Countdown to the 2011 Book of the Year: Part 1

Each year, Speech Pathology Australia awards chosen books for their speech, language and literacy content and ability to stimulate children’s communication skills.  They award one book in four categories: young children, lower primary, upper primary and indigenous children.

As most of our readers are carers or educators of preschoolers, I thought I’d share the details of the 12 books on the ‘young children’ shortlist, as well as some extension activities you could use with them.  I have split the reviews into four posts, to share with you before the winner is announced on 18th October 2011.

A Giraffe in the Bath by Mem Fox & Olivia Rawson

This is a beautiful rhyming book that will tickle your child’s sense of humour.  The beautifully illustrated pictures show animals in silly situations, such as “piranhas in pyjamas” and a “hippo with a hula”.

If your child is really enjoying the rhymes – keep them going!  Print out some rhyming word pictures (they’re about the fourth set down) and play snap or memory with them.  If they rhyme, they make a pair!  Many of the lines use alliteration – where at least two of the words start with the first sound.  You can continue playing with this by finding an alphabet book (for example Alison Lester’s ABC) that has lots of pictures that start with each letter.  Make up sentences together (the sillier the better) using at least two words from one page.

This is a good book for:

• rhyming
• alliteration
• discussing why certain situations are absurd and silly
• problem solving – how could you fix this picture so it wasn’t silly
• having a giggle!

Available from Fishpond for around $30 in hardback.

The ABC Book of Cars, Train, Boats and Planes by Helen Martin, Judith Simpson & Cheryl Orsini

This board book is just right for little hands, and focuses on vocabulary and concepts about transport.  Some of the pages describe a scene using a rhyming poem.  Other pages break transport into smaller categories – road, sea, air and rail.  Safety instructions, sound effects, location words, and occupations are also described.

If you have a little person who enjoys transport books, then they may also enjoy the many transport pages at the wonderful DLTK site.  You could print the colouring pages, colour them in and decorate them, and then help your child sort them into categories – land transport, air transport and sea transport.  You could also sort them into transport with wheels and transport with wings.  Or play the same same game, where you set the pictures out like a memory game.  Turn two over, and if your child can describe something about them that is the same, then they can keep the two pictures (eg. they both have wings, they both carry passengers, they both have engines, etc.)

DLTK’s transport craft pages also have loads of inspiring projects to do with your toddler and preschooler. Lots of recycling crafts here, that give you and your child a chance to practice giving and understanding instructions.  Your little one can also tell other people how they made the item with you, and this will give them practice in oral narrative skills.

Like making music with your child?  DLTK’s songs and poems page has lots of familiar and not so familiar songs and rhymes to play with your child.

This is a good book for:

• infants and toddlers
• transport vocabulary
• semantic organisation – knowing which words belong in which categories
• transport verbs
• symbolic noise
• concepts

Available as a board book from Fishpond for around $12.

Can We Lick the Spoon Now? by Carol Goess

This beautifully illustrated book outlines the steps that a family take to make a chocolate cake (including two small disasters along the way).  The children in the story repeatedly ask “Can we lick the spoon now?” and the answer again and again is “No, not yet!” The story uses rhyming short sentences to explain what is happening in the picture, and then a verb or describing word is used as the ‘chorus’.  For example, “Pour it in the cake tin. Plop plop plop.”

Ideas for Play Based Learning talked about how they read the book and then made a chocolate cake with their preschool class.  Sounds good to me!  Making a chocolate cake with your kiddos would be the ultimate follow-up activity to this book.  While you cook, you and your child could make up sounds to go with the actions, just like “Add a little milk. Splish, splash, splish.” Afterwards, re-read the book and talk about whether your cake followed the same sequence of events.   Then eat more cake.

This is a good book for:

• sequencing in story telling
• onomatopoeic words
• picture description practice
• discussion about how they solved the problems in the story
• asking and answering questions
• verbs and adjectives

Available from Fishpond for around $20.

I hope you enjoy these books and the extension activities. As they are Australian books, so far I can only find them sold by Australian booksellers.  Many of them (including Fishpond) will ship internationally, so hopefully you can get hold of the copies that you want!  I’ll have some more for you later this week and next week.  Are you already fans of these stories?

Have fun!

Emily

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