I saw this workbook ( My Book of Number Games (1-70) ) at Target and there was something very simple and appealing about its cover- almost Eric Carle-like- that attracted my attention.
When I flipped through, I found the inside to be equally interesting. The book contains 38 connect the dot exercises that get slightly more difficult as you progress. The first few go from 1 through 10, then it slowly works up so that the child is tracing from 1 through 70. On the reverse of each connect the dots exercise, there is a color by number that gives the child practice identifying the newly introduced numbers. For example the one on the reverse of Panorama’s seal had her distinguishing between several numbers in the twenties.
Panorama liked this book from the first time we tried it, but she did get pretty frustrated the first few times she attempted the connect the dots. I had to show her how to stop and look for the next number before beginning to draw the line, and we practiced drawing straight lines with mock-up dot exercises I made for her on regular paper. It didn’t take long for her to get the hang of it, and I have been very impressed about how well she "reads" numbers greater than 10. She’s up to the thirties now.
I would recommend making copies if you can of some of the earlier exercises instead of working right for the book. Panorama is the type of kid that thinks a whole page is "ruined" if she makes one line loopy (especially when we first begn this book), and it was nice to be able to let her try the same puzzle again.
Since this workbook has been so popular, I’ve picked up a few others. They all have that same simple, sane and practical tone with no in-your-face cartoon craziness or 100 pages of stickers. Just low key, fun, yet challenging exercises.
We tried that book, and it seemed OK for the first few days. The book is laid out so that it tells the parent EXACTLY what to say, and leads the child through some sound exercises. For whatever reason, Panorama just didn’t like it, and a few minutes into the lessons she would start squirming around and every sound was “starfish” instead of “eeeeeeeeeeeee” or “aaaaaaah”. Starfish, eh? Lovely.
But she still wanted to read, and so I dug out some Bob Books that we had piled up in a corner. Bob Books are simple little stories using small words. Each story is about 10 pages long with one simple sentence on each page, such as “The cat had a rag hat.” As you work through the books in order, you build skills. The first books focus on the sounds like: at, ag, as then you move up to uff, ug, etc.
What we’ve been doing is reading the book together, then I write out the words in the book that we “don’t know” and we talk about the sounds. After finishing the book, I’d have her brainstorm words that rhyme with the key sound from the book. Then we read it again- this time, she is the “lead”. Over the course of two or three days, she’s be able to finish the book by herself.
My daughter will be four next month and she is chomping at the bit to read. She is constantly arranging the magnetic alphabet letters on the fridge into nonsense words and asking me “What does this spell?” “Um, scterhhitmsmiff?”
She knows all of her letters, their sounds, and some really simple words like “cat”, “mom”, and “gymboree parisian poodle rainslicker.”
We have gotten into a routine of watching Super WHY! and Word World on PBS and doing the curriculum activities. She also enjoys Leap Frog DVDs and games, and we read all the time together. I was considering investing in one of the Hooked on Phonics programs, but before dropping $50+ dollars, I decided to hit the Mom Forums over at www.babycenter.com and see if anyone had any suggestions or success stories.
This Hemp Diaper does it all and when we designed it we had your baby’s comfort in mind. That is, for example, why we developed a special new hemp/cotton/polyester blend giving you a one of a kind hemp diaper. This fabric is very very soft and ‘comfortable’, super-stretchy and best of all it does not stiffen over time!
I saw this workbook ( My Book of Number Games (1-70)
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