Posts Tagged ‘preschool education’

Diary of an Emerging Reader: Fun & Games

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

One of the things I like best about the Bob Books is how they progress sequentially, introducing different concepts in handy, easy-to-hold books. Lately I’ve been using the My First Bob Books: Pre-Reading Skills with Wilson, our emerging reader. Because he knows his shapes pretty well, we’re now breezing through the first three books (which cover learning simple shapes, finding hidden shapes and matching shapes) and are spending more time on the other three groups (sorting, patterns and sequencing). We’re having fun with each book beyond the text, asking questions, finding hidden objects and playing games.
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My First Bob Books are not only intended for you to read to your child (whereas the foundation sets are intended for your child to read to you) but they are full of fun learning games that you can play with your emerging reader. For example, in “Fix It” (book 5) kids are asked to identify certain shapes that will enable the broken toys to get fixed. The illustrations contain additional shapes (triangles on the curtain, a smiley face on the flag), which I asked Wilson to identify and count. In “Get Ready” (book 10) the illustrations are spaced on the page as to give kids clues to what happens next. I turned it into a game by asking Wilson which toys he would play with first, second and last. Wilson loves blocks so we had a lot of fun with “Block Town” (book 7), which introduces simple patterns. I had him repeat all of the shapes in the pattern (“square, rectangle, rectangle, square”) and then we got down on the floor and created our own pattern – using the Bob Books!

My emerging reader has an extremely short attention span so our reading sessions progress at their own pace. Once he gets wiggly or starts throwing books on the floor, it’s time to move onto something else. Still, I can definitely tell that each time we pick up the books, he’s putting into action the concepts that we learned in previous reading sessions. Which is pretty exciting.
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Do you have a reading success story or guest blog you’d like to share? Let us know.

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Sweet Dreams!

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Twenty years ago, Bob Books were self-published by Bobby and John Maslen. When you sent in your Bob Books order, my parents personally packaged up the mail and often included a personal note or drawing. There was quite a bit of correspondence between those early Bob Books purchasers and the authors. In fact, letters from readers are still treasured by the Maslens and Bob Books.

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Early on, Bobby and John received a letter and photo of a little boy who loved his Bob Books so much, he had fallen asleep in bed with them. This inspired the cover of an early brochure (illustrated by family friend and children’s illustrator Fredrika Spillman).

Now, 20 years later, we received another letter – with a very similar story:

I just wanted to take a minute to thank you for a great product. I ordered the first collection of Bob Books for my five year-old son. He loves reading them. It is such a nice thing for him to have so many books that he can read by himself.
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I am attaching a picture of him asleep, clutching his books. That’s how much he loves them. Thank you! Sincerely, Sarah E.

It tickles my heart that Bob Books still means so much to kids as they start their journey into reading.

Do you have a Bob Books story you’d like to share? We’d love to hear from you!

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Diary of an Emerging Reader: The Word Explosion

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Like most parents, I take delight in verbal milestones. Such as, when “baa” and “coo” became “bottle” and “cookie,” and again when “cookie now!” and “big doggie” turned into “I want cookie now pease,” and “look at that big scawy doggie.” But perhaps most exciting of all is what is happening now with our reader-in-training, Wilson, age 2.5. The “word explosion” has arrived.

We’re actually having conversations. Okay, maybe we’re not discussing politics or literature but… now, finally, I’m able to say things like “Please don’t climb on the fridge” and Wilson will respond with “But I want some milk. And some cheese. The orange cheese, right there. Will you cut it for me?” Ah, so much easier than having to say, “don’t do that,” and then dealing with a massive fit on the floor.

I’m also finding that while the verbal skills are exploding on a daily basis, so are his pre-reading skills. Last week he walked up to a “Happy Halloween” banner I had hanging over the fireplace and shouted “L, L, two Ls!” and then “O, W, E, E, two Es!” and “A” and “X” and “B.” All right, so he didn’t get all the letters correct, but it was enough to get me pretty excited. And then there are the books… the massive amount of books. Normally our routine has been to read to him at naptime and bedtime but now Wilson wants to be read to all the time. He’s yanked every single book he can find off the shelves and tossed them all over his bedroom floor. It’s like a book bomb went off in the house. So now we read while he’s getting dressed. We read while brushing teeth. We read before breakfast, and after breakfast. We read during dinner. We read during dessert. We bring books in the car. Thankfully, if his older sister is along for the ride, she reads to him there. I’m trying to accommodate his insatiable desire for books as much as possible—while also maintaining my sanity of course.

I know that it’s a phase and that soon we’ll no longer view his verbal abilities and obsession with books as tiny miracles but as everyday things we take for granted. For now, though, it’s pretty amazing to watch the early literacy fireworks in action.

–Allison

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