Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Friday, October 14, 2011

Reinforcing the Alphabet

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 12:01 AM

It was only when Ryan started voicing the letter names that we found out that he knew them. Before that, we never tested him - for example, we never asked him to point to the letter "A" or anything like that. When we knew that he knew the letter names, we then gave him materials to reinforce his letter recognition. I'll share these materials in this post.

These are the items that we used. I am by no means suggesting that everyone must use these items and I am not suggesting that you should not use other items. Neither am I suggesting that you must do things the way we did. There is no magic formula. How you teach your child and what you use is entirely up to you and your child, your preferences and your circumstances.

Ok, again, I stress that Ryan had already learned all the letter names by this time, ie. we did not use these as our first tools to teach letter names. Having said that, we didn't draw a line between these "stages", we still continued to use the items in yesterday's post and we still have most of them out on the shelves for Ryan to play with even now.

First up, the iPhone app. We only had one app when it came to letter names, which was "Fish School" by Duck Duck Moose. This is a fantastic award-winning app which introduces letters, numbers, colours and shapes. I'm sure most parents on the iPhone will have this. Ryan played the alphabet song over and over and over and over again on this app. We installed it when Ryan was about 16 or 18 months, can't recall exactly. Ryan didn't really get into the app until a few months later actually, because we did not give him much time with the iPhone until he was about two years old.

We don't have any apps on the iPad for letter names (we do have some for letter sounds, but that's for a separate post).

We have many many many alphabet stickers - flat ones, foam ones, puffy ones, glittery ones, even those used for scrapbooking. Ryan uses them freely in his artwork; he will select each one, call its name and place it wherever he chooses. Stickers can seem a little wasteful so I always try to stock up when I come across very cheap stickers.



Over at his nanny's place, Ryan's nanny gives him foam letters to play with. She says that he arranges them everyday in straight lines as he lovingly calls each of the letters by name and that he gets upset if anyone messes up his work!

When we are out and about, we look out for letters in our surroundings. Ryan will yell out the letters as and when he comes across them, on the street, in the car park, on the restaurant menus, on the buses passing by our car, etc. Usually he is the one who points them out to us.

Ryan also started showing us that he understood how to construct letters. One of our pre-dinner activities while waiting for our food to arrive at the restaurant, is for Ryan to construct letters using everyday items, like coins, chopsticks, straws, pins, toothpicks, eating utensils, anything really. He also likes to make letters using his arms. This is an "V" and below that, an "X"!



A few months after his first birthday, we started gradually introducing letter sounds, which he enjoyed. We still continued to give him the opportunity to reinforce his letter names and letter construction whenever he could, and we still do.

In June this year, I bought these plastic magnetic letters, upper and lower case. I got them dirt cheap at a Popular Bookstore sale. Ryan loved these and played with them a lot (especially matching up the upper and the lower case letters!). Interestingly, he preferred to play with these letters on the floor. He was not as interested when I stuck them on the magnetic board. He wanted to touch and feel and handle the letters.


I bought them thinking that Ryan could start building words with them. In fact, I bought two sets of the lower case letters so that he could build words like "Mummy" and "Daddy" and "zoo". I showed him "Ryan" and "Elmo" and a few other words using these plastic letters, and that helped him to see that letters make words and have meaning. The first few times I did try to talk about the letter sounds, but he was not interested so I stopped that and I just constructed different words to show him.

As for videos, after we put away the YBCR videos, we generally didn't watch videos until Ryan was about 18 months old, when he started watching Hi-5 and then a few months later, Sesame Street. When he was a little past two years old, I felt that we should emphasise lower case letters a little more so I shopped around and bought this DVD from Leapfrog called The Amazing Alphabet Amusement Park, which he enjoyed tremendously. The video teaches letter names and pairs up upper and lower case letters. It also teaches what rhyming words are. This was the thing that sparked his "hobby" of matching upper and lower case letters. Even now he still loves watching this and singing along with all the songs.

He does have a Sesame Street video called "What's the name of that song?" which was (and still is) one of his favourite videos when he was about 2 years old and a couple of clips on that video are about letters. One is an alphabet song sung by the divine Patti Labelle. It is AMAZING. This is not the well-known Twinkle Twinkle Little Star alphabet song - it's a bluesy, soulful tune with the muppets chiming in gospel-style. Ryan loves it! Sometimes he screams and shouts the letters out, as if he were watching the diva live in concert. I love it too and I scream right along!  Please check it out on Youtube!

We also have the LEGO DUPLO Play with Letters set which has the letters of the alphabet printed on the blocks. We got it at a promotional price at Toys "R" Us. We have a few other LEGO DUPLO sets, but this is the only one we have that is alphabet-themed. You can see them in action in this post. We started playing with these just a few months ago, after we got back from our trip to USA.

Recently also, we got him this book called "How to Build an A" by Sara Midda, which comes with 11 foam pieces which can be used to construct letters, and he enjoys that too.

I mentioned in yesterday's post on learning the alphabet that Ryan enjoys the book, "Colors, Numbers, Letters" by Leo Lionni. We bought it when he already knew his colours, numbers and letters so the first time he saw it, he "read" the whole book aloud. He still enjoys it. Here's a recent video of him "reading" it, which I posted yesterday as my book review.



Ok, I think I have covered everything. Next time (probably next week) I will cover the items that we used to introduce letter sounds.

 

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Thursday, October 13, 2011

Colors, Numbers, Letters by Leo Lionni

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 10:43 PM

We picked up this book at the bookstore because it passed the Ryan test on the first reading - he read the whole book on his own, while we were still at the bookstore! How could we not buy it?

That is really the best review I can give you, so here's a video of Ryan reading the book (at h8ome).

 

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Learning the Alphabet

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 12:01 AM

Today I want to record the items that we used at home to show Ryan the alphabet. I can't recall exactly when but most of these were introduced when he was just under one year old.

These items were only for introducing the letters and their names. I have not included the items we have which show words and letter sounds - like A is for Apple and B is for Boat. The items in this post merely show him what is an A, what is a B, etc.

The first "item" we used was probably the alphabet song. You know how it goes, to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I do have one issue with it and that was the part that went "LMNOP". All the sounds are crushed together. So I usually sing it a little differently when it got to that part. Actually, there are lots of other alphabet songs that you can use, just pick up a CD at the children's section. I should add that, in Shichida class, for the children who are 1-2 years old, we sometimes sing an alphabet song (very much like the famous alphabet song, just slightly different at certain parts). We sing it while pointing to each of the 26 letters printed on a sheet of paper.

This was probably the first "toy" we used - an alphabet/abacus frame. Richard would have Ryan on his lap every night and he would tap each letter in turn as he sang the alphabet song to Ryan. He would do one or two rounds each time, and then they would move on to play with something else. There are images on the reverse side of each tile so Richard also goes through those with Ryan, to keep things interesting. After a while, and when Ryan started talking, Ryan started pointing to some of the tiles on his own and saying the letter's name. Now of course he can name all the letters on his own and this item has been packed away, waiting for the next little cutie to come along.


I came across the frame by accident. I was actually looking for something like an abacus (you can see three rows of balls on the other side (blue, green and red) if you peek between the rows on the lower left of the frame). To be honest, I was more persuaded by the price than anything else - it was only a few dollars. It's made of plastic, probably made in China - yes I know about all the dangerous toys that come from China, but I knew that Ryan would not be having much skin contact with this sort of toy and he certainly wasn't going to put it in his mouth, so I felt it was not an issue.

Ok, next item. This is a wooden alphabet board. There are wooden letters which fit on the board which I didn't bother to fit for the photo. At present, we've put the board away and we keep the letters in a small container which we sometimes bring along when we go out for meals. When Ryan was still learning the alphabet, the letters were always in their places on the board and all the little images are covered, so you just see the letters and it's not as distracting as it is in the first photo. In fact, we never bothered with the little images.


What Ryan did with this was the obvious - he fit all the letters onto the board. That was it. I guess it gave him a sensorial experience and familiarity with the shapes. As he fit each letter, we would sometimes say the letter's name out aloud but not always. 

These are the letters. The thing that persuaded me to buy this board (apart from its low price) was that it had both the upper and the lower case letters, remembering that it is very important to introduce the lower case letters, in addition to the upper case letters as the lower case letters are encountered more frequently in everyday life. I did not like the font used though - the lower case "a", "g" and "a" are not my desired shape (see the bottom row of letters in the photo). Ryan didn't have any problem with them however. As he grew more familiar with the letters, he would use them without the board, and his favourite thing to do was to match up the upper case letters with their lower case partners. 


Next is this wooden train, made up of letters. All 26 letters are represented, plus an engine and a caboose, and you can hook each one on and off in any order. Ryan loved this and we still keep it out for him to play with, even now. The advantage (although I did not realise it at the time I bought it) was that Ryan could see both sides of each letter.  As the hook on each letter is only on one end (the other end being the eye for the hook), he learned that there was a correct side and a wrong side (for letters like B, D, E, etc). Again, I didn't spend much on this, it was quite cheap.


The last item I will show was a Christmas gift (in 2009) from a friend. This comprised a set of wooden letters and a corresponding set of 26 cards, made by Plan Toys. Each card has, on one side, a picture of an animal which name starts with that letter. There is an empty space on the animal which the wooden piece can sit on. The other side of the card shows the plain letter (which is also the same size as the wooden letter) and there is a dotted arrow line showing how the letter is written - you are supposed to trace the letter with your finger following the arrow. 


Ryan didn't love this immediately, he took a long time to get into it. I guess it was like a duplicate of some of the items above, which he was already playing with. Plus the pictures on the cards were not that appealing, I think. In fact, when he did play with this, he preferred to play on the plain side of the cards, although we never bothered to do the tracing, just the matching up of the wooden letter with the card. Anyway, this toy slowly gained acceptance and now Ryan pulls it out quite regularly to play with, sometimes he plays with the cards (both sides); other times he doesn't bother with the cards, he just holds the letters in his hand or lines them up on the floor and says their names. 

Around the same time that we introduced the Plan Toys set, I also introduced cards with textured lower case letters. You can see what this looks like at this link (I did not buy it through this link though. I bought it off the shelf from a local store). The intention was to get him to trace the letters with his finger, in the order and direction that he would eventually write them. This is what is done in Montessori when they work with sandpaper letters. Ryan did not like these - I think this activity was too restrictive and too advanced for his age so I packed it up after two or three tries. I re-introduced these cards later, and he was much more receptive. I would think that you can try when your child is, at the youngest, 18 months, and even then, when you start, don't ask the child to do the tracing, just show him/her how to do it and leave it at that, until his/her interest is sufficiently piqued and he/she starts to reach for the cards on his/her own.

As for books, we felt that there was not much point buying a book with pages that simply had A, B, C, D, E... etc. So, we didn't use any. After Ryan was already familiar with the alphabet, we did pick up two alphabet books, because by that time, Ryan absolutely loved the alphabet so we wanted to get some books that he would enjoy. One is the famous "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" (by Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault with illustrations by Lois Ehlert). We bought this fairly recently and have only gone through once or twice with Ryan. The other one is Leo Lionni's board book, "Colors, Numbers, Letters". Ryan read the whole book on his own the very first time he saw it - there are no words, he just named all the colours, numbers and letters. Great book, I will post a review soon.

I should add that we do not have an alphabet chart on the wall at home. 

Before I pen off, I want to mention that, in the beginning, I had the intention of teaching letter sounds first, before teaching the alphabet. I was concerned that Ryan wouldn't want to learn the letter sounds if he had already learned to refer to the letters by their names. My fears were unfounded - Ryan learned the letter names first and had no problem with the letter sounds subsequently. Now, in addition to reciting the alphabet by letter name, he can even do it by letter sound! In fact, when reading up on this, I came across an ex-Montessori teacher who said that she had one student who learned the letter sounds without learning the alphabet and he was so demoralised in pre-school when he discovered that his peers all knew the letter names. He felt out of place and all this negativity affected his ability to learn the letter names, which frustrated him even more. Thinking about it, even if you don't teach letter sounds at home, it's all right because children will get that done in school, but you have to teach the letter names at home, because that's not done in school (the students usually already know the letter names).

All right, that's it. Maybe next time when I write on this subject, I will write about the items we used to introduce letter sounds.

 

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Monday, September 19, 2011

Good Night Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 5:08 PM

Written and illustrated by Peggy Rathmann, this book has won multiple awards including ALA Notable Children's Book for 1994, Bulletin Blue Ribbon 1994 and Horn Book Fanfare 1995 selection. Almost wordless, the story is told through the rich illustrations. An unobservant zookeeper is doing his nightly rounds when a cheeky gorilla steals his keys and lets the animals out. The animals all follow him home and the zookeeper's wife sorts everything out.

I asked Terri to buy a copy for us from overseas and since we received it, we have read it over and over again. The book is available locally but I was not in a hurry because I was afraid that it might be another "Goodnight Moon" and, at that time, I was not enamoured with Goodnight Moon (I've since become a firm fan). Comparing the two, they are both fantastic books, the difference is that Goodnight Moon is more sedate and quiet, while Good Night Gorilla takes you on a hilarious escapade.

When I first read the book with Ryan, Ryan would call out the names of the animals that he knew best - the gorilla (Ryan calls it the "gowawa"), the mouse, the elephant, the giraffe and the lion. After Richard started reading the book with him, they started a game of "Spot the banana" in each scene. This came about because Richard was so tickled at Ryan saying "nana!" so he kept pointing out the banana so that Ryan would say "nana!" over and over again. Now that Ryan is getting on with his speech and vocabulary, Richard points to each of the seven animals (including the hyena and the armadillo) and Ryan dutifully identifies each one in each scene.

This one's a keeper, for sure.






 

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Thursday, July 14, 2011

Freight Train by Donald Crews

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 11:05 AM


If I had to recommend a picture book for young children, Freight Train by Donald Crews would be one of my top choices. Whenever Ryan brings it out, he insists on that we read it over and over again at least five times, sometimes up to ten times!

There is no plot or story line. The book merely describes the different cars (in different colours) that make up a cargo train and describes the train's journey from country to city, day to night. There is limited text on each page, which makes it perfect for young children. Although the text does not rhyme, it has the rhythm of a poem when read aloud. The illustrations are simple and colourful. Sometimes the images are clean and sometimes they are blurred and smudged to show movement. On the last page, the train chugs out of view, Ryan loves to read the last word - "gone".

To be honest, I was surprised at how much Ryan loves this sparse book. To an adult (or perhaps just to me) the book seemed quite boring, as it does not actually tell a story. I then realised that that's where the magic of the book lies - it lets the child make up his/her own story, it inspires the child to wander off into his/her imagination where the train gets into all sorts of adventures, it fosters the child's natural creativity. The child's natural curiosity is piqued and they want to learn more about this exciting-looking train. Ryan can stare for a long time at the page where he first sees the entire freight train, who knows what he is imagining! That's when I realised that this book is pure genius.

The book was named one of 1979's Caldecott Honor Books. The popularity of this book led to a sequel in 2001, "Inside Freight Train", also by Donald Crews, which features fold-out panels so your child can see the inner workings of the train.

 

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Friday, June 3, 2011

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 11:48 AM

We started reading The Gruffalo when Ryan was still an infant. Ryan had other favourites at the time so we just read this on and off. When we were reading it few months ago, I noticed that he was hanging on to every word, his facial expressions were changing at each scene and he was making comments on the illustrations. Now it is one of his firm favourites.

This “David and Goliath” story, written by the great Julia Donaldson, is a poem about the courage and imagination of a mouse, wandering the “deep dark wood” in search of nuts. Predators approach him, one by one and he scares each one away with tall stories of the terrifying Gruffalo, topping each tale off by sharing that the Gruffalo’s favourite food is that particular predator. Suddenly, the figment of his imagination appears and wants to have him on a slice of bread! The quick-thinking mouse employs his wit and ingenuity to show the Gruffalo who’s the boss and the Gruffalo flees.

Donaldson has said that the story is based on a traditional Chinese folk tale of a fox that borrows the terror of a tiger. Donaldson was unable to find rhymes for “tiger” so came up with the “Gruffalo” to rhyme with the word “know”.

The illustrations are equally important to the telling of the tale and are done by the incomparable Axel Scheffler. Ryan loves them, as do I. The forest backdrop is drawn in such detail, it is simply magnificent. After we finish reading, Ryan loves to go through the book again and point out the little details on each page – the woodpecker and the fallen tree, the kingfisher and the dragonfly at the stream where the owl lives, the reeds and the stepping stones in the stream, the snake’s logpile house (the logs are from different trees), the green frogs in the stream, the acorns and the mushrooms lining the mouse’s path, the butterflies and bugs, the pink and blue bluebells, the different types of trees, etc. The power of the illustrations is particularly felt when the mouse is describing the fearsome features of the Gruffalo. Only one part of the Gruffalo is shown at a time, and this effectively builds up the suspense in the story. When it finally appears, the Gruffalo isn’t that scary, it has kind eyes and looks a little goofy (apparently, initial sketches of the Gruffalo were much more menacing) and this endears it to the reader.

While reading it aloud, I use a variety of voices and accents to give each animal a personality and I try to express, through pace and volume, the mood of each scene whether whimsical, scary, funny, suspenseful, victorious or peaceful. You can get an audio version of it (the audio version won the Best Children's Audio award in the Spoken Book Awards) but I couldn’t bear to miss out on the fun!

Published in 1999, this "modern classic" has sold more than 5 million copies, been translated into 40 languages and has been staged in repertory since 2001 – not just in the UK (including London’s West End) but across America (including off-Broadway), Chile, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia. The Gruffalo has spawned a sequel, The Gruffalo’s Child, and even has its own website where you can play games and be part of the Gruffalo gang.

The Gruffalo won the gold award (in the 0–5 years category) of the 1999 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In 2000, it was UK's bestselling picture book and won the 2000 Nottingham/Experian Children's Book award plus the Blue Peter “Best Book To Read Aloud” award. In November 2009 the book was voted "best bedtime story" by listeners of BBC Radio 2. In a 2010 survey by UK charity Booktime, the book came first in a list of children's favorite books.

It has been adapted into a 30-minute animated film, which was broadcast in the UK on Christmas Day 2009 with an all-star cast including Robbie Coltrane in the title role and Helena Bonham Carter as the narrator. The film was nominated for a BAFTA in 2010 and for an Oscar (Academy Award) for Best Short Film (Animated) in January 2011.

 

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Friday, January 7, 2011

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 10:54 AM

From the day I started Ryan's library, I searched high and low for this book. I suppose I could have ordered a copy online but I wasn't in a hurry as Ryan was still just a few months old. I finally found a copy in a small children's bookstore in Balmoral Beach in Sydney in September 2009 (and even there they had only one copy). When I got back, I did see a copy in Borders Singapore - don't you always find the thing you were looking for once you are no longer looking for it? - but generally I don't see it often in the stores, which is a great pity because it is a wonderful book. It has become a firm favourite in Ryan's library.

First published in 1940, the tale of the cap peddlar has become a classic. Unable to sell any caps, the peddlar decides to take a nap under a tree. He wakes to find that all his merchandise is gone, stolen by monkeys in the tree. He manages to get his caps back, but only by a fluke. 

I can see us going back to this book time after time, year after year, as there are lots of little things that Ryan can learn from it - colours, emotions, positions (left, right, behind, up), etc. We read the story to Ryan with lots of expression and actions, and he plays right along, making the actions as well - shaking his finger, shaking his hands, stamping his feet.  

 

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Monday, August 2, 2010

Hooray for Fish by Lucy Cousins

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 3:47 PM

Lucy Cousins is the award-winning creator and author of the Maisy the Mouse books.  She employs her colourful and bold style underwater in this 2005 book, a winner of Child magazine's Best Children's Book Awards 2005.

Little Fish takes the reader on a tour through the sea and introduces all his "fishy friends".  There's Spotty Fish and Stripey Fish, Happy Fish and Grumpy Fish, a fish that is upside down and fishes that go round and round, and loads more. The illustrations are big and bold and the text is rhyming and catchy.

We have been reading this book to Ryan ever since he was an infant.  At first he just listened and watched as we read the simple text and flipped through the colourful illustrations. Now he makes comments and lets out different expressions when he see the different fishes. He notices similarities, differences, temperaments, movements, colours, numbers, shapes and sizes.

The story ends when Little Fish introduces "the one I love the best, even more than all the rest" - "Hello, Mom! Kiss Kiss Kiss!" Who wouldn't love an ending like that?

 

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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Ten in the Bed by Penny Dale

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 1:36 PM


“Ten in the bed” is a very well known and popular song which combines numbers and the amusing idea of falling. There are many books based on the song. In this 2007 version illustrated by Penny Dale, the ten characters are a boy and his nine stuffed animals. Everytime they shout "Roll over, roll over!", one of the toy animals will fall out of bed with a "Thud!" or a "Boink!" or a "Plop!". When all nine toys have fallen out of bed, the lonely boy calls for them and they climb back in and cuddle together and fall peacefully asleep.

Richard reads this book to Ryan with a lot of gusto and Ryan chuckles at every thud, boink and plop.

This is a very good book for all ages and you can use it as a base for teaching concepts like numbers, counting, animals, etc. Here are some ideas from TEFL.net.

We were surprised to see that Ryan recently invented a game where he stands up and then falls down, gets up and falls down again, usually with some sound effects. He usually does this on our big bed but, the other day, we were in Borders and he pretended to fall down on the carpeted floor - he "fell" on his side and stuck one leg up and there was even an "Ah!" to top up the performance! He did it a few times and everyone around him was so amused. I think he got the idea from this book!

 

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The Wheels on the Bus by Paul O. Zelinsky

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 10:48 AM

Another firm favourite of Ryan's. Almost every child in Singapore would know this song/rhyme about the wheels on the bus that go round and round, the wipers that go swish swish swish and the windows that slide up and down.

This book was published in 1990 and was illustrated and engineered by Paul O. Zelinsky. Zelinsky is a Caldecott medallist and The Wheels on the Bus is his most well-known work.

The illustrations are fantastic. They are realistic in that the various commuters on the bus are depicted doing all sorts of different things and there are little sub-stories going on - there is the boy with a box of playful kittens, there is the young man with a guitar, a motorcyclist and her runaway puppy, etc.

Of course, the greatest thing about this book is that it is a "movable book" - there are tabs to pull, wheels to spin and flaps to lift. Ryan goes all through the "activities" and he never misses a flap/tab. I sing the song everytime we read this book and he just loves it, he never rushes through.

We introduced this book to Ryan when he was a few months old and lots of flaps are torn up now, which I just love to see! Watching Ryan examine the book with such interest and seeing him investigate how the flaps work brings a smile to my face and I'm happy that the book manages to thoroughly engage him. I'll gladly patch it up over and over again and I'll happily buy another one if I have to. This book is definitely a keeper.

 

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Sunday, July 25, 2010

Where's Spot? by Eric Hill

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 2:49 PM


This lift-the-flap book is a firm favourite of Ryan's. We introduced it when he was a few months old and he loved it from the start. He learned very quickly where the flaps were on each page and how to lift the flaps himself. He's torn off some of the flaps a few times (and I've patched them back each time).


The story is about a search for Spot who has hidden himself somewhere. The flaps hide the various hiding places that he could be in and the reader lifts the flaps to see if Spot is hiding there. The reader encounters various animals who are in these hiding places and the story ends when Spot is finally found, which is a nice way to "reward" the reader for going through the search.

Ryan enjoys it when I read this book with different voices for each animal and he always has a good time. First published in 1980, this is the first of many adventures of Spot and you can now find a whole library of Spot books. This particular book is a good way to introduce concepts like "under", "inside" and "behind". The flaps provide good finger-training too.

 

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Friday, July 23, 2010

Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 5:18 PM


First published in 1947, Goodnight Moon is a poem describing a bunny's bedtime ritual of saying "goodnight" to various objects in the bunny's bedroom: the telephone, the bunny's dollhouse, the bears, etc. The illustrations are full of little details which would keep an older child intrigued. The details also change as the story progresses.

As a baby, Ryan had completely no interest in this book. He found it neither soothing nor interesting. We don't have a ritual of saying "goodnight" at our house so perhaps that made a difference. It was only after Ryan turned one that he let his father read through the whole book with him. Now Ryan does pick up the book and flip through the pages on his own. I think it will get more affection as Ryan grows older.

 

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 4:53 PM


This book is a good way to look at counting (up to five), the days of the week, different types of food and even to teach our little one where butterflies come from. It comes highly recommended both for the storyline as well as the colourful illustrations. First published in 1969, a copy of the book is reportedly sold every 30 seconds somewhere in the world. It has been described as "one of the greatest childhood classics of all time" and has won multiple awards.

However, I have never really been impressed with the illustrations or the little holes in the pages that children apparently love (the book was apparently inspired by a hole puncher). The first few times I introduced this book to Ryan, he was not impressed either so I actually put this book away. When I re-introduced it a few months later, Ryan was much more receptive although I still had to speedread through it otherwise he'd turn to the last page and close the book before I get to finish the story. I continue to rotate this book in and out of Ryan's active library every few months and everytime it is re-introduced, Ryan seems to take a little more interest in it. At the moment however, he still doesn't care about what the hungry caterpillar ate on Saturday.

 

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Chick by Ed Vere

Posted by Pinkie Pirate at 4:04 PM


I actually bought this book by chance - I was buying a load of books at Borders and I needed one more to qualify for a discount so I just grabbed this book which was left on the floor. As it turned out, Chick is one of Ryan's favourite books and one of the first that he loved. He was only a few months old when we introduced Chick to him but everytime we brought Chick out, Ryan would have a big smile on his face.

This colourful pop-up book published in 2009 is about a chick's first day of life, from the time it pecks it way out of its egg till it is tucked to sleep under its mummy's wing. It mirrors the daily routine of a baby, even including a page showing the chick doing a poo (the poop page is a hit with Ryan who loves turning the wheel). I subsequently found out that this book is the Winner of the Baby Book Award, Early Year Awards 2009.

I have had to patch up the book a couple of times as it has suffered from Ryan's enthusiastic fingers. Ryan continues to love this book very much - we were in Borders the weekend he turned 18 months and he read this book eight times. Looks like it will remain a staple of his library for some time to come.

 

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