For the past month or so, Bella has been working on putting together letter sounds to make words. We have a letter of the week (this week is the letter P). Each week, I change the "Word Builder" (a great contraption that I got at the Teacher's Aide store in Pineville, LA) and make words that start with the letter of the week. So this week, we have words like pop, pot, pen, pin, pig, pray, etc. Everyday, when we do circle time, we go over the letter of the week - what the letter is, what it says, and then we go over the word builder. Bella tries to sound out all of the words by herself. She's been doing really well with it, so I wanted to find some books to help further her learning, and give her a sense of accomplishment. Do you realize how hard it is to find books with only a couple of words on a page, that are easy (short) words? It's very difficult. All of the Pre-beginner books at the library have like 5 or more words on a page. Or, if they don't have a lot of words, they have words that are totally not at Bella's level yet. Grr.
Well, today my quest for a developmentally appropriate book came to an end!! Amazingly enough, it ended with a Dr. Suess book - Hop on Pop.
It is fabulous!! Not only does it not have a lot of words on a page, it groups words into categories. For instance, the first page says:
UP
PUP
Pup is up.
Then for two more pages, it all goes along with the "UP" theme.
PUP
CUP
Pup on cup.
CUP
PUP
Cup on pup.
Then it will change to a different grouping like "ALL" - words like tall, small, ball, fall, wall... and make short sentances with the words. I am seriously loving it! Perfect for what we need. It definitely still challenges Bella (she got tired of it after about 6 pages), but she also seemed to really like that she was reading an actual book. YAY!
