Just My Tots

I am so glad that I am a member of Parents Reviewers - I have received more goodies last week. 2 wonderful books – Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten and Let’s Get Ready for First Grade by Cedar Valley Publishing.

I had been looking forward to receiving these books as Bryan just started play school and I want to know what I can do at home to supplement his learning at school.

Bryan was next to me when I opened the parcel. He immediately snatched the books away from me and started flipping through them happily before I even got the chance to look at them. When I finally did, I know why he was so attracted to the books.

Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten is targeted at children aged 2 – 6 and Let’s Get Ready for First Grade are targeted at children aged 5 – 8.

Thus, for Bryan’s age group, Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten is definitely the right book for him. Just look at all the colorful graphics – of course they are appealing to young children. There are interesting characters (friends) to make learning more fun.

The books starts with basic lessons that I am sure many parents are already doing with kids at this age- Alphabets and numbers. And then as you progress through the pages, there are introductions to slightly more complex subject such as autonyms (opposites) and science (seasons).

Some pages such as currency may be a bit difficult for the Malaysian children to relate to as they are in US currency. But having this page gives me an idea of what I can teach Bryan outside this book. I can always teach him the Malaysian denominations, right?

Bryan may be a little too young for Let’s Get Ready for First Grade at this time. But I am sure that I will find this book helpful in another year or so.

You can see that in this book, the lessons are definitely a little more complicated than Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten. Instead of just learning alphabets or single words, children are now guided to see how vowels play a part in each word. Where are the similarities? How is it different?

There are also lessons on compound words and contractions. I find that these lessons will be very useful once Bryan moves to reading.

And instead of just basic science such as seasons in a year, children are now introduced to the concept of astronomy, eg our solar system.

What I really like about both books is that it is very versatile. You do not need to complete the lessons page by page. But instead you can jump from one page to another freely. I find that this is especially good with young children as they have short attention span. So, we as parents can cover any page/ topic depending on the circumstances. And it is easy to flip to the topic that you are looking for as both books have the subjects clearly identified at the page sides.

There are tips on teaching at each page. What are some questions to prompt our children? What are some of the ideas to make learning more fun?Bryan’s favorite pages are these…

See the teaching tip at the bottom, “Your left hand makes an ‘L’.”

Bryan loves to do this now and he goes around with this sign, asking us “What is this?” If we tell him we don’t know, he’ll answer, “This is L.” Usually I will make this an opportunity to ask more questions such as, “L is for what?” “What do you use Lxxx for?”…etc.

Whether your child has already started school or not? These books certainly helps to give you an idea on what you can do at home to prepare them for lessons that they will learn at school. And if your child, like mine, have already started to attend school, then the books will be a great supplement for continual learning at home.

Thanks again to Parents Reviewer and not most importantly Cedar Valley Publishing for these great books.