The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

5 A Day Books: Week 3

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5 a day books

Read all about our 5-a-day book challenge here and please consider joining in!
So have you started to see any benefits yet?! I noticed another one this week. Because of how often I am reading these books to the girls, I am learning them off by heart myself. This means that I am now able to retell the stories without the books in places and situations where I might not have previously read to them, such as while shopping, in the bath and walking to the park! Oral storytelling is powerful and creates confident and imaginative storytellers.
Our 5 books for this week:

This book is another from one of my favourite author/illustrators, Nick Sharratt. It has one page of rhyme followed by a page with a hole in it for sticking a little finger through. Instant kid appeal, especially when they see the pictures of each crazy creature that lurks on the other side! C just loves this book and thinks it’s hilarious (particularly when I add in sound effects and a bit of drama!)

This is a rhyming book from a series, written and illustrated by the same team that produced The Gruffalo. It has flaps to lift and easy to predict rhyming text, with a sweet storyline too.

Another Nick Sharratt! This time with Steve Tucker too. This duo has written a GREAT series of short, funny, rhyming fairy tales. Absolutely perfect for the under 5s for so many reasons! We have a few of these in the series and they have launched C into a new-found love for fairy tales. Often fairy tales are quite long and wordy for this age group with few pictures to keep their attention, but these books are condensed and a quick read. Plus, there are flaps to lift! Just perfect.

I love this story as it is multi-cultural, introduces a brief idea of global geography, has plenty of new vocabulary and interesting discussion points, has items to count (up to 10)… AND…is in rhyme! You know how much I value a rhyming picture book! Lots of fun.

And, lastly, another timeless classic from the Ahlbergs. I have often wondered what it is about this book that little children love so much (because they really all do seem to love it!) and I can’t put my finger on it. It is set in post-war Britain and is a rhyming story about a typical day in a suburban home from the point of view of a baby. Sounds so unlikely to be interesting and yet my 2.5 year old has requested this nearly every day for months now! There is a little hole on each page giving a glimpse of the picture on the next, and there are plenty of interesting things to point out and talk about. Best of all…it rhymes!

So, all 5 of my choices are rhyming books this week! Excellent 🙂

 Apologies about missing a week last week! We were away and I just didn’t manage to get it ready before we left. If you have a list from last week please link it up below or leave a comment so that we can all see what you were reading! It’s all about the mutual inspiration and sharing of ideas. I have loved browsing your lists and am about to order some of your recommendations- thank you!

Comments

  2. That looks like a great selection of books. I’m not familiar with Nick Sharratt, I’m going to have to check some of these out!

  3. Ours are all Aussie books this week. J is loving Australian animals at the moment and I just love Aussie bush humour. Wombat Stew is fabulous and great for extending further into play.

    I’m going to check out the Nick Sharatt books too. I haven’t really read J too many fairy tales for those reasons and so I’m looking forward to these ones. Just a question though, is the language traditional fairy tale style or is it more modern? Also are they written in American or British English?

  5. We made a puppet theatre last week including scenery and puppets for one of our previous 5-A-Day books (The Gruffalo). Princess Pea has been putting on Gruffalo puppet shows, and she pretty much knows the whole story by heart. And last night she discovered a second copy of the book – we had been reading the board book version, but we also have the paperback version. She insisted it was different than the one we had read, and she proceeded to sit down and ‘read’ it aloud to me to prove it – and she made up a whole new story using the pictures in the books!

  6. This is such a great idea! Many of these books aren’t familiar ones to me so we’ll have to check them out. Thanks for sharing! We’re starting Poetic Play today so we’re rhyming too!

  7. I’ve realised that my numbering is out of order. The link is for this week’s books but I also have a post about week 3 books (last week). Will have to make next week 4a!
    This has been great inspiration-I now have post-its tucked at the back of my diary so that I can look out for books at the library.

  9. Kate- Sharratt is British and therefore the books are UK English, though I think publishers usually change the lingo depending on where the book is published (sometimes even the title!) The fairy tales are modern, funny and rhyming. Eventually we will need some more traditional retellings of these stories, but for now these are great! I can type out a page of text if that would be helpful?

  11. We started our 5 a Day books this week, so I’ll be joining and linking up next week. We’re loving it so far!