Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood

We just got back from vacation and since I have been doing nothing but laundry and cleaning bathrooms the last couple of days, I thought I would take a break and work on a project with Paige.  She has been loving the book Quick as a Cricket lately.  We decided that we would make our own version of the book.  We made a list of animals that we wanted to include and then we did a search for coloring pages for those animals.  We ended up finding all our animals here .  We printed out all the animals and we colored them together.  I grabbed some old cardstock and three hole punched it.  We cut out our animal pictures and glued them to the cardstock.  Then Paige dictated to me how she was like each animal, following the pattern in the story and I wrote it and the bottom of the page with a Sharpie.  For the last page, she drew a picture of herself and wanted her name at the top.  She wrote the "P" and I wrote the rest.  We used 3 binder rings to make it into a book.  She thinks it is fantastic and can't wait to read it to dad and Blake when they get home.  Dictated books like this are perfect for introducing kids to reading.  Since the child has come up with the words for the book they remember them more easily, so they can start to recognize words on the page.  If you can get them to, have them practice pointing out specific words.  They gradually begin to associate the words with the meaning of the story.