One of a set of 2 books recently released by Cedar Valley Publishing, “Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten” begins with an introduction by Mrs Good, the class teacher, who welcomes the students to a class for “children of all ages and stages of learning development”.
She encourages the reader to:
Unlike other pre-K books, I like this book for the 2 lists of:
a) early childhood skills that parents and teachers should introduce to the child and
b) tips for parents and caregivers on how to bring out the best in their child.
My toddler and I had a lot of fun reading this book as he:
- pointed out purple A, red B and green C; identified O and Q (another O…),
- identified most of the items associated with each letter of the alphabet,
- named each colour,
- pointed out familiar shapes,
- placed his right and left hands in the funky-coloured cut-outs,
- identified the numbers associated with his trains ie Thomas No. 1, Gordon No. 4, Percy No. 6, James No. 5 etc and
- pointed out parts of the body
…and we ended the book there as he lost interest after that! Nevertheless, for a book meant for kids aged 2-6, I’d say it did a good job sustaining his attention for as far as 16 pages…
I like having Mrs. Good’s face at the bottom of each page, with a tip to guide parents/child for each activity. I’d imagine he would have more fun with it as he gets older as I plan to teach him to memorize his home telephone number and other essential info included in this book.
A step-by-step guide for writing out each letter of the alphabet is at the back of the book to help the preschooler. I also like the calendar feature, which invites the reader to pencil in the days of his/her birthday month.
A diverse group of kids, known as the “Cedar Valley kids”, appear on every page – I’m guessing that the authors have a VCD series in the works. Kids who start with these 2 books will know Amy, Ricardo, Tatiana, Omar, Bo, Rafferty and Peek-a-Blue the hippo when they see them again…
My pet peeve with the book is the Comic Sans Serif font used. This font may look fun but I get really irritated when I need to read anything in this font. I wonder if the authors will consider another type of fun font for the next editions?
If you’d like a copy of “Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten”, you can get it here:
Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten by Linda Desimowich and Stacey Kannenberg
ISBN: 1-933476-00-1
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the great review. We spent months researching fonts and found that the vast and overwhelming majority of parents, kids, and teachers we surveyed preferred the comic sans font. We will definitely revisit the issue at our next revision!!! Thanks so much for the great feedback!
Smiles – Stacey
Stacey Kannenberg
Cedar Valley Publishing
Hi Stacey – thanks for visiting my blog. I’m so honoured to have the original author commenting
I guessed that it’s a popular font for kids…it’s just not my personal favourite. I’ll be looking out for the next edition and hope that I could review that too!