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Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.

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Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.

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The book “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” is a great resource to have for young literacy learners as it introduces them to all the letters that make the alphabet as well as the difference between lowercase letters and uppercase letters. The letters in the book are also presented alphabetically in order, a good way for children to learn the alphabet. The book also uses rhyming text throughout and can even be sung. The story is a favourite for young learners and is very amusing.  According to Hornsby and Wilson (2014) children learn phonics while they are talking, reading, and writing. Therefore, it is important that children are practicing reading as soon as possible even if they are not fully developed in phonics yet. Reading will actually increase their understanding of phonics.

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A magnetic letter board is made up of a magnetic tray and magnetic letters. Letters include all 26 from the alphabet but includes extra vowels in the collection. Letters are dispersed around a page that has a dock and water drawn on it. The dock provides a straight line for children to practice placing their letters on and allows some of the letters to “go fishing” meaning they also go under the line provided. This allows students to practice where letters should be placed on a line. It also allows to students to identify letters as either “sitting small, standing tall, or going fishing.” This resource would be beneficial to young children and could be used to support literacy learning opportunities by allowing students to experiment with spelling, letter recognition, and proper placement of letters. It could also lead to children exploring words and their sounds. Children could practice sounding out words with this resource as well. This resource is something that children can play with either with their parents or by themselves and it can be used in classrooms as a literacy workstation. According to Lily (2015) its important to have these types of activities at home as well and “involving families is crucial in developing early literacy skills and strategies” (p. 34).

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A you're adorable, B you're so beautiful
C you're a cutie full of charms
D you're a darling and E you're exciting
F you're a feather in my arms
G you look good to me H you're so heavenly
I you're the one I idolize
J we're like Jack and Jill K you're so kissable
L is the love light in your eyes
M, N, O, P - I could go on all day
Q, R, S, T - alphabetically speaking, you're O.K.
U made my life complete, V means you're very sweet
Double - U, X, Y, Z
Its fun to wander through the alphabet with you
To tell you what you mean to me.

This song was published in 1948 and has been covered most famously by Dean Martin. The song was also performed on Sesame Street and has made appearances in other pop culture areas. The song has a very melodic flow to it and is easy to remember. It’s a great song to sing to your children as it is very calming, yet still educational as it goes through the alphabet and gives a word with the corresponding letter. This lets children start to correlate certain letters with certain words and hopefully certain sounds. The song also has a rhyming pattern in it and according to Hornsby and Wilson (2014) “rhyming texts repeat particular sounds and thus provide a rich resource for learning not only the sounds of a language, but also the letters which represent these sounds” (p. 13).

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Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. 

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Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. 

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This Board book is an excellent edition to your book collection at home for young learners, as it uses a lot of rhyming and repetition, all great ways for young children to learn to read better. According to Stover (2015)  “repetition has been widely studied in the memory and cognition literature, and repetition has been found to improve retention of information, making it widely use learning strategy” (p. 4). This book offers both repetition and rhyming by introducing different animals into the story and having them essentially repeat the same patterns. This book can also be sung and therefore provides a melodic flow to the story, another good strategy for learning to read.

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According to Baghban (2007), “children’s earliest productions are scribbles, a term appropriate to both drawing and writing.” It is important that children feel as though they are capable of producing something, and this adds to their sense of self. Drawing (scribbling) is the first stages of writing, therefore having an outlet for children to use such as a drawing pad is super important. This is something children can grab at any time to doodle in. Eventually doodles will lead to coherent drawings with labels, which will eventually lead to stories.

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According to Miles, Rubin, and Gonzalez-Frey (2017) sight words are extremely important for young learners to know. Sight words are high-frequency words that appear in everyday life and are crucial to know for young learners as they make up a large majority of the words they will find in children’s printed material. Sight word reading “is the fastest and most efficient way to read words,” It is different from sounding out letter-by-letter or other reading methods as it is more so automatic. It’s important for children to start to recognize sight words as early as possible. Sight words can also be accessed for free on online resources. Find an example at the following link: https://www.amazon.com/Kindergarten-Sight-Words-Free-Frequency/dp/B00NYCEQQU/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1544124028&sr=8-10&keywords=sight+words

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National geographic Kids book sets are a great resource for young children and their parents at home. These books offer insight into real-life things that are often of great interest to children. Children will have fun reading these and learn about different non-fiction topics. These are also books you can read to your children. They will get a lot from the pictures just as much as they will from the text itself. According to Bortnem (2008) teachers tend to gravitate towards fiction text, but it is equally important that we are introducing non-fiction texts to provide children with quality vocabulary building experiences. If this is built upon in children’s early years, then reading ability will increase in primary grades.

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This resource is great for young children and provides meaningful activities, stories, puzzles, etc. for children to use. It is a monthly magazine subscription and is perfect for preschools, day cares, and homes. According to Baghban (2007) this is a good resource as it helps stimulate young children’s social and emotional growth. It allows for cognitive development and language acquisition. The magazines include stories, poems, read alouds, finger plays, and much more. Not to mention, getting something in the mail is really exciting for children of a young age!

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This resource can be bought on Amazon, and is a kit that comes with various words and pictures that allow children to build their own sentences. This would be great for young children to practice reading, sentence structure, and grammar. This resource is a great stepping-stone from reading to writing and it allows students to use hands on materials to build their own sentences. This can be done on their own, or with the help of a parent. Building proper sentences can be a tough concept to grasp, and children need a lot of practice with this aspect of literacy. According to Datchuk and Kubina Jr (2017)  “proficiency in constructing simple sentences is an important and foundational skills for continued writing growth” and is important to start early as it will lead to better literacy understanding.

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Little boy blue,

Come blow your horn,

The sheep's in the meadow,

The cow's in the corn.

But where is the boy

Who looks after the sheep?

He's under a haystack,

Fast asleep.

This is a nursery rhyme that you can use at home for your children as it is recommended by Hornsby and Wilson (2014) as an example of a way to teach the sounds of language and the letters that represent these sounds. They consider this nursery rhyme as it allows children to discuss the rhyme, the problem, the main idea of the text, and even leaves room for dramatized play of the rhyme. This is a good rhyme to ask children questions about words that sound the same and get them thinking about this concept.

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Baghban, M. (2007). Scribbles, Labels, and Stories. The Role of Drawing in the Development of Writing. Young Children, 20-26.

Bortnem, G.M. (2008). Teacher Use of Interactive Read Alouds Using Nonfiction in Early Childhood Classrooms. Journal of College Teaching & Learning, 5(12), 29-44.

Datchuk, S.M. & Kubina, R.M. (2017). A Writing Intervention to Teach Simple Sentences and Descriptive Paragraphs to Adolescents with Writing Difficulties. Education and Treatment of Children, 40(3), 303-326.

Lily, E. (2015). Literacy Boxes: Differentiating in Kindergarten with Portable Literacy Centers. Dimensions of Early Childhood, 43(2), 30-37.

Hornsby, D., & Wilson, L. (2014). Early Literacy is More Than Phonics. Practically Primary, 19(3), 12-14.

Miles, K.P., Rubin, G.B., & Gonzalez-Frey, S. (2017). Rethinking Sight Words. The Reading Teacher, 71(6).

Stover, K. (2015). Rhyming versus Repetition in Children’s Stories: The Role of Reading Strategies in new Word Recognition. Undergraduate Honours Thesis.