Zoo Books

  Tweets over the last few weeks (from the likes of @MillonBookRead and @littleonebooks to name a few) have me thinking of zoo books and reading techniques.  I know, not really related topics, but both got me thinking, and both are easy to discuss using two of our current favorites, My Heart Is Like a Zoo and Dear Zoo: A Lift-The-Flap Book .

First, let me say that Dear Zoo has been one of our favs since Bud Bud was about 7 months old and cousin of mine gave it to him as a present, and at 2 1/2 he still loves it.  It is a fun little lift the flap board book about writing to the zoo for a pet and all the different types of pets that they send before finding the perfect one.

Zoos are fun and the surprise element of lifting a flap is fun, as are the illustrations.  However, over time I realized that we were using this book as a teaching tool for a number of different things.  Firstly, it is a board book and the fat pages are easier for little hands to turn, so we would always say, "turn the page Bud"  before turning each page, even when he was too young to do it himself, not only did he learn to turn pages, but he stayed focused because it made the reading process that bit more interactive for him (which of course the lifting flaps did too.)  We also used each new animal to illustrate animal sounds and repeated the names of the animals over multiple times combined with the sound.  As Bud Bud got older, we waited for him to name the animal and make the sound etc. I think of this type of reading as building up the layers of understanding and knowledge.  You can just read a book through over and over again because you like the pictures or the story, or you can build on what you find in the book over time and therefore get the most out of it.

Another good example of a book to do this with is My Heart is Like a Zoo.  At face value, this seems like a nice easy animal book with a novel approach to illustration, but I think it can be a lot more.  For example:

Yesterday Bud Bud, Little Flower and I read the book and it took us over 20 min, even though there are very few words and only about 30 pages.  We read and enjoyed the simple story, but we also counted the hearts on each animal (they are layered to create the shapes of difference animals, which I find really interesting) tracing them with our fingers to understand where each one was and how they were combined.  We identified the different colors, made animal sounds, talked about new words like portly, and even practiced the ASL signs that we are working on for animals.  Bud Bud had a great time and all the commotion of noises and signs and the bright colors of the illustrations even kept Little Flower entertained.

I am not a teacher and I am sure that there must be lots of studies and techniques on how to get the most out of reading, this is just what works for us.  Soon after Bud Bud was born, when I still had no idea of what to do as a mother, my Mom told me of how she would sit us in the kitchen with her while she was doing things like cooking dinner, and talk us through chopping, mixing etc.  Of course we were way too young to understand it all, but the repetition and exposure that she gave us was the building blocks for later learning.  I feel that the same is true for what we cover while reading these types of books, Little Flower might not be able to keep up with Bud Bud at this point, but she is hearing all of these things over and over and it will help her to learn, and Bud Bud can use the knowledge that he already has and add too it with multiple concepts coming from one source.