animals

My two-year-old and I love this book. It's about a spider who blows in, lands on a fence post, and spends the entire day building a web. She keeps working as various animals tempt her to do other things. At the end of the day, she catches a fly in her web and then falls asleep, tuckered out from her busy day. This book has several things going for it. First, it is a very simple narrative, making it one of the first stories that your child will be able to understand. Second, it is repetitive. Toddlers LOVE repetition and it is good for them. It helps them stay focused on the story, and gives them a chance to "read" something themselves, because they will naturally recite the repetitive bits as you come to them. Last of all, this book has several animals and the noises they make--very important for that fund of knowledge you are building. Oh, and I forgot the kicker: The spider web is made of some sort of 3D glue, making it tactile. My son loves running his fingers along it. I would have given this book 5 stars, but I love Carle's THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR even more!

While a spider weaves her web, animals of the farm come and ask her to play. The spider is too busy spinning her web. Adorable.

Several things make this book a true winner. First the repitition. The repitition is an excellent way for pre-readers and early reader to learn to read. (A whole language approach, but it gives kids some success.) Second, the tactile approach- as the spider spins her web you can feel the strings of the web and the fly that is buzzing around. This is a fun book to read and my son loves to touch the pages. The illustrations are adorable.

When I taught Kindergarten I always had a unit worked up around this book. There are so many creative and fun things you can do for activities and learning with this book. Now that I'm at home with my kiddos, we still do many of these fun things after we read this book. We made spiderwebs out of glue on black paper.

Enjoy.

This is a cute story about a spider who drops in on a farm. All the farm animals greet her and invite her to play. But the spider spends the day building her web instead. The book is fun and informative, and not at all scary. The pages are doubled so they are easy to turn, but be careful, because inquisitive little fingers may reach inside the pages and rip them. The book has about 350 words.