Dinosaur Fun with Reference Books!

A friend asked me yesterday how you know if you're encouraging your child in a hobby that the child really wants to do, or if you are just pushing them towards an activity that you want them to want to do. Difficult question! And I'm not about to provide you with a wise answer, either, cos I haven't got one! But I did find myself asking myself the same question last night after I'd put my little book bugs to bed. You see, I love dinosaurs ( see this post, too), and recently my bugs are getting into them as well. Am I forcing them to by giving them cool books about them and wanting to play dinosaurs at any available moment? Or am I just offering them something interesting that they can take or leave? Who knows?! But I'm definitely going to make the most of it while it lasts!

I'm going to talk about two books today, both of them reference books, not stories. This is one of them:

Larousse Enciclopedia Increïble: Dinosaures, 2010

Our copy's in Catalan, and I've found it in Spanish too, but it doesn't appear to be published in English :-(  But I do want to tell you why we like it and what we get out of it anyway, then you can see for yourselves what you can find in whatever language you need! And if you can use it in either Spanish or Catalan, I thoroughly recommend it!

Storytelling: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? Bill Martin Jr & Eric Carle

As well as reading to my little book bugs at home, I also do storytelling sessions for non-English-speaking 2 to 6-year-olds and their carers in my local bookshop. The aim is for families to take part together in fun activities, share as many lovely books as possible, and learn and/or practise a bit of English!

I want the sessions to be fun and participative, and not too hard on tender, non-native attention spans, so we mix stories, songs, crafts and games for 45 minutes a time.

So this is the first post about these sessions. See what you think.


Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

Hamish Hamilton, London, 1996

Main Target Vocabulary: animals, colours, same/ different

Session One

·   Starter: Sit in a circle and greet each child individually by name.

·      Read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? book with different voices and sound effects for each animal. Check out the author reading it himself on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdHCYgO9zh8

I expressed surprised at the blue horse and the purple cat (isn’t that strange?!) and we laughed, but otherwise read it straight through so as not to lose the children’s attention. I tried to get my listeners to join in with the last page when the children list all the animals they see looking at them. They are non-natives with little to no exposure to English, so they joined in in Catalan: I read, “A yellow…?” with rising intonation and paused for them to fill in the animal, which they did in Catalan, I repeated the target word in English, and onto the next animal. For me, the most important thing is that the children enjoy the story and follow as much of it as they can, so if they’re participating, even in their own language, that’s great! A round of applause and “Bravo!” ends each activity.

Botas Nuevas, Guido van Genechten

EDITORIAL JUVENTUD S.A. 2002
Original edition: Nieuwe Laarzen, Clavis Vitgeverij, 1997

This post may not be much use to anyone, which is a shame as it’s my “comeback” after quite an absence! We’ve got it in Spanish, and I can’t find an English translation anywhere! L If anyone knows of one, please let me know. I tell it in English, and the Spanish isn’t difficult if you have just the very basics.

Botas Nuevas is my 2 –year-old’s latest obsession. I think we read it four times a day at the moment, so it seems a good book to come back with! It’s great for little ones, and good fun to work with with early leaners of English. The story’s simple and the illustrations are beautiful: bright and bold and conveying the most wonderful sense of life and energy and fun.

The title and the first page say it all: Jan’s got NEW BOOTS, big, bright red wellies, and in these new boots he can do all that a child could possibly need to: run, jump, dance, climb, kick a ball around and splash in puddles! My little one loves jumping up and showing me how he dances and runs and jumps, just the same as Jan. Various animals (real and stuffed) look on or take part in the action, making for a great book to point things out in and talk about.

I like this page best of all: doesn't it just make you want to jump up and run around with them???!

Press Here, Hervé Tullet

I absolutely fell in love with this book this week when my 4 year-old's best friend lent it to us to have a look at as a possible birthday present for another friend. We read it straight away, and both my boys were enthralled, as was Eva, the book's owner, who'd heard it a thousand times before. Originally written in French (we've borrowed it in Catalan) it works perfectly well in English, and I'm sure in any language you'd care to translate it into. It's really really simple, a brilliant idea that looks lovely on the page and is great fun to read. Especially with an enthusiastic, expectant tone of voice for the instructions, and one of excited surprise for the results.

Instructions??? Results??? What happens when you press here? Have a look:

Dinosaur Roar, Paul & Henrietta Stickland

I love dinosaurs! This lovely book is a picture catalogue of dinosaurs big and small who are all different but share one thing in common: they're all hungry! The beautiful ink illustrations feature fangs and claws galore in a fantastic parade of real and invented dinosaurs, and the rhyming text links them in pairs of opposites: fast/slow, above/below etc. 

Why not use it with emerging readers, too? The repetition produced by the rhyme gives practice with several different letter combinations.

There's loads to talk about in this book: colours, parts of the body, or the adjectives suggested by the text itself. Great for natives and non-natives.

Español: ¡Me encantan los dinosaurios! Este divertido libro es un catálogo de dinosaurios grandes y pequeños, todos diferentes pero con una cosa en común: ¡todos tienen hambre! Las preciosas ilustraciones en tinta muestran una serie de dinosaurios variopinta, repleta de garras y dientes afilados, y el texto los junta en parejas de opuestos: lento/rápido, encima/debajo, etc.

¿Porqué no usarlo en las primeras fases de la lectura en inglés también? La repetición que proporcionan las rimas facilita la práctica de varias combinaciones de letras.

Este libro da mucho de que hablar con los peques: los colores, las partes del cuerpo, o los mismos adjetivos reflejados en el texto. Muy divertido para nativos y no nativos.

Monkey and Me, Emily Gravett

This great little rhyming book tells the story of a little girl and her monkey and their trip to the zoo. The wonderful illustrations and rhythm have kept both of my little ones crying out for this one again and again. The vocabulary is simple and the illustrations clearly outline the story, which makes it a fantastic read for both native and non-native speakers.

I could also see this book being used with slightly older children to stimulate first reading skills: the repetition gives them security, the illustrations facilitate, and the length of the book gives them a goal that is easily reached.

One of our favourites!



Español: Este divertido libro cuenta la rítmica historia de una niña y su mono de peluche y su visita al zoo. El vocabulario es muy sencillo, y las preciosas ilustraciones contribuyen de forma esencial al desarrollo de la historia, lo cual lo hace una opción perfecta tanto para nativos como para no nativos. Mis pequeñajos me lo piden una y otra vez.

También recomendaría este libro para niños un pelín más mayores para estimular las primeras fases de la lectura: la repetición les da seguridad, las ilustraciones les facilita la tarea, y la reducida duración les presenta una meta fácil de alcanzar. 

¡Uno de nuestros preferidos!