Your
child will enjoy 26 full color illustrations, read 26 charming
limerick poems, and learn interesting facts about 26 animals!
Teachers Perspective:
When I first received this book, I decided to look at in a way to use in my classroom with Special Education students. Every year I teach a unit on poetry, for Poetry Month, and because it correlates with the PSSA and PA State Standards. When I review my materials for my students I look at illustations, word usage, font, space between parageaphs/kines, ability to keep the attention, and how I can use this cross curriculum.
The font and space are great! It is simple to read, with the animals name is in bold to match one of the main colors of the illustration. A student can easily use a pencil as a guide or a line reader, like a ruler, to keep track of where they are reading. When there are different fonts throughout a book students can become confused, but this author keeps the style the same. It also makes it easier for the students to write their own!
The illustrations in the book were cute. One thing I have learned is that students of all ages love to have a visual to go with the story or in this case the limerick. I have to say that although this is availabe as a e-book, I would much rather have it in physical form and have the picture and limerick side by side. I feel it would make it easier for a student to be able to correlate and visualize the animal doing as the limerick states. If I were to use this with my middle/HS students I would chose to have them as real animal photographs. If they were real it would be easier for a teacher to use it as a cross-curriculum book and could theme teach in a class - animals of the world for science/portey for langage arts.
Finally, the word/vocabulary picked by the author used in the limericks is good. Some words included in the limericks would be difficult for students to read or understand, so a teacher should always read through and help with vocabulary before sending them on their own. One could make a list of all the words and create a vocabulary board before jumping into the Limerick Zoo so the students have seen them before. Many sight words are included in this book, so it would be great to use as a class read before you begin the day.
Parents Perspective:
The E-book comes with a coloring book that has the same pictures as the Limericks. Having the same animals available as a coloring page gave me a jump on other poetry books at home. We loved that we could read an animal a day and then color the corresponding page to show what we learned! It also helped with rhyming - which is what we are focusing on now! I just wish the pictures were more of a coloring book page instead of a copy/paste of a image with some color removed. That was the main thing we had a problem with - the images looked like they were just pasted down so it was finished sooner instead of taking the entire page so children can have more to color and changing the background so they did not have a yellow/grey tint. However, it was nice to have a copy of the Limerick Zoo in the end with all the pages colored so we had our own self-published one though.
If your classroom or home is Kindle/Nook/iPad accessible, you can always get it that way!
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