Early Literacy Activity Cards-Resource

Image borrowed from kwachtman.wordpress.com

I came across a site called Family Literacy Expertise, they are a Canadian non-profit and have an immense resource of early literacy activity cards based on familiar children's books. If you are looking for a kids book with activities pre-pared with it, or have a kids book and are looking for activities to accompany it. This is a great site to check out.

Some of the books they have listed are:

A Big Fat Enormous Lie	My Family's Changing
A Child's Treasury of Nursery Rhymes	My Friends and Me
All Together Now	Nose to Toes
Alligator Baby	Number One, Tickle Your Tum
Amazing Grace	On Your Potty
Andrew's Loose Tooth	Pajama Time
Baby Faces	Peek a Who
Barnyard Dance	Peekaboo Baby
Big or Little	Red Ripe Strawberry, Little Mouse and the Big Hungry Bear
Can't You Sleep Little Bear	Shoes from Grandpa
Clap Your Hands	Sleepy Little Mouse
Finding Kate's Shoes	Stellaluna
Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed	Stop Picking On Me
Five Little Monkeys Sitting In a Tree	That's Good That's Bad
Five Little Monkeys With Nothing to Do	The Bear Went over the Mountain
From Head to Toe	The Grouchy Ladybug
Good Night Gorilla	The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Goodnight Moon	The Kissing Hand
Guess How Much I love You	The Mitten
Hands Are Not For Hitting	The Princess and the Potty
Hiding	The Very Busy Spider
I Can Blink	The Way I Feel
I Have to Go	Touch and Feel Animal Kisses
I Love You So Much	Touch and Feel Bedtime
I Miss You	Touch and Feel Mealtime
If You Give A Moose A Muffin	Touch and Feel Pets
If You Give A Mouse A Cookie	Two Eyes A Nose & A Mouth
If You Were My Bunny	Up to the Skies and Down Again
I'm A Little Teapot	Very Busy Spider
I'm As Quick As A Cricket	Very Hungry Caterpillar
Jessica's X-ray	Where the Wild Things Are
Lifetimes	Where's My Teddy
Little Mouse, Red Ripe Strawberry & The Big Hungry Bear
Makeup Mess

Oprah's Reading Lists

Sorry I deserted you, my faithful readers, this past weekend. I ended up having some gallbladder issues that left me barely wanting to parent, let along blog. You can read more about it on my weight loss blog. So anyhoo...

Photo courtesy of Oprah.com



For those who are a fan of The O--Oprah, you know that she is a big proponent of reading. She created Oprah's book club to encourage us "old folks" to crack a book for pleasure. I suspect that she may continue her book club now that she's has her network OWN, however it does not appear that she has named a book since 2010. Click here for a complete listing of Oprah's book club picks, and if you're feeling crafty, you can even create a custom Oprah's book club bookmark here.

But what you might not know is that Oprah is also a proponent for getting young kids to read. And to help parents in choosing the best books for their children, she (with the help of Target and the American Library Association) has compiled book lists for kids broken down by age group. You can find those links here. 

But if your child is picky, and only wants to read books on a certain subject or within a certain category, O also has a list of books categorized by subject, and then further broken down into age groups.

I myself get a little uncomfortable "grading" books, I don't like kids to feel like they are bound by limits. I personally think that "grading" also take a little bit of the fun out of reading--it makes reading for pleasure much more like school. So if you do decide to use these lists, I strongly suggest using the age ranges as suggestions. If your child is reading above or below the books in "their range", allow them to delve outside of it. As long as they are reading, and it's fun for them, there's no reason to put constraints on the books they can read--pending age appropriateness, but I leave the judgement on what is age appropriate up to you.

But overall, what Oprah is doing is fabulous, both for the young reader, and their parent. I mean, who doesn't like having the guess work taken out? These lists will certainly assist you and your child in choosing their next book--who knows, you may find an old favorite, or discover a new one!