Highlights High Five™ January 2008 Parent/Teacher Guide
The Adventures of Spot (page 5)
- After reading the story, discuss Spot's feelings.
- Help children use information from the text and illustrations to decide how Spot feels. For example, the text says Spot wanted a nap, so we can infer that he is tired.
- From the illustrations, we can possibly infer that Spot felt frustrated, disappointed, sad, and/or mad.
- In the end, Spot probably felt peaceful, content, and perhaps even proud that he found a safe spot to rest.
Helping children recognize and name how characters feel will help them learn to articulate their own feelings with greater clarity. They will also be better able to recognize and describe how others feel.
My First Hidden Pictures (pages 10 and 11)
- If children need help finding an object, offer hints. For example, to find the cup, you could say, "Her dress has spots and so does the cup. Look for the cup on her dress."
- Before you read the nursery rhyme, explain that curds and whey is another name for cottage cheese. (The lumps are curds and the liquid is whey.) And a tuffet is another name for a low stool.
Finding the hidden objects sharpens children's visual discrimination skills. Looking closely at the names of the objects will help children focus on specific letters and words.
High Five (pages 12 and 13)
- Read and reread the poem, inviting children to chime in on the parts they know.
- Ask them to listen for and name the words that rhyme (high/five; low/go; thumbs/fun; say/hooray).
- Here are the sets of five that can be found in the illustration (candles, balloons, hats, kids, presents, forks, plates).
- For additional counting practice, children could look for words in the poem that begin with the letter h (12). They could also count the number of times the phrase high five appears on these pages (4).
Early "hands-on" explorations are valuable ways to help children discover basic math concepts. For example, give children 5 objects and ask them to see how many ways they can group the objects. Eventually, they'll see that 5 can be rearranged into groups of 4 and 1; 2 and 3; 3 and 2; and 5 groups of 1. But no mater how they are grouped, when they count the objects, the total number is always 5.