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Read and Do: I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

November 16, 2014 by ajpassey Leave a Comment

Kids love exploring the impossible. As they develop their understanding of how the world works, they find humor in stories and songs that break the rules. Our three year old giggled endlessly the first time we read the book I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. With each new animal he sputtered out, “No! She can’t” between fits of laughter.

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, published by the Secret Mountain, has beautiful illustrations that captivated Scott from the beginning. This boy has claimed ownership of this book and is very particular about if and when anyone else can read it. The book comes with a CD containing 12 songs, the first of which is I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. There are 16 pages of the book devoted to illustrating this song.

The other 11 songs are included after, each with a 2 page spread of the lyrics and accompanying illustrations. Scott will sit for the entire length of this album and follow along in the book. His favorite of the additional songs is “Sailing Over the Sea” or as he calls it, “The Pirate Song.” My favorite is “Heel, Toe, and Away We Go” about traveling to different places in the world. I always love a good traveling song!

This article first appeared on Because Babies Grow Up, a sister website to Laptime Songs.

Read and Do: I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

To enjoy the silliness of this story, here’s a fun activity where you or your little one can turn into the old lady and (pretend) eat all those animals! The kids all laughed so hard when I came out in a silver wig and apron. We sang the song together so kids could remember which animal came next. It also allowed us to pause for a little acting when needed. But you could also do it while listening to Thomas Hellman and Emilie Clepper sing it.

I collected a (butter)fly, spider, bird, cat, dog, goat, cow and horse from our collection of stuffed animals and figurines. Next, I spread them out on the table in a random order to further require the kids to remember which came next. After we had all taken turns and it was time to clean up, I put all the animals in a basket with the book that received a lot of play the remainder of the week.

I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is available on Amazon and in iBooks. The iBooks version has a narration option and includes 2 songs. Scott loved flipping through the book on the iPad. Though he very much loves the hard copy.

Learning with I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

Kids need to hear the same thing again, and again, and again. It’s a necessary part of their learning process. As adults we often tire more quickly of a particular song (Let It Go, anyone?) or a particular book (Good Night Moon, right?) but for our children, these repeated exposures are slowly and firmly building a framework for understanding language, emotions, information, relationships, LIFE! Listening, singing, and reading I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly over and over is engaging for you little one as they see different patterns with each exposure.

Math: Each creature she eats gets progressively larger. Sizes small, medium and large are great preschool math concepts. Comparing them to each other teaches spatial awareness in an abstract way, for example, by asking which is bigger, the spider or the horse.

Science: Animals are a great science topic for little ones. Learning about different animals, how they live, what they do and eat, and then learning about their relationships with each other. Dogs chase cats and cats chase birds which eat insects.

Language Arts: There is great vocabulary in I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Words like absurd and wriggle are fun words to know. As kids are singing this song, they have multiple chances to practice simple words while they are first learning to talk. One kindergarten readiness skill is for children to be able to tell a story in the correct order. Since the chorus of I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly repeats adding one new action each time, this is great practice for remembering the order of actions in a story.

I hope you and your little one have as much fun with this activity as we have had! I’d love to see you or your child dressed up as the old lady.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book review, Read and Do, STEAM

The Three Little Pigs Story Shop

September 23, 2014 by ajpassey Leave a Comment

The Three Little Pigs is such a classic story.

And with a wealth of published retellings, too.

But yet, each new crop of little ones just adores this story. Our kids’ favorite version is our own oral retelling at bedtime. They love it when we use their names as the names of the little pigs. When we added our fourth child, the kids didn’t miss a beat. They insisted we add another pig. The fourth pig’s house is usually made of food, chocolate or candy preferably, and fills the big bad wolf up so he leaves those little pigs alone.

The Three Little Pigs and the Somewhat Bad Wolf, from Scholastic this spring, also plays on solving that hunger problem. Once the wolf is full, he’s not in such a bad mood and is able to play quite nicely with the three little pigs. But what I love most about this version is that when the pigs are sent on their way, they are given money to help make their way in the world. (They are released from a farmer who is retiring to Florida.)

Then the three little pigs must make choices about how to spend their money which leads to variability in building materials. The preschool and kindergarten introduction to social studies is a unit on needs versus wants. I immediately loved this illustration of how different people, or pigs in this case, can fill their needs and wants with the same resources but in very different ways. And since money is also a great math unit for young learners, it seemed a story store was in order!

This article first appeared on Because Babies Grow Up, a sister website to Laptime Songs.

The Three Little Pigs Story Store

Materials and Set Up:

  • bundles of straw (we used grass clippings; it was quite long!)
  • bundles of sticks (we have a plethora of sticks lying about our yard)
  • rocks and dirt (representing bricks and mortar)
  • play money
  • your child’s favorite food items
  • price tags

Set up the store on an easily accessible table or even spread out a blanket on the ground. Arrange the items and attach the price tags.

How Little Ones Can Help

We gathered crass clippings together and put them in a big pile. The littlest ones in our family also love collecting sticks so this was a fun task for them. The older two helped me bundle the grass and sticks and held the bundles while I tied. The most fun for the girls was arranging the store while Scott loved playing with the mortar and rocks. The kids also helped me decide on prices for various products.

If I try to do all the set up and present them with an activity like this, my little ones are not as interested in it. Plus, I don’t really have that much time where they are engaged in an activity without me that I could pull a whole store together like this one. I’ve tried and I’ always get too frustrated with the process before we get to the playing part. So I decided the whole process is the playing part. That has changed our structured play tremendously! Their creativity flourishes when they are invited to create the set up with me. We all have a lot more fun!

Play Money Ideas

We have play money from our game, Monopoly Jr, or from our toy register in our play kitchen. I also love this idea from Nurture Store to paint numbers on leaves. You can turn fall leaves into money by painting the numbers on the leaves. To keep it simple for little ones, I would paint a 1 on all of the leaves. Then they can just count out the number of leaves they need to buy their items. For older children, you could have some leaves with 5 or even 10 and they can practice making change.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book review, Read and Do, STEAM

Book Review: Good Night Sleep Tight by Mem Fox

August 16, 2013 by ajpassey Leave a Comment

We received a treasure of a book* in the mail box the other day. Scholastic sent us Mem Fox’s newest book, Good Night Sleep Tight, illustrated by Judy Horacek. Mem Fox and Judy Horacek have teamed up before for Where Is the Green Sheep?

book cover for good night sleep tight by Mem Fox

Good Night Sleep Tight is the story of a babysitter putting a brother and a sister to bed. Sammi loves when we’re visiting Brent’s sister and they do something together. She always comments, “A brother and a sister!” She gets a lot of joy out of those sibling relationships. Back to the brother and the sister from this story. The babysitter tells them familiar nursery rhymes. Then they ask to hear it again and instead he tells them another.

The rhymes are delightfully illustrated and we usually pause to enjoy the pictures, talk about the rhyme or do any actions that go with it. It also has a cute repeated transition between nursery rhymes. The kids picked up on this right away and enjoyed saying it all together. They also took turns doing “This Little Piggy” on each others’ toes. This was a book they all enjoyed reading together. It’s been harder to find books they can all equally enjoy with Sammi now 7 and an independent reader. She actually read this one to us all which warmed my heart. Another bedtime favorite!

*This review was originally published on Because Babies Grow Up. Post contains affiliate links which help keep the site content available for free. Find this book on Amazon.com: https://amzn.to/41hxq1k

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book review, early literacy

Favorite Doctor Seuss Books

February 26, 2010 by ajpassey Leave a Comment

My Fave Dr Seuss Book

I Can Read With My Eyes Closed

We’ve read this one so many times, I literally can read it with my eyes closed! I was a bit hesitant the first time I read this book because I thought it would downplay “reading” and upplay imagination. But I was wrong, gratefully. It’s actually about how important it is to keep yours eyes open to read and observe the world around you. My favorite line is “And when I keep them open I can read with much more speed. You’ve got to be a speedy reader cause there’s oh so much to read.” We’ve worn our copy of this book almost completely out.

Brent’s Fave Dr Seuss Book

Sneetches and Other Stories

Brent loves to read the Sneetches story to the girls at bedtime. At first I thought it was a little long for a bedtime story, but now that I’m more familiar with it, it goes rather quickly. I think Brent really likes the rhythm of this book’s rhymes and he kind of sings the words in a bouncy voice. He also likes the message of the Sneetches lesson, that we are all the same no matter out outsides and we can live in happiness and peace together. But we do always wonder with the Sneetches without stars upon thars never had their own frankfurter parties. Some mysteries are left unexplained, I guess.

Sammi’s Fave Dr Seuss Book

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Sammi requests this one quite often. It’s another one I can almost read with my eyes shut. It doesn’t have a single storyline, rather each couple of pages work together around the same characters or topics. The lack of a coherent story is kind of difficult for me, but it does have some pages we quite love and quote often. For example, one page counts the fingers on Ned and he has eleven. Our quotable line is “Eleven, this is something new. I wish I had eleven, too!”

Elli’s Fave Dr Seuss Book

Sleep Book

Yes, at 18 months Elli has a fave Dr Seuss book and it is indeed The Sleep Book. It’s kind of a long book so I usually read the first few pages (which are the best, in my opinion) and then read a couple out of the middle and then the last three pages. I’m not sure why Elli likes this book so much. We tried reading it to Sammi for ages before she showed any interest in it. But it’s a regular now at bedtime. My favorite line is “And people are gradually starting to say, ‘I feel rather drowsy. I’ve had quite a day.’” That’s exactly how I feel at the end of most days.

My Least Fave Dr Seuss Book:

The Cat in the Hat

I’m not fond of this one in the least. The poor kids are totally overwhelmed by the cat and then the poor cat is totally rejected by the kids. When I read it, all I can think about is the experiences of the characters on an emotional level. I think Dr Seuss definitely improved over his career. I haven’t read The Cat Comes Back. Maybe I should give it a try. But I’m not entirely motivated to. Maybe if it shows up on my doorstep, I’ll give it a go. But for now we’ll stick with our favorites.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book review, early literacy

Review: Chicken and Cat Clean Up

January 10, 2010 by ajpassey Leave a Comment

I love words. When I read, I am driven by the words on the page. As fast as I can absorb the words determines how quickly I turn the pages. This is fine for reading grown up books with few or no illustrations, but I tend to carry this over into my reading with the girls. I’ve really had to work at slowing down and looking at the pictures with them and answering the random questions that arise, entirely unrelated to the storyline, because of the illustrations. Even when I am trying consciously to allow time for studying the pictures, I still get caught up in the words. For this reason I now LOVE Chicken and Cat Clean Up.

Chicken and Cat Clean Up came to us from Scholastic for review. When Sammi first pulled it from the pile and wanted me to read it, I expected your typical picture book. But I was surprised when I opened the book and there were no words to read. I turned to the next page to see if there were words. None. I turned the page again. Hmmm. I was at a lost. So I went back to the beginning to figure out how to “read” this book to Sammi. But, Sammi’s observations and imagination came through to make this book a big hit.

We poured over the pictures on each page and looked for all the details that would help us understand the story. There is a little bit of print throughout the book, but almost all of it can be figured out through the illustrations. After we went through the book a couple of times, Sammi went off to her baby dolls to tell them the story over and over again. Then it occurred to me that this book was perfect for developing the early literacy narrative skill.

Storytelling is a part of developing literacy. When little ones understand the structure of stories, that they have a beginning, a middle and an end, they are better able to process the meaning of the words in the story. Retelling stories, or even making up their own, is great practice in developing literacy skills. I love to watch Sammi, and now Elli too, sit with a book and turn the pages as they retell the story to each other and their dolls. Sammi even has mastered holding the book facing away from her and “reading” it from the side. Elli is great at holding up the book and showing off the page to the whole room before turning the page and looking at the book herself again.

So, back to Chicken and Cat Clean Up. The illustrations are engaging, simple, but full of detail. The story is a bit of a page turner because you just wonder if it really could get any worse for poor Cat and then the ending is charming. I like this book not only for its strength in helping kids develop narrative skills necessary for literacy, but also because it created the opportunity for me to forget the words and lose myself in the illustrations. It really helped me experience literature from my little ones’ perspective; to remember what books are like when you can’t read; and how much joy there can be in that experience.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: book review, early literacy

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