5 A day Books - Gg Books

We have had a really exciting week with books. R seems to have recaptured the magic that he used to show when reading books when he was younger. He looks at books a lot through the day, remembers characters/phrases and talks about the pictures. Its such a joy to watch!

This week we are learning about the letter Gg, so these are the books we chose.

1. Where Is The Green Sheep by Mem Fox. (This would have to be #1 on R's list of favourite books.)
2. Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae. (We have this on a CD, so R can sit and listen on his own. R enjoys this for a while, but with the addition of music to the story, it takes quite a while to listen to, and he often moves onto something else before the story is finished.)
3. Geraldine's Blanket by Holly Keller. (I loved this book as a child!)
4. Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss.
5. Goodness Gracious! by Phil Cummings.

Linking up to The Imagination Tree.

5 A Day Books - Winter

R has got such an amazing memory, and he surprised me this week when we were reading a book at bedtime. I was reading it when my husband came in. I stopped reading and R started "reading" the words almost perfectly. So, I started reading the next sentence, and stopped after a couple of words. R continued on. He can remember the words to about 3/4 of the book. He gets a bit fuzzy in the last few pages. Since this happened, we have pulled out a few of R's favourite books to 'read'.

These are the books we chose for our winter week. You can see the winter post here.

1. The Smallest Snowflake by Bernadette Watts.

2. Snow Bears by Martin Waddell. (This is such a cute story, R loves it!)

3. Fuzzy Bear by Dawn Bentley. (This is an interactive book about a bear who gets dressed to go outside and jump in puddles! It has pull tabs, a button, a zip and velcro parts - great for fine motor development too. Another favourite in our house.)

4. Seasons Of The Year by Jilly Attwood.

5. Seasons With Pooh by Nancy Parent. (This is a basic story with magnets that relate to each season.)

Linking up to The Imagination Tree.

5 A Day Books - Ff Books

R is amazing me each and every day with his memory skills. Last week, he said something about Donald's drums being noisy. We read a book called "Donald Loves Drumming" as part of our Dd program about a month ago. We haven't read it since, and he remembered specific things about the book.

This week we are doing our Ff and Square program. The books we chose are:

1. The Tooth Fairy by Sharon Peters.

2. Five Little Bats Flying In The Night by Steve Metzger.

3. Fox In Socks by Dr Seuss.

4. Fancy That by Pamela Allen.

5. Farmyard Sounds by Colin and Jacqui Hawkins.

Linking up to The Imagination Tree.

5 A Day Books - Polar Animals

This week we are learning about Polar Animals. See the full post here. These are the books we chose:

1. The Polar Bear Paddle by David Bedford.

2. Penguin Pete's New Friends by Marcus Pfister.

3. Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle.

4. Andy An Alaskan Tale by Susan Welsh-Smith.

5. Brave Little Polar Bear by Karen Sapp. 



Linking up to The Imagination Tree.

5 A Day Books - Transport

This week we are learning about transport. Read the full post here.

I must say, R has really taken to this idea of reading 5 books a day for a week really well. His vocabulary has spiked since we started doing this. He can speak in full sentences now and there are not many words that we cannot understand him saying. R also asks for books to be read to him throughout the day and has taken to sitting down with books again. He used to sit down to look at books on his own a lot when he was younger, but an obsession with cars, trucks and trains took over! :)

R loves all the books we chose this week. I have read all of them countless numbers of times! The books that we chose for this week are:

1. Snappy Sounds Vroom! (no author). R simply loves this book. It has different modes of transport on each page, and as you open it, it makes the noises, such as a tractor chugging along. It also has a section down the side of each page with pictures of different modes of transport. R has to find each one in the picture.

2. Thomas's Big Railway Pop Up Book (no author). This is a interactive book with 3-D pictures and a few moving parts, as well as all the Thomas characters!

3. Tractors (no author). I got this board book for R when he was about 6 months old, and he still loves it to this day. It has sections on each page with a "touch and feel" area, as well as real pictures of different types of tractors.

4. The Wheels On The Bus (no author). This book combines the traditional words of the song with interactive elements, such as wheels to spin, pop-up sections and pull tabs that make the picture change.

5. Who Sank The Boat by Pamela Allen.

Linking up to The Imagination Tree.

5 A Day Books - Ee Books

This week we are working on our Ee and Ovals Program. See the full post here.

These are the books that we chose:

1. Sydney The Little Blue Elephant by Sharon Renatta.
2. Edward The Emu by Sheena Knowles.
3. Where's My Egg by Tony Mitton
4. But No Elephants by Jerry Smath. (This is my book from when I was a child, my Mum just gave me a whole stack of books that she was holding on to. I had a great time going through them all...so many memories!)
5. Whose Ears? by David Bennett.

Linking up to The Imagination Tree.

5 A Day Books - Outer Space

Wow, I am amazed at the memory skills of my almost 27 month old after reading the 5 books a day from last week. After only 4 days of reading the books, R could answer questions about the books, remember characters from the books without seeing them, and recognising letters on the pages (mostly D which we learnt last week and R for his name). I was so thrilled by this that I have decided to continue it.

We are learning about outer space this week, so we popped into our local library to get a few more books to compliment this topic, as we only had 3 of our own books.  R loves the library. We used to go regularly, but this was the first time visiting since M was born (he's 12 weeks old already, can't believe how fast that has gone!). R can also now say Library clearly. The full Outer Space unit is posted here.

Our books are:

1. Little Tom and the Trip to the Moon by Diane and Christyan Fox.

2. A is for Astronaut. (no author)
3. My Book Of Planets by Elise See Tai.
4. Planets by Melvin and Gilda Berger
5. Can I Cuddle The Moon? by Kerry Brown.

Linking up to The Imagination Tree.

5 A Day Books - Dd Books

I love this idea. Basically, you pick 5 books and read them all everyday for a week.

When I was working, I used to read 3 books a day to the kids (I was working with 1-2 year olds). We would read 1 book everyday for the week and 2 books each day would be different. It worked so well, and we got to the point where some of the kids approaching 2 would be able to "read" the book from memory. It developed language skills as well as attention span.

I started reading to R when he was about 2 weeks old, and started with M when he was about 6 weeks old (have been a bit slacker with M, but there is just not enough hours in the day sometimes!). I was really keen to make sure my children loved books. My mum is a librarian, and passed on her love of books to me, and I want to pass it on to my boys. Plus I also read somewhere that children who love books and enjoy reading are better students.

So, this week we are going to have a go. We are doing Dd and Yellow this week in our program, so I chose "D" books. The full Dd and Yellow post is here. They are:

1. Who's Behind The Door? At The Farm by Michael Salmon

2. Mighty Machines Diggers by Amanda Askew

3. One Duck Stuck by Phyllis Root (This is one of my favourite books)

4. Five Little Ducks Went Out One Day! by Margaret Bateson-Hill.

5. Donald Loves Drumming by Nick Bland.

Linking up to The Imagination Tree.