Full Of Fall
by April Pully SayreThis book is beautifully done. The vibrant cover photograph grabs your attention and pulls the reader right into the season. I love April's use of alliteration throughout the book. She is careful to not over do the alliteration but has rhymes mixed in and it's just a very simple yet eloquent way to say good-bye to summer and walk through fall foliage with children. I love the vocabulary used! This book while easy to keep the attention of very young kids I think it's a book that you can use for class with third graders still. It's a beautiful way to introduce talking about why leaves fall, why they change color and talk about what happens. There's even a page that tells you about the parts of a leaf! The book is educational but for all the lessons you can take from it, it's still a poetic and fun read. This one is a must for the season for babies on up.
I love that April Pully Sayre has used photography instead of illustrations. The images are vibrant, and as she says "Colors surge," though the entire book. I love the crisp details!
At the end of the book there are two pages full of in depth information on why leaves are green, how they change colors, and a lot of science that is fascinating. I learned more in those 2 pages then I did in school about this season. For example did you know that while the leaves are changing color and dying they are actually still working for the tree? They deconstruct chlorophyll and send back into the tree what nutrients the tree can reuse.So while that book is more educational based but still simply fun to read my next two I'm sharing are books to help those who are just starting to read, Kindergartners, maybe some preschoolers who are doing sight words.
A Season of Sight Words "Fall"
Written by Shannon Penney
Illustrated by Lynne Avril
I did at one time 4 years ago have all 5 books, but now that my youngest is doing sight words in Kindergarten it seems that I'm missing 4 of them. I'm tearing the house apart trying to find the others because she loves that she can read on her own to us now that she has a handful of sight words she knows. Going on a Hayride is so far the only book in the set I can find and it's really great for those just starting to read. This one focuses on the words "it," "yes," and "is." These are very simple sentences of 3 to 5 words max, and that's throughout the set. Each book in the set has it's own two main sight words that are in bold in the sentence and are repeated on each page so the child sees them, and reads them over and over to reinforce them in their memory.
The illustrations really brings the book together. It is a picture book that you can see what is going on and that is key to helping children begin to use context clues in reading.
I think these are fun fall books because they have five favorite autumn activities: bonfires, hayrides, leaves, pumpkins, and football! So for young children if you take one of these books to focus on each week you can talk all week about hayrides, have the child read the book each day and then on Friday (or if you're doing this at home) on the weekend go for a hayride and have your child tell you what they thought. Have one week that's all pumpkin themed, and so on for each book.
Check out some of these sight word games you can add in as well:
Autumn Leaves Are Falling
Written by Maria Fleming
Illustrated by Melissa Sweet
This is another great beginning reader book. It's a Level 1 aimed for preschool to first grade. The sentences are simple, a step up from the Sight Word books but still very simple with a strong focus on those high frequency words. You will see a lot of repetition still but with a bit more pages and words on each page. As you can expect from the title the focus is on leaves falling and what you do with them. You can start by asking your child what they think will happen in the book before you start reading. It's great to have children predict what will happen, and start developing those hypothesis and context clues early on in reading so they will carry on as they grow.A fun activity to do with this book would be to make your own leaf pile, have the kids help rake and jump in the leaves, then have them describe to you how they felt, and where were the leaves after jumping in. As a child this was the highlight of the season was to see how big of a pile of leaves we could make.
My last book is just a funny picture book that is a blast to read aloud and I'm sure you can find so much to do with this from a preschool level up into intermediate school.
Fall Mixed Up
Written by Bob RaczkaIllustrated by Chad Cameron
This is a book that is sure to crack you up. I dare you to try to read this with a straight face. You won't be able to and the kid(s) you read to won't be able to keep from calling out that you're wrong about well everything mentioned in the book. It might take a minute...Are apples orange? Wait a minute I know squirrels don't fly! I love that Bob Raczka has taken all things having to do with Autumn and has twisted them around into a funny story that makes kids (and adults) think twice about what was just read and then picture this crazy alternative to how things really are.
Chad Cameron has done a great job on the illustrations in capturing fall as we know it and making this alternative world almost believable. The illustrations are full of color and just as funny as the text.
There are so many fun activities you can do around Fall Mixed Up! You can do the obvious and go through and point out all that is mixed up and tell what really happens for each. Talk about what animals hibernate, and what other animals do instead? Where does candy corn come from if it's not grown? You can have your child(ren) do their own drawings of something crazy mixed up they think would be fun to see.
Ready for some more fall fun? Check out some bucket list adventures you can do as a family:
I hope everyone gets out to enjoy the last couple summer days we have before Fall officially starts on Sunday!
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