I feel so fortunate to have come across Christmas Is Here, a children’s book about Christ’s birth. Lauren Castillo's illustrations are so warm and beautiful and the text is taken from the King James Bible. It is a simple, yet powerful account of something that has impacted the world and changed so many people’s lives. I’m thrilled to be able to read it over and over again this Christmas season with Avery and Nate.
Today I'm on The Land of Nod's blog sharing about Avery's favorite autumn lunch. Head over to Honest To Nod to check it out!
Sharing more of Nate's current favorite storybooks.
Chloe, Instead is a sweet story about sibling relationships and lessons learned about friendship and unconditional love. And of course, we’re huge fans of Micah Player’s bold, vintage style.
In Pete’s a Pizza, Pete's father thinks of the perfect silly solution to rainy day blues. Nate thinks this story is hilarious!
Robert McCloskey’s Blueberries for Sal is a tale about little Sal and her mother going foraging for blueberries, and the little adventures they have during their search. I love McCloskey’s use of onomatopoeia.
This week I'm sharing some of Nate's favorite books and Maisy Bakes a Cake is most definitely one of them! Besides the exceptionally fun and interactive pop-up aspect of it, he enjoys Maisy and her cronies' amusing antics. I've always been drawn to Lucy Cousins' vivid colors and bold black lines. It goes without saying that her playful style is hugely appealing to young children.
What I love about the Maisy series is that it features simple storylines ideal for working on preschool and early childhood language skills: grammar, early story retelling, sequencing of events and comprehension questions. Maisy books also offer a wide variety of experiences--going to preschool, visiting the museum, camping, going to the library—each with its own lexicon and opportunities to learn situation-specific social language.
Stay tuned for more of Nate's favorites tomorrow!
November's theme for #littlelitbookseries is food. Lemonade in Winter, written by Emily Jenkins and illustrated by G. Brian Karas, is about a pair of entrepreneurial siblings who decide to set up a lemonade stand on a cold wintry day. Do they learn about math and counting money? Yes. Do they learn a little about ingenuity and perseverance? Yes. Do they sell any lemonade? Read this delightfully frigid tale to find out. 😉
Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie dePaola is one of my all-time favorite wordless picture books. Its subtle humor draws you in and invites you to narrate the story of a hapless (but not hopeless) woman in her plight for a plate of warm, toothsome pancakes. The story is also a nod to an older, agrarian way of life, making it a wonderful teaching experience for its audience. And if reading it doesn't make you crave a tall pile of crispy-edged pancakes doused in maple syrup, I don't know what will! 🍁
Also, as a side note, wordless story books are invaluable tools. Telling and retelling a story multiple times with a wordless story book helps children learn a variety of vocabulary words, synonyms and sentence structures. It helps teach children the elements of a story--characters, setting, problem, resolution, etc. When you revisit stories and retell them, you talk about different little aspects of a story that you didn't talk about the last time you read it because you might pick up on other details in the pictures or nuances in the story. When different people tell a child the story, the child hears and is exposed to different narratives, points of view and different sets of vocabulary. Happy storytelling!
Check out our collection of delicious food books in this month's installment of #littlelitbookseries on Instagram.