Froggy Gets Dressed by Jonathan London is an entertaining story about a young frog who wakes up in the middle of winter and wants to go outside to play in the snow. Although his mother tells him to go back to sleep, to wake up when the snow melts, he goes outside anyway. His mother must keep reminding him of pieces of clothing he has forgotten to put on. Your child will roar with delight when Froggy forgets to put on his underwear!

Print Motivation/Awareness

Experts have determined that it is easier for a child to remain motivated to learn to read, even if it becomes difficult, when they love books and reading. Notice that the word “Frrrooggyy” is written in a larger, stylized font throughout the book - be sure to run your finger under the word whenever it appears in the story. This encourages Print Awareness (knowing that print has meaning). Have your child call out “Frrrooggyy” with you as you run your finger under the word.  As an alternative, whenever Froggy’s mother calls out “Frrrooggyy!” have your child respond, “wha-a-a-a-a-t?” as Froggy does in the story. 

Vocabulary and Background Knowledge

Young children will also benefit from hearing the words that name the different pieces of clothing necessary for Froggy to play in the snow, which helps increase their Vocabulary. This story would also be a great opportunity for playing dress-up and talking to your child about the clothing they wear in winter – what they need to put on before going out in the cold and why. You can continue the discussion with the difference between what they need to wear outside during the winter and what they wear during the summer.  

Froggy Gets Dressed can also provide a starting place to talk about frogs and where they live. Talking with your child about their daily activities provides endless opportunities to label the world around them, which helps increase their vocabulary and background knowledge (everything they know before going to kindergarten).  

Let’s Dress Froggy!

The folks over at Kizclub offer printable Froggy Gets Dressed props that your child can color and cut out. Coloring and cutting help develop the fine motor skills needed for learning to hold a pencil. (They also have a color version if you prefer)

Your child can use these props to help develop Narrative Skills as they retell the story or make up their own story about Froggy and his mother. They can also simply play with the props, dressing Froggy in different ways.

We also recommend these great sequencing, matching, and math-related Froggy activities from The Paper Bag Teachers. 

And finally, if your child loves singing and rhyming, check out these songs from PreschoolEducation.com that you can sing while getting dressed in the morning!

This time of year, kids will see pumpkins everywhere! It’s Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall is a great book to show kids how pumpkins grow. In this book, a brother and sister plant a “jack-o’-lantern patch and tend to it step by step, until it’s time to pick their pumpkins and carve them for Halloween. 

The story provides a perfect opportunity to introduce narrative skills. The story shows the sequence in which a pumpkin grows, from planting the seeds to cutting the pumpkin from the vine. Ask your child questions about the story like: “What do you think will happen after they plant the seeds?” or “What does the pumpkin need to grow?” At the end of the book, you will find step by step pictures illustrating how the pumpkin grows, which gives you a perfect chance to talk about the story and practice sequencing and narrative skills with your child.

Your child will also learn background knowledge. If you go back and read the story again, ask your child to tell you what is happening in the story. Your child will practice telling a story, which teaches her how stories work. She will also learn about gardening, which teaches her more about the world around her.

After reading this story, it’s a great time to go out to a pumpkin patch and pick a pumpkin together, or you can make a pumpkin patch of your own with the fun craft below.

Make a Pumpkin!

You will need:

• Orange Construction Paper
  
• Yellow Construction Paper
  
• Orange Yarn
  
• Scissors
  
• Green and Black Markers (or Crayons)
  
• Glue
  
• Stapler

1: Cut two pumpkins out of the orange paper and make a Jack-O-Lantern face on one.

2: Take the yellow paper and cut out pumpkin seeds.  (If you have real pumpkin seeds use them!)

3: Cut some short strings from the orange yarn and glue them onto the other pumpkin with the seeds.

4: When the pumpkin dries, staple both pumpkins together on one side, like a pumpkin book!

Banana! by Ed Vere tells a very simple story about two monkeys learning to share a banana. The great thing about this book is that the story is so simple, a pre-reader will easily be able to read it to you! All they need to know is two words: BANANA & PLEASE!

As you look through the book with your child, ask them what the monkeys are thinking. How do you think this monkey feels? Why do you think he feels that way? Storytelling with your child in this way will help your child learn the importance of context clues. When they read a book, they can use the pictures, colors and even the font style to help them read the story. Your child will be able to get a sense of the monkey’s emotions by looking at their picture. This is one way that reading builds empathy.

Chocolate Peanut-Butter Banana Popsicles

We found a great recipe on Recipe Runner that’s perfect for this story - and for summer! We won’t completely recreate it here because that would just be rude, but here are our tips to make it a kid-friendly activity:

1. Let your child help by measuring the ingredients or cutting the banana with a child-friendly knife and your help.
   
2. Use paper cups if you don’t have popsicle molds.
   

That’s it! Pretty simple, healthy, and tasty!

The Little Red Hen (Makes a Pizza) by Philemon Sturges is a fun, silly book for all pizza lovers. The little red hen decides she wants to make a delicious pizza but finds herself in need of the necessary ingredients. Who will help her? After repeatedly hearing the phrase, “Not I!” from the dog, duck, and cat, readers will be delighted and amused by the ending.

Practices and Skills:

This story allows children the opportunity to talk aloud, teaching them narrative skills. Ask your children to guess what ingredients the little red hen will buy next or how the other animals in story will respond to her requests for help. Talking aloud also facilitates phonological awareness—the way a word sounds. Children will learn new words and at the same time predict the outcome of the little red hen’s shopping trips.

The story also fosters vocabulary and background knowledge. Children will laugh at the many ingredients the little red hen forgets each time she visits the store as well as learn about the many toppings that can be added to a pizza. Ask your children to name their favorite pizza toppings and what other toppings can be added to the pizza. They will learn more about what makes pizza such a popular food among people—and hens!

Activity:

Children can use their imaginations by playing. Encourage them to create their own pizzas using felt or construction paper. You can find an “order form” at:   http://overthebigmoon.com/movie-and-pizza-family-night-idea-w-printable-order-forms/

The possibilities are endless as children add more and more toppings to their pizzas!

You and your little ones will have fun wiggling and giggling to Wiggle by Doreen Cronin. The adorable pup in the story is mastering many activities and all with a wiggle.

Have your child point out and describe the real photo items that are among the cartoons. Identifying words such as alarm clock, maracas, rubber duckie and pancake help develop their vocabulary. Also, see how many different animals your child can identify. Being able to identify the animals and photos helps to build BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE, what he/she knows before entering school.

Wiggle has rhyming text. Being able to rhyme is part of PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS, hearing the small parts in words. It is important for children to be able to hear these sounds in order to read.

PLAY one of these rhyming game anywhere: 

• Have one person choose a word then take turns saying just one rhyming word, one right after the other, as fast as you can.
  
• You say a color name and then have your child say a word that rhymes with that color. For instance, a blue shoe, a red bed, a green bean, yellow Jello would be winning combinations.

Extend the book by watching and listening to it on TumbleBook Library! 

Wiggle is a book that invites lots of movement and laughter, so it’s perfect to read and watch on our animated, talking picture book database. Here’s how:

Keep reading

This adaptation of the familiar preschool song “The Wheels on the Bus” has the animals making their own sounds as they ride through town.

Sing this song with your children while doing the actions and sounds of the animals. Songs tend to draw out the syllables in each word, making it easier for children to recognize the smaller sounds that make up words and helps them develop phonological awareness.

As you read, ask questions such as, “Do you ever ride a bus?” “How many animals are on the bus?” “Would you like to ride a bus with so many animals on it?” “What sounds do each animal make?” Talking with your children about the story increases their vocabulary.

Now make it your own!

After reading through the book once, read it again and have your children try to remember the sound each animal makes, or which animal gets on the bus next. This memory game increases their narrative skills as they learn to tell a story back to you.

Sing the song yourselves and add in new animals and their sounds.

After finishing the book, play an animal freeze game. Call out an animal and have your children pretend to be that animal until you call “freeze!” They have to stay frozen until you call out the next animal.

Say hello to many amazing, colorful animals. Hello Hello by Brendan Wenzel is a great book for building Print Motivation. Print Motivation means making reading fun, and this book is fun!

While looking at the illustrations, notice how each animal shares something in common with the one on either side of it. Then, as you turn the pages, see how one animal leads you onto the next page. After reading the book with your child, check out the animal key in the back of the book. This is a great opportunity to learn the names of the creatures that we share this Earth with, especially those that are threatened or endangered. Learning the names of these animals increases your child’s vocabulary.

Extend the book with a paper plate snake craft!

We got this idea from craftymorning.com. Check them out for more detailed instructions, more pictures, and even more fun bubble wrap paint ideas. Here’s how our snake turned out!

You’ll need:

• bubble wrap
• a rolling pin
• a paper plate
• paint (we used green, but snakes come in lots of colors!)
  
• scissors
• googly eyes
• red ribbon or felt

First we wrapped the rolling pin in bubble wrap and squirted green paint out onto a flat surface (notice that we laid down cellophane to help with cleanup!)

Let your kids roll the rolling pin through the paint and then roll it over the plate. Leave it to dry (good opportunity to read a book!). When it’s dry, cut the plate in a spiral.

The middle of the plate will be your head, so feel free to shape it with the scissors! That’s where you’ll glue the eyes and the ribbon for the tongue.

Pick up the snake by the head and bounce around the house (or the library in this case!)

Piggies is a different approach to the classic “this little piggy went to market” finger/toe rhyme played with babies and young children. The book is full of the adventures that ten little piggies have while they sit on the fingers of a small child. This is a good book to help the children work on finger dexterity/movement when you have children imitate the illustrations. Finger dexterity/movement aids children in learning writing skills.

Suggestions for reading:

When sharing this story have the children imitate the actions in the book:

Hot little piggies – rub your hands slowly, rub your hands quickly
Cold little piggies – wiggle your fingers slowly, wiggle your fingers quickly
Clean little piggies – scrub your hands slowly, scrub your hands quickly
Dirty little piggies – roll your hands slowly, roll your hands quickly
Good little piggies – clap your hands slowly, clap your hands quickly

Extend the book with piggy finger games!

Try the classic “This Little Piggy” rhyme with fingers instead of toes. If you’re not familiar with the rhyme, here’s how it goes:

This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy ate roast beef
This little piggy had none
and this little piggy went wee, wee, wee all the way home

We use other “finger play” stories with this book in our storytime classes, too. Try this one:

“Let us go to the woods,” said this little pig (hold up thumb)
“What to do there?” says that little pig (hold up first finger)
“To look for my mother,” said this little pig (hold up tall finger)
“What to do with her?” says that little pig (hold up ring finger)
“Give her a kiss,” says this little pig (hold up little finger)

Now that we have your attention… Look! by Jeff Mack is a book with only two words: ‘look’ and ‘out.’ How they are put together makes a pretty good point about the importance of reading.

A friendly gorilla tries desperately to divert a young boy’s attention from the TV. The persistent gorilla tries to impress the boy by showing him all the cool things he can do, like balance books on his nose and ride a bike. The boy is absorbed in the TV and he could care less about the gorilla. When gorilla’s antics accidentally break the TV, the angry boy eventually picks up one of the books the gorilla was playing with and begins to read it.

There are plenty of discussion opportunities while you read the book. The gorilla is entertaining and it’s fun to predict what he is going to do next to try to get the boy’s attention, which helps kids practice talking.

Look! teaches children, and adults the importance of turning off the TV and picking up a book instead. Take the time for reading, talking and playing.

Extend the book with a gorilla handprint craft!

Crafting helps with manual dexterity and the early skills needed for writing. You will need:

paintbrushes
tempera paint
construction paper
wiggly eyes
glue
markers

Paint the child’s hand with gray or brown paint. Add some white on the palm to show the chest area of the gorilla.

Since the fingers are full of paint have the child add a circle for the head of the gorilla to the heel of the hand. Some white on the head will indicate where the face is located. Add your wiggly eyes and use the markers to draw accessories, like a hat!

Note that your gorilla will have five legs if you paint all of your child’s fingers… what a great opportunity to build background knowledge by talking about what gorillas really look like!

The Rainbow Snail is a brightly illustrated picture book with easy-to-read text that is great for teaching colors to toddlers and preschoolers.

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We follow the charming snail and discover all the colors of the rainbow. This book promotes vocabulary and background knowledge.

This book also encourages talking and playing as you describe the different colors of the rainbow: blue like the raindrops, green like the grass and yellow like the sun.

Extend this book by making a rocking rainbow snail

What you will need:

• paper plate
• white, black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple construction paper
• scissors
• tape or glue
• black paint

1. Fold the paper plate in half.
2. Paint the plate black to match the snail in the book.
3. Cut out paper circles making the red one the biggest and purple the smallest.
4. Cut out black strips. Cut out white and black circles for the eyes.
5. Glue or tape pieces together.
6. Glue or tape the circles and the eyes on the plate.

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