This post is brought to you by Karen B. Winnick and her new book, Good Night, Baby Animals, You’ve Had a Busy Day. All thoughts are my own.
My 5-year-old has had a busy year in Kindergarten. Her reading skills are developing – she can identify a lot of sight words and is working on decoding words using clues from the photos combined with sounding out the letters. She loves to practice every chance she gets so we were delighted to get a chance to review Good Night, Baby Animals, You’ve Had a Busy Day by Karen B. Winnick, a collection of six original stories.
This picture book is recommended for 2 to 5-year-olds, and while I think it is perfect for toddlers, my kindergartener loved this book as well! It covers the antics of six animals-elephants, tigers, giraffes, rhinoceros, pandas, and gorillas right up into bedtime rituals. The language is rhyming, repetitive and fun: “poof poof,” “run, run,” etc…
While my little one expected to just flip through the pictures, she was delighted to find many of the sight words she is working on daily throughout the text and was able to phonetically sound out many words.
Throughout the book it also introduces new words that are great for expanding your child’s vocabulary. Words like rumbles, snaps, spindly, shoots, squints are peppered throughout, and my eager learner wanted to know what everyone meant!
The illustrations, by Laura Watkins, are soft and sweet, the perfect complement to Karen B. Winnick’s text. We love soaking up the sweet animal artwork from cover to cover.
While books are a tool that can be used from sunrise to sunset, I loved this book for bedtime. The repetition of the animals getting ready to settle down from their busy day was the perfect mirror to our own rituals and made for a nice snuggle-on-the-couch after bath time. While my 8-year-old is a little older for this book he still snuggled up for a bedtime read too and enjoyed the book as well.
I keep a variety of picture books on the bookshelves and in baskets to encourage the kids to pick them up but to get the most out of our picture books we use them several ways…
How to Get the Most out of Children’s Books
Read together – There are so many times throughout the day that are perfect for reading together. At bedtime, day time napsy (oh how I miss those naps!), and when we both need a calming down period.
Read independently – I encourage the kids to grab a book and look through the pages or read it to themselves as best they can, as often as they can. You might be surprised what your eager little learner is able to read more than you’d expect.
Read and re-enact – We have quite a collection of little plastic animals, people, birds, bugs, etc.. and they get put to good use often! When I introduce a new book or after we have read it a few times, I like to offer her some props from the book for imaginative play. In the case of Good Night, Baby Animals, You’ve Had a Busy Day, she put baby gorillas, giraffes, tigers, and pandas to bed as we read.
If you have a little who enjoys books, reading, or animals Good Night, Baby Animals, You’ve Had a Busy Day is a great addition to your collection. I’m thinking of picking up several copies to use as shower gifts, too. As an avid reader myself I love helping to start the libraries of new babies!
About the Author:
Karen B. Winnick is the author and illustrator of How Lucky Got His Shoe, Gemina, the Crooked-Neck Giraffe, Hank, the Ballpark Pup, Mr. Lincoln’s Whiskers, and Sybil’s Night Ride. She is President of the Los Angeles Zoo Commission.
Good Night, Baby Animals, You’ve Had a Busy Day is illustrated by Laura Watkins.
Check out some fun games, printables and coloring books related to the book.
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