Customer Reviews

California A to Z

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"California A to Z" is a great book for kids 4-8 to be introduced to the Golden State, as well as to grow with the book. Not all 4 year olds are going to get the vocab, but it makes this book a great interactive read between adult and child. When you get to Q, for example, "Quail plant quivering during a quake" you have endless possibilities for learning in all subjects.

Science: What's a quail plant?

Bodily awareness: Can you quiver?

Language arts: What's 'quake' a nickname for?

Social Studies: Where do earthquakes tend to happen?

How does an earthquake happen?

Math: How are earthquakes measured?

GREAT, great, great learning book! I love the illustrations, as they are clear and simple. The visual aid supporting the sentence reinforces reading comprehension.

Another tidbit: the author has hit the nail of the proverbial head with teaching writing skills to children. She has a distinctive noun and then a strong action word followed by another distinctive noun. GREAT for teaching sentence structure to young writers. The setup is noun-verb-noun (n-v-n), as with the letter Q example above.

I loved the illustrations in this book. However, being a book for learning the alphabet, it was a little over my three-year-old's head. With wording like "Irrigation invigorating the Imperial Valley", you can imagine that any 3-year-old would be clueless about what they're being read. There is a glossary in the back, but again, this is beyond a preschooler's attention span. My son was done by the letter "M" and wanted to move on to another book.