The Great Gracie Chase

Mark Teague (Illustrator). Blue Sky Press 2001, Hardcover, 40 pages, $9.91

Gracie is a dog that likes things quiet. She likes cats that nap on the windowsill and goldfish that go ‘bloop’ in their bowls and a house that is calm and serene. So when her owners hire a team of painters with big voices and long clangy ladders, Gracie gets rightfully upset.

But imagine her suprise when she barks her discontent and it’s Gracie who gets put outside!

Indignant, Gracie spots an open gate and decides to break with doggy law and take herself for a walk. The painters come after her and the Great Gracie Chase has begun.

The painters chase Gracie because she is runniing away. Gracie runs away because the painters are chasing her. It’s a classic catch-22 that draws paperboys, delivery drivers, hot dog vendors and all kinds of cats, birds and rabbits into the Chase as Gracie runs clear across town.

Finally, as Gracie barrels along at high speed, her pursuers give up. The paperboy loses a wheel. The painters collapse in exhaustion. Noone can keep up with Gracie. Left alone on a calm and quiet street, Gracie is reminded of her cozy house and turns to go back. And it’s Gracie’s lucky day. The painters can’t come back because they need to rest, leaving Gracie’s house, and her afternoon, just the way she likes them — quiet.

This is a great book.

I don’t just say that because, like Gracie, I treasure peace and quiet (although as a kindergarten teacher I really do).

I don’t just say it because Mark Teague’s pictures are both comical and cute, and ripe with minute details — like a cat sliding to a halt rather than follow Gracie through the park fountain — for kids to find and enjoy.

And lastly, I don’t just say it because Cynthia Rylant has created a story with a loveable character and a plot resolution that kids can easily grasp.

I say it because this book is a pleasure to read-aloud.

The story is told at a perfect pace, with sentences that literally roll off the tongue in expressive fits. Dialog is sparce (a good thing in a read-aloud story (see my article, Five Qualities of a Good Read-Aloud Children’s Book, for more), sentence length is varied, words are expertly chosen and age appropriate. Rylant is a truly skilled storyteller.

Combined, these factors put The Great Gracie Chase: Stop That Dog! at the top of my read-aloud list. It makes several appearances in my classroom throughout the school year, and is always greeted with applause.

Read-Aloud Tips

1. Match your reading pace, tone and level of expression to the events in the story. When Gracie is at home in her quiet house, read softly, soothingly. Then when she gets outside and the painters yell, ‘STOP THAT DOG!’ bring the energy level up. As the chase goes on and attracts a crowd of townfolk on Gracie’s tail, read faster, more frantic.
2. Reading in this way draws kids immediately into the story, eyes wide, mouths grinning, as events unfold. This sort of involvement is what reading to kindergarten students is all about!

Comprehension Questions

No Jumping on the Bed!

Tedd Arnold (Illustrator). Puffin 1996, Paperback, 32 pages, $3.00

It’s bedtime, and young Walter is enjoying a few good-natured bounces on his bed when dad walks in with the eternal parental edict flying from his lips: ‘No more jumping on the bed!’ ‘One day,’ he cryptically warns, ‘it’ll crash right through the floor!’

Walter obediently goes to sleep, but when he hears the kid upstairs jumping on his bed, Walter decides to take just one more bounce…

And wouldn’t you know it - CRASH! - down through the floor he goes!

Walter’s downward journey through seven floors of New York apartment building brings him into sharp contact with lots of humorous characters and many belongings that all plummet through the building with him. There’s Miss Hattie and her delicious spaghetti and meatballs, Aunt Batty and her sticky stamp collection, Mr. Hanratty and his colorful paint cans, all falling through floor after floor.

It isn’t until Walter’s bed crashes through to the basement, where things are dark and quiet, that he finally realizes it was all a dream.

Except that the kid upstairs is jumping on his bead again, and Walter hears a CRACK…

No Jumping On The Bed is one of the funniest children’s books around. The words are written at a rapid, hectic pace that keeps things moving as Walter’s bed falls down, down, down. The further he falls, the more stuff falls with him, until the paragraphs, and pictures, are simply choked with plummeting people and their possessions. Kids love to listen to the laundry list of falling items and will usually start trying to recite them along with you; a sure sign that they’re involved and engaged with the story.

Tedd Arnolds pictures are bright and colorful and filled with minute details. These details, from the expression on the TV monster’s face as the television falls through the floor to the images on Aunt Batty’s stamps, give pre-literate students plenty to focus on and talk about without the need for being able to decode the words. Pre-Readers and Early Readers can use the pictures alone to tell or retell the story.

The use of rhyming words for all of the building’s inhabitants creates a fun, lilting story and make some of the more difficult details easier for kids to remember.

Lastly, this book goes a long way towards helping pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students learn about cause and effect. Whole discussions on the subject can generate from this one text, whose lovable characters, vibrant illustrations, and whimsical story make all that learning seem like just a lot of fun.

Read-Aloud Tips

1. As Walter falls through each floor, he takes more and more of his neighbors, and their belongings, down with him. As this list of falling objects grows longer, try reading through it as fast as you can. Kids will love this, trying to keep up with your fast pace and enjoying the novelty of your rapid reading. And although they don’t know it, you’re also modelling an important lesson: the idea that you can change the way you read a sentence based on what that sentence is trying to express.

Comprehension Questions

Duck on a Bike

David Shannon. Blue Sky Press 2002, Hardcover, 40 pages, $6.09

It’s just another day on the farm when Duck gets a ‘wild idea.’ After eyeballing a big red bike, he hops on and goes for a ride!

As he clumsily pedals around the barn yard, Duck passes each of the other inhabitants of the farm, quacking out a hearty hello. Each animal responds as we’d expect - ‘M-o-o-o,’ says cow - but adds their own critique of the Duck’s zany behavior.

The Cow thinks Duck is being silly. The Sheep thinks he’ll get hurt. The Cat wouldn’t waste her time like that and the Horse knows he can run faster than any bike. The Goat would just as soon eat the bike as ride it and the two Pigs think Duck is a show-off. Clearly, the animals are not impressed with Duck’s idea.

Or are they? We find out for sure when a pack of children come riding up to the farmhouse. As they dump their bikes on the front lawn, the animals gather and stare. An idea forms, a wild idea, and next thing you know all the animals are pedalling around the yard having a wonderful time and praising Duck for his smart thinking.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that I have a special love for children’s stories that take place on the farm. There’s something about the mix of animals and tractors and crops and big, red barns that is just so perfect for kindergarten storytelling. And when this essential kiddie setting is mixed with a humorous story, all the better.

If you read many children’s books in the Funny Farm genre, you start to see common threads. For instance, cows and sheep are maternal, chickens are, well, chicken, and the duck is always the troublemaker. (Don’t believe me? Check out Click, Clack, Moo, Giggle, Giggle, Quack, Duck for President, Serious Farm, and Babe.)

By tapping into these expectations, Duck On a Bike provides students an immediate connection to the story. Without knowing the details, they understand the basic structure of what is about to happen. It is through discovering and tapping these personal connections that students build an ability to comprehend stories and texts they read on their own.

Duck On A Bike also gets kids thinking about dialog in a story. Without being overwhelming (I have very strong opinions on what constitutes good or bad use of dialog in a children’s book), the animals’ dialog shows children how to handle the introduction of speech in a book. Even better, since every pre-kindergarten and kindergarten student knows the sounds farm animals make, children will have fun saying or listening to the animals’ lines in their own special voice.

Needless to say, David Shannon’s illustrations once more win the day. The expressions on the animals faces, especially as they eyeball all those bikes are truly priceless. This book would be a winner without any words at all. My students especially like the end of the story where we see duck rubbing his chin and considering the big, red tractor that sits before him. This sort of detailed, well-considered picture support lays a groundwork for getting students to think about and extend the stories they read.

Read-Aloud Tips

1. I seem to say this about nearly every book I read, but you simply must use voices when reading this book. The dialog is perfect for this, since each animal speaks their lines clearly and alone, without any confusing character switches.
2. To emphasise the plot of the story, try to emulate each animal’s attitude, as well as their sounds. Remember, this story’s humor stems from the fact that each animal feigns indifference to the Duck’s idea, but secretly wishes they could ride a bike, too. This plot element is easy to play up as you read what each character thinks.
3. Encourage children to read the predictable parts of the book with you. Duck’s lines and the spoken response of each animals are easy to predict and get children actively involved in the story.
4. Never read a David Shannon book without spending ample time examining and talking about the pictures. Do a picture walk before reading and give students plenty of opportunity to look at the details in the picture.

Comprehension Questions

Pre-reading:

How I Became a Pirate

David Shannon (Illustrator). Harcourt, Inc. 2003, Hardcover, 44 pages, $2.46

Young Jeremy Jacob, expert sandcastle maker, is minding his own business on the beach one day when Braidbeard the Pirate and his scurvy crew row ashore. When Braidbeard spots Jeremy’s digging skills (his castle has quite a moat), he recruits the young lad to help him bury his treasure.

Jeremy quickly finds that he likes the pirate life. He doesn’t have to eat his vegetables (there aren’t any on board), he doesn’t have to say please or thank you, and bed time is just a fading memory.

But great as it is, there’s a downside to being a bucaneer. Pirates don’t read bedtime stories, nor do they tuck little boys into bed (No Tucking! is the rule.). Jeremy finally decides that the pirate life isn’t for him after all when a scary storm whips up and cracks the ship’s mast in half.

Not wanting to leave his new friends high-and-dry, Jeremy offers a simple solution to their treasure problem by helping them find a safe (and conveniently close) place to bury the chest of gold.

The true joy in a book illustrated by David Shannon lies in his hilariously detailed pictures. How I Became A Pirate is no exception.

David Shannon’s illustrations are a riot. From the comically hulking pirate with sail-boat PJs to the soccerball chomping shark, the illustrations add a depth to the story that carry it far beyond words. They draw children into the book, enticing them to look for more and more details, and to notice changes in each character from scene to scene (like the pirate whose eyepatches are different on every page). Since so much of learning to read has to do with noticing picture details, books like this one with really great illustrations make for particularly good kindergarten reading.

These detailed, story-telling images are a joy by themselves, but add to them a funny story, with plot twists and perfectly timed dialog, and the book becomes an enchanting read, as well. Throughout the pages, Braidbeard speaks to his crew, only to have them chant it back in large, bold letters. Kids in my class routinely mimic my pirate voice (you simply cannot read this book without one), reading back to me the pirate crew’s words with enthusiastic ‘Arrr!s’ and ‘Aye!s’ When kids are that involved in a book, it’s a safe bet they’re learning something, too.

Add to all of this the book’s subtle message (the life of a kid is a pretty good life) and the suggestion that perhaps Jeremy is making all this up (what kid hasn’t fantasized about pirates), and you’ve got a really fun children’s book with a ton of learning opportunities built right in.

Read-Aloud Tips

1. Be sure to use your best pirate voice when Braidbeard and his crew speak. Not only does it get kids into the book, but it also demonstrates the fact that stories are made of both exposition and dialog.

Comprehension Questions

Click, Clack, Moo

Betsy Lewin (Illustrator). Atheneum 2000, Library Binding, 32 pages, $5.00

Farmer Brown has a problem. His cows have just found an old typewriter in the barn, and much to his chagrin, they’ve learned how to use it. Unhappy about how cold it is in the barn at night, the cows hammer out a note. ‘Dear Farmer Brown,’ it says. ‘We want electric blankets.’{MORE}

When Farmer brown refuses their request, a furious written exchange ensues. As the chickens get in on the act, too (’No milk. No eggs,’ the note reads.), Farmer Brown is left with little choice: he agrees to exchange electric blankets for the typewriter.

But when the Duck, who has some ideas of his own, is asked to act as the middleman in the exchange, Farmer Brown suddenly finds himself with another note. ‘Dear Farmer Brown,’ this one says, ‘The pond is quite boring…’

I’m not entirely certain which is funnier, the story in Click Clack Moo, or the fact that the kids I read it to have no idea what a typewriter is. I literally have to bring one into school and show them what it is, and what it’s for. You should see their eyes light up. They look at me as if I invented it myself.

Still, once they understand what the contraption is about, kindergarten and first grade kids always enjoy this story. I think it’s because they are, themselves, just learning how to use the written word to communicate their ideas and wants, and they feel an affinity for the cows struggle against the odds.

In the case of Click, Clack, Moo, this is an affinity that educators and parents can put to good use. While this book is a great, fun read, adds to the already well documented canon of Farm Books, and has lessons to teach about conflict resolution and compromise, its strongest lessons, I think, are those it teaches about writing.

Many young children question why they must study academic subjects, and simply don’t see the point behind learning to write down what they can so easily say aloud. Click, Clack, Moo models for them the power of the written word, how writing is used to communicate from afar and is a great tool to use in getting the things that you want. That lesson alone makes it a worthwhile read.

Read-Aloud Tips

1. One thing all kids get into when reading this book is making the ‘Click, Clack, Mooo!’ sounds. Be sure to give your child plenty of opportunity to ham it up as the cows type.
2. Betsy Lewin’s children’s book illustrations are a hoot, especially when she’s showing Farmer Brown as he reads those notes from the Cows and Chickens. Play up on how red-faced and angry Farmer Brown looks by reading his notes with your best ‘Dag-nabbit,’ upset farmer voice. Your kid(s) will love it.
3. Be sure to discuss the written notes exchanged in the book. Talk about the formalities used (the salutation, body, and sign-off) in letter writing and touch upon the utility of note writing for communication.

Comprehension Questions

Pre-Reading

Which do you choose?

If you’re the reserved type, you probably go for the firstΒ β€” the quiet, ‘read-the-words’ type of approach. And that’s okay. But while there is nothing inherently wrong with reading to children in this way, I would argue that the second option, the modesty-to-the-wolves, let-down-your-hair approach, can have a far reaching positive impact on children’s early literacy development.

In fact, there are three solid reasons why throwing propriety out the window and getting outright SILLY while reading to children will make a huge difference in their ability to read and write.

1. Silly is fun, and fun is engaging.
2. Silly is light, light is relaxed, relaxed is more successful.
3. Silly is expressive, expressive is fluent, and fluent IS reading.

Let’s explore each in more detail.

Silly Is Fun and Fun is Engaging.

If there’s one thing I see over and over as students move from the relatively free-wheeling early days of kindergarten to the more structured and academic half of the year and the beginning of first grade, it’s the way their attitude towards reading and writing changes. Early in kindergarten, when we ask nothing more of them than to experiment with written language, they are thrilled at the prospect. They can’t wait to draw and write, to explore the pictures in books and play with the bits of language in them that they can recognize and tackle.

But as the year wears on and we start shoving an education down their throats, when we add structure to their writing tasks and ask them to learn reading strategies and skills, they drag their feet. In the midst of all the new and, frankly, difficult things we expect them to master, it’s no wonder that much of the exploration and enjoyment starts to bleed out of the task.

So one of our primary jobs, teacher and parent alike, is to remind students that reading is FUN. While learning all the difficult tricks needed to do it well may be a chore, reading is nonetheless an enjoyable, relaxing, and desirable endeavor.

The best way to do this is to give young students positive vicarious reading experiences, simply put: times when they see the enjoyable benefits of reading without having to do any of the work. AKA, the read-aloud.

It’s key to remember that this is the only way your child will keep his sights on what it is that he’s working toward. Only if reading with you is fun, will your child believe that reading by himself will, one day, be fun, too.

And I can’t think of a better way to convey that fun and enjoyable aspect of children’s literature than throwing yourself into the story and being as silly as you possibly can. Quack out the duck’s words in Duck On A Bike. Let out hearty ‘Arrs’ and ‘Ahoys’ while enjoying How I Became A Pirate. Sob as Andrew bites the apple. Give every character a voice. Read with enthusiasm. Laugh, roll, tickle, get up and dance if it strikes you as appropriate. Just make sure that it is, above all else, FUN.

Silly is light, light is relaxed, relaxed is more successful.

Reading is fun, rewarding, and enlightening. Indeed, for many of us, reading is one of life’s greatest pleasures. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, learning to read is one of the most difficult things young children are asked to do during their school careers. Combine this difficulty of the task with the enormous pressure put on kids to master it and master it quickly, and it’s no wonder many kids show little interest in reading.

Experiences that show kids the funner, lighter side of reading are invaluable countermeasures. Every time we show kids that reading is a form of entertainment, we lower the tension that surrounds it and give them a chance to enjoy what is otherwise a chore. With this lighter, more relaxed experience, the stress drops and kids are far more likely to succeed in their own reading.

Silly is expressive, expressive is fluent, and fluent IS reading.

The heart and soul of reading, the most critical skill for readers to acquire in order to do it well, is what educators call fluency. Simply put, fluency is an individual’s ability to read smoothly, quickly and with expression. While the experts differ in their exact definitions and in how much weight each part of fluent reading is given, they are unanimous in one thing: if you can’t read fluently, you can?t read effectively.

A major part of fluent reading is technical stuff: sight vocabulary, decoding skills, etc. But another big chunk of it is an ability to read the words with expression. To give life to language. To take the written word and convert it back into the inflection-filled spoken language it originally was.

Text itself holds very few clues about how to read with expression. Instead, kids achieve expressive reading when they understand the connection between their experience with spoken language and words on a page.

By reading with expression, indeed, by being overly expressive, we model this connection for our children. We show them by example how to convert plain written words into vivid oral language.

Things To Do

There are obvious benefits to being silly while reading with your child. Here are some specific things you can do to make reading fun, relaxed, and model fluent reading to your child.

1. Use voices. Children’s literature lends itself particularly well to using voices. Accents, animal voices, old lady voices, whatever. If you use voices while you read, you make it fun and model an important lesson.
2. Make noises. The illustrations in picture books provide opportunities to embellish the story by adding sound effects. Don’t hold back. More goofy is more fun for your child.
3. Act it out. Wave your arms around, roll about. Physical comedy goes over really well with kids.
4. Finally, check out the ‘Read-Aloud Tips’ section of each book review on this site for specific advice on turning reading into an engaging and fun experience.

If we want our children to grow to become lifelong readers who get joy and enrichment out of reading books, we must set the example now, while they’re young, even if it means embarrasing ourselves by being silly. So don’t hold back. A silly parent can create an especially literate child.

Below is a list of what many researchers agree are the 4 most important phonemic awareness skills. A child who can do each of these is well on his or her way to becoming an effective reader.

Rhyme Awareness

Phonemically aware children are able to recognize rhyming words when they hear them. They understand that two words rhyme when they sound the same at the end. They are able to both recognize rhyming words and to produce rhyming words of their own.

If you rattle off the following words — cat, dog, hat, chair — a phonemically aware child should be able to tell you which ones rhyme. Additionally, if you say ‘cat,’ the child should be able to produce other words — like ‘hat,’ ‘mat’ and ’sat’ — to rhyme. Here you can see the two ideas mentioned in our definition, hearing and manipulating, at work. A child recognizes rhyme when they hear it, and manipulates rhyme by producing their own.

Note that rhyme awareness is not limited to words that actually exist in the English language, as Dr. Seuss well proved in his prolific career. If you say “cat” and the child shoots back with “glazooglerat,” they’re still very much good-to-go (and very possibly ready for publication).

Phoneme Isolation

Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound from which language is built. In the English language, many phonemes are matched to a single letter. When we say that the letter b makes a “buh” sound (education writers represent it like this: /b/) that “buh” sound is a phoneme. While many of our phonemes map directly to a single letter, there are others that match to sets of letters. Digraphs, for instance, represent two letters together that make a single sound (sh, ch, th, wh).

A child with good phonemic awareness will be able to listen to a word and pick out the specific phonemes found within it. The easiest phoneme isolation task is to identify the first sound in a word. Phonemically aware children will be able to listen to a list of words and identify those that have the same first sound. As they progress in skill, students should also be able to recognize when two words have the same ending and/or middle sounds. Children should also be able to produce their own words that begin or end with the same sound. If you say “mouse,” your child should be able to produce other /m/ words, like “moon,” “man” and “motorcycle.”

Note that hearing the ending phoneme in a word is different from hearing a rhyme. When children listen for rhymes, they listen to the entire ending section of the word. It is the /og/ in “dog” and “log” that identify them as rhyming words. Two words can have the same ending phoneme, however, and not rhyme. The ending phoneme in “dog” is /g/. So “dog” and “bag” and “pig” all have the same ending phoneme, but do not rhyme.

Phoneme isolation is an important skill because it forms the basis for Blending and Segmenting (see below).

Phoneme Substitution

Phoneme substitution is the ability to make “phoneme level” changes to a word. While phoneme isolation is a passive task — the child listens and identifies — phoneme substitution is active. Phoneme substitution involves listening for a given phoneme and then swapping it out for another. Remember that this is all done orally. It isn’t a question of changing the letter in the word, just the sound.

For instance, a phonemically aware child would be able to fix intentionally bungled words. If you pointed to your dog and said, “muppy,” your child should be able to hear that you used the wrong initial phoneme and would be able to substitite in the correct one — /p/ — to fix the word.

Another common substitution task is to pick a phoneme and substitute it into the beginning of all the words in a rhyme or song. The Name Game song (banana-fana-fo-fana, me-mi-mo-mana, etc.) is a prime example of phoneme substitution. Raffi’s classic Willaby-Wallaby song — “Willaby wallaby wusan, an elephant sat on Susan” — is another. In both songs, children take a given phoneme in a word and trade it out for another phoneme.

This is an important skill because many words in the English language can be derived by making slight changes to other words. If a child is able to make phoneme level substitutions, for instance, they can easily understand the relationship between “cat,” “mat,” “sat,” “hat,” “rat” and “that.” When faced with one of these words while reading, a phonemically aware child who knows the word “cat” can easily read the others, as well.

Blending and Segmenting

Earlier, I mentioned that phonemes are the smallest unit of sound in spoken language. There are about forty of them. All other sounds in our language are constructed by combining these basic phonemes and then blending their sounds together.

A phonemically aware child is able to listen to a string of separate phonemes and squish them together into the right word. If you made the sounds /c/ - /a/ - /t/, with about a one second pause between each one, your child should be able to smooth them together into the word “cat.” This is blending.

Segmenting is blending’s opposite. Segmenting activities present a child with a complete word and challenge them to break it down into its constituent phonemes. If you tell your child to “stretch out” the word “cat,” they should be able to break it up into /c/ - /a/ - /t/. This is segmenting.

Blending is a critical reading skill. Once a child has started to learn some phonics (the association between written letters and their matching sounds), an ability to blend phonemes literally becomes reading. If they see the word DOG, they are able to translate the letters into the right sounds (d => /d/, o => /o/, g => /g/). With those sounds in mind, the child then falls back on blending skills to smooth them together and say “dog.” Phonics plus phonemic awareness equals reading.

In the same way, segmenting is a critical writing skill. The child starts with an oral word and seeks to turn it into a written one. Before they can start using their phonics mastery to convert sounds into letters, they must be able to say what each of those sounds are. They do this by taking the oral word and segmenting it into its phonemes … “dog” becomes /d/ - /o/ - /g/, which is then translated into letters and written DOG.

Some Other Stuff, Too

These four skills represent, in my opinion, the most important phonemic awareness skills children need to master, but they are not all that phonemic awareness includes. Other phonemic awareness skills include syllable awareness, onset and rime awareness, phoneme subtraction, and a few others.

While these skills are important, they’ve always seemed to me to be sub-skills to the four discussed above. Onset and rime awareness, for instance, is really a mixture of rhyme awareness and phoneme isolation.

Generally speaking, kids who have control over the basic four will have all the phonemic awareness they need to become skilled and successful readers.

This article discusses one of the best ways parents and I have discovered to integrate learning letters and sounds into daily home life: through cooking.

Kids Love Cooking

Kindergarten and first grade kids LOVE to cook. They love the gathering of ingredients. They love the mixing. They love the mess. They love the anticipation, and, above all, they love getting to eat something they helped to prepare.

What’s more, cooking is an activity kids at this age expect to be doing with a parent, which makes it a great opportunity to both bond with and educate your child.

Cooking is Already a Literate Activity

It’s true. Reading and writing are built right into the process of cooking. To cook a meal we must be able to read a recipe, write a grocery list, read the labels on ingredients, read the measurements on a measuring cup and follow a set of directions in sequence. All of which rely on critical literacy skills. Cooking presents many opportunities to build literacy.

Building Literacy in the Kitchen

Obviously, I’m not suggesting that you hand a cookbook to your kindergartener and tell him to read it to you. However, there are ways that you can incorporate the things he needs to learn into the process of cooking food. Not only does this give your child extra practice with needed skills, but it also shows him the relevancy of learning to read and write, something many kids find hard to grasp.

Here are a few games and activities you might try:

Guess the Ingredient:

Show your child the first letter in the name of an ingredient and see if they can use it to guess what the ingredient is. For instance, you might point to the line …

1 cup chocolate chips

… and tell your child, ‘We’re making cookies. Look at the first two letters. What sound do they make? What do you think the recipe is telling us we need?’

If your child doesn’t know what sound that letter makes, tell them the sound and let them try to guess the ingredient.

Magnetic Letter Quiz:

Place a set of magnetic letters on the door of the refridgerator. For each ingredient on the list, call out the name and challenge your child to show you which letter makes the sound at the start of that word. If they get it right, they get to add that ingredient into the bowl.

Write a Grocery List:

Grocery lists are one of the best ways to show young children that writing is a useful, real-world tool. They’re also a great place for them to practice using letter sounds to write. Get out a sheet of note paper and make up the grocery list together. Your child can write the first letters and you the rest. Alternately, you can use both words and pictures.

I would suggest prefacing this activity by reading the classic Rosemary Wells book Bunny Cakes together, then making your list.

Food Writing:

While gathering and measuring your ingredients, challenge your child to write or identify letters and sounds. For instance, with a countertop covered in flour you might draw a ‘B’ with your fingertip and have your child name its sound or two foods that start with that letter.

You can also spell out letters or words with chocolate chips, raisins, carrot sticks , etc.

Unlovable (Owlet Book)

Dan Yaccarino. Owlet Paperbacks 2004, Paperback, 32 pages, $4.08

Alfred is an unhappy pug. The cat insists that his round head, squashed face and tiny little legs make him absolutely unlovable, and the other dogs in the neighborhood don’t help any: no one will play with him because of the way he looks. Then, one day, a new dog named Rex moves in next door and Alfred, desperate to make a friend, tells a lie. A harmless one - ‘I’m a golden retriever,’ he says - but one that comes back to haunt him when Rex decides to dig under the fence and meet Alfred face-to-face.

First of all, Alfred is really cute, and I always wonder how Yaccarino manages to pull off the story he does, telling us that Alfred is ugly and unlovable, when it’s so obviously clear that he is anything but. In fact, I have yet to read this to a group of students and not have them interrupt to argue the point. ‘He’s really cute!’ they exclaim. ‘Look at his little tail … what a mean cat!’

Which is, of course, the entire point of the story, and what, I think, makes it such a great book for character education and helping establish a sense of community amongst children. They all immediately see the injustice of how Alfred is treated. They connect quickly with his desire to make Rex his friend, and while they agree he shouldn’t have lied, I think they easily see why he did it and, more importantly, how the way he was treated by his peers drove him to it.

So, clearly Unlovable is a great book for talking about bullying and friendship and loving yourself and others for who they really are. What’s interesting to me, however, is that this same lesson makes Unlovable a great way to teach children about connecting with characters in stories; one of the key things a burgeoning reader must be able to do.

The fact is, most fiction, adult and children’s alike, is all about character. It’s about characters doing things, having reasons for doing them, then feeling and reacting to what happens as a result. This is what drives fiction forward. If we can teach young children to think about those things, to empathize with how Alfred is feeling and understand why he tells that white lie, we are, in essence, teaching them how to understand that story.

And this is more than a minor point. Reading comprehension is THE goal of learning to read. The letter sounds, the spelling, the phonics, the sounding-out — all the reading skills children learn — are just ways to get them reading the words of the text. The ultimate goal of reading is to understand what has been read. Understanding character motives and feelings is a huge and important part of that, and Unlovable is, without a doubt, the perfect book for practicing and building that ability.

Literacy Activities

Read-Aloud Tips

1. Do voices. There are plenty of voices to do in this one, so do voices. Meow it up, with attitude, as the cat. Squawk the parrot’s line. Get gruff as the doberman and as prissy as you can for the pampered poodle. For some reason, I always read Alfred with a Woody Allen voice and Rex always seems to come out sounding like that little dog in the old Looney Toons cartoon that jumps back and forth over the bigger dog saying, ‘Wanna throw a ball, Spike? Huh? Huh? Wanna?’ Yours may sound different, just don’t let is sound like you.
2. Alfred’s expressions in the book are priceless and, beyond that, are a young child’s doorway into understanding his feelings. Be sure to pause and talk about those facial expressions when they play a major role.

Comprehension Questions

Before Reading

Serious Farm

Tim Egan. Sandpiper 2006, Paperback, 32 pages, $1.81

Farmer Fred runs a serious farm. He’s not mean or sad or angry, just serious. He thinks farming is serious business and so do his animals. Until one day when the animals decide they’ve had enough. Fed up with Fred’s seriousness, they decide it’s high time they had a few laughs there on the farm. So the animals, led by Edna the cow, set on a campaign to get a chuckle out of Farmer Fred. Try as they might, the animals still can’t get a rise out of Farmer Fred. Frustrated, they decide to run away from Serious Farm.

Serious Farm is a rare kind of children’s book. It appeals to kids because it is interesting, lighthearted, and funny. But at the same time it has a complex storyline, difficult vocabulary, and a heartfelt message. The result is a book that is able to engage students and get them talking and thinking about complicated things without boring or losing them like you would expect a ‘deeper’ book to do.

The setting of the story (a farm) is a common one for children’s books. If you look through a collection of farm stories, you’ll see that almost every one of them is humorous in nature. Kids pick up on this sort of thing and bring them as expectations to reading new books. Serious Farm doesn’t disappoint. From the cover picture, with it’s deadpan animal faces, right through the story to it’s plot resolution (the look on the animal’s faces when they hear about lions in the woods is priceless), this is a funny book.

What’s more, it invites kids to think funny on their own. As the animals do silly thing after silly thing to try and make Farmer Fred laugh, my students always start yelling out their own ideas about what the animals might do next. It takes great creativity to think up those sorts of antics. It takes a special kind of book to inspire that creativity.

The plot of Serious Farm is more complicated than most children’s books - the animals are tired of being serious; they do silly things to get Farmer Fred to laugh but they don’t work; the animals run-away; Farmer Fred is sad and goes after them; they have a chat about individuality and loving each other despite their differences; everyone goes home happier - but is presented in a way that, with some adult guidance - makes it accessible to 5 and 6 year old kids. It affords us many opportunities to talk with kids about complicated things, too, like the shades of meaning between serious and angry, and the fact that feeling differently isn’t a reason for people to not get along.

Overall, Serious Farm is a great book to read with kindergarten and first grade students who are learning to read. Its complexity stretches kids understanding of stories while it’s familiar setting, characters and great sense of humor make it accessible and engaging.

Read-Aloud Tips

1. Being the advocate that I am of using silly voices while reading children’s books to kindergarteners, I insist that you use a dead-pan southern drawl for Farmer Fred’s part of this story. Make sure you get that flat-eyed, line-mouthed, serious look of his down, too. Edna’s voice can be equally funny.
2. Some of the funniest parts of this book are not described by the words of the story, but happen instead in the pictures. Be sure to take time to look at and discuss some of the silly things the animals do that the text glosses over.
3. This site encourages discussion of all stories after they are read, but Serious Farm falls into a special category. Much of this story’s plot and message can be missed by a 5- or 6-year old if not discussed afterwards. So be sure to spend a few minutes talking (the comprehension questions below are a good place to start) about this book when you’re done.

Comprehension Questions

Pre-Reading