Experience Books

Here are two little books Andrew and I did together. The first one is about an experience we had at the zoo recently. He was sitting at the table eating a piece of cheese and a duck came and took it right out of his hands. Unfortunately, I did not have any pictures of this experience, but it still worked. On this one, I had to give him sentence starters on some of the pages and he finished the sentences. Then he drew on the pages. (The pictures are out of order.)

The second one is about the tractors he was watching one day a couple of weeks ago. I was so glad I thought to bring the camera and take pictures of the process. I had him help me tape the pictures to some paper we had, I wrote down what he said, verbatim, and we put it in a report cover. I didn't have to help him with any of the sentences on this book, like I did the duck story. I just asked him what happened on each of the pictures and wrote down what he said. (These pictures are in order.)

Now they're going on our book shelf and he can pull them out and read them any time he wants to.

This is one of the best ways to help toddlers and preschoolers 1) Learn language, 2) Learn that print has meaning, and 3) It helps connect literature and their world around them.