In the photos of the kids in action, you can see that I often invite one of the children to hold the book at the front of the class and “be the teacher” while the story plays on a CD. The children love to be chosen for this job! From my spot on the carpet, I can see that the “readers” have clearly mastered several conventions of print: they hold the book upright, turn pages from front to back, and scan their eyes from left to right. These are excellent pre-reading skills!
The children enjoyed the tactile experience of manipulating and placing the magnetic pieces in the correct order while our group retold the story. This book is also very useful for practicing ordinal numbers i.e. “What did the old lady swallow first, second, third ...?” (premier, deuxième, troisième ...?)”.
Storybooks are excellent tools for fostering a link between literature and mathematical ideas.