Preschool Family Reading Night, Part II: Discovery Baskets

A few weeks ago, I hosted our second Family Reading Night this year for my daughter’s preschool.  I’m always amazed and excited at the number of families that attend.  The Parent Association, which I’m a contributing member of, is hosting Spring Fling in a few weeks.  This is a day when families can come together, enjoy a picnic lunch, a petting zoo, and spring related arts and crafts.  Knowing this was coming up, I chose to make the theme of reading night related to spring.  So, families enjoyed “Discovering Baskets of Hands-On Fun” with a spring theme.  It was a night of building background knowledge to help prepare students for Spring Fling.

I created Discovery Baskets using six sub-themes of spring.  Baskets included the following themes:

• Caterpillars/Butterflies
• Baby Chicks
• Animal Babies
• Gardening
• Kites
• Birds

Each basket had several fiction and informational texts for parents to read aloud with their children and a hands-on craft or activity.  Students had fun creating butterflies out of coffee filters, making baby chicks out of pom-poms, sorting and matching animal babies and their mothers, sorting packets of seeds, creating flowers out of cupcake papers, making kites, and creating their very own bird nest out of playdoh and twigs.  It was a fun night!

Children and Parents Create Chicks

Children Sort and Match Animals and Their Mothers

A Cupcake Paper Flower

Would you like to create a Family Reading Night for your child’s preschool, but don’t know where to begin?  Check out Links to Literacy for more information!

©2010 by Dawn Little for Literacy Toolbox. All Rights Reserved.  All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.

We-View Wednesday: Everything Spring by Jill Esbaum

I’d like to begin a new weekly link here at Literacy Toolbox.  It’s called We-View Wednesday and basically it’s a parent/child review of a book (as in “we” review it together).  I don’t make it a habit to review books here, but if I come across books that I think you and your child will like, I will certainly share them!  I started to think about how I could involve my children in the process and this is what I came up with!  We read all the time and I think asking kids what they think about a book is just as important as reading to them.  Kids need to understand that they may not always like a book and that’s OK (especially if they are school age, they may feel uncomfortable sharing their true feelings for fear of upsetting an adult).  Asking children to share their opinion of a book also begins to build their critical thinking skills.  Of course, your child’s age will determine how much of  a review you may get out of him or her.

So, since I am VERY new at this whole process, I would like to open it up to you all!  If you are interested in participating in this weekly event, please leave a comment.  If you have any suggestions or ideas, please share them!  I begin with the following review.  I read the book with my three year old.  Her short two sentence review is at the bottom.

Everything Spring is a book in a series of books titled “Picture the Seasons” by National Geographic Kids.   Everything Spring uses bright and colorful photography to share with children the “birth” of spring.  From new plants and budding trees to the birth of new animals, spring comes alive in this short picture book.  The text size is a bit larger, making this book an easy one to share as a read aloud.  While it doesn’t have some of your typical features of informational text (table of contents, glossary, index), it does provide different fonts (italics, all caps) to emphasize words.  Descriptive language and sensory details abound as children learn about the sights and sounds of spring.  (“Fuzzy ducklings totter to a rippled pond.  Splish-Splash!  In they go, webby feet piddle- paddling.”) All in all, I find it to be a perfect read aloud for the preschool crowd!

I asked my three year old, What did you like about the book?

Three Year Old We-View:  I liked splish-splash.  The ducks were getting in the water.

Please let me know what you think!!

©2010 by Dawn Little for Literacy Toolbox. All Rights Reserved.  All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.