have stories. It also has poems, knock knock jokes and even a little section on how to draw spooky creatures like monsters and witches. This book would be great around Halloween time, too.
Poetry is a FANTASTIC way for beginning readers to practice fluency. These poems are short, they’re not intimidating and they rhyme which helps beginning readers decode new words. This link is only a small part of a bigger website. I especially love the poetry part of this website because you can listen to the poem, read it on your own, search for words with certain sounds or search for a certain word. Also, each poem focuses on a certain phonemic blend, like: ee, oo, igh, i-e, and several others.
My boys love doing Mad Libs. They are so much fun, they can be hysterically funny and you might learn a thing or two about verbs and nouns while you’re at it. The only downside is that once you have written in all the blanks in your MadLibs book, well, you’re done. Well, this website has MadLibs online for an almost endless combination of nouns, verbs and adjectives to tickle your funnybone. Have fun!
I stumbled upon this at the library and fell in love with it. It is a magazine/story/activity set that comes in the mail twice a month. (It ends up being $4/month.) What I love about it is that it can be used with children of various ages and skills beginning as early as age two up through age five or six (depending on your child’s age and interest level) and covers everything from print awareness, vocabulary, letter knowledge, phonological awareness, comprehension and so much more. It even comes with a booklet for parents so that they can better understand not only how to use this particular product to develop a love of reading with their child, but it also gives parents just some general guidelines and ideas on how to develop a love of reading with their children.
