Big bold illustrations of familiar farm animals are featured in the playful book with cutout holes that allow a partial view of the animal hidden on the next page. The text offers a clue to help the little listener guess who will show up when the page is turned. Based on the original game and always popular game of I Spy With My Little Eye, this is a fun way to introduce toddlers to knowing and naming, color concepts and animal sounds. It includes letter names. For young toddlers we suggest skipping the letter names—use the sound the letter make as a hint or skip the letters altogether for young listeners. That's something they can grow into.

Age: Toddlers, Preschool, Early School Years. Award Year: 2013. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

Newest in an excellent series that introduces beginners to the concept of subtraction. Using rhymes that give auditory cues and photographs for visual clues, the symbols of math equations become playful and concrete. For young children the concrete objects pictured add an understanding of the number symbols. Eventually children will not need the images, but for young children, these images are already one step beyond real objects. You can further reinforce the concepts of subtracting with crackers or cheerios to represent the same equations on the pages. Frankly, M&Ms and kisses were always my favorite way to teach subtraction. But Jean Marzollo's rhymes add a dash of humor that is always welcome when dealing with numbers! They say 3-7, we say more like 5-7.

Age: Preschool, Early School Years. Award Year: 2012. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

It starts with the usual A is for Apple, but before getting too far into the typical B is for Ball, C is for Cat, an eager Moose appears on the wrong page and the romp begins! An entertaining alphabet that kids will enjoy looking at more than once! 4 & up.

Age: Preschool, Early School Years. Award Year: 2012. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

Sean has a big, big yawn while sitting on his mat....and of course everyone knows that yawns are catching. So who got his yawn? A Scruffy Fluffy___ Can you guess? Turn the page and you'll find a cat who in turn has a big, big yawn that is caught by___ You get the idea. There is a cut-out hole on each page, but it offers no visual hints about who is next. The clues are in the words that kids will soon remember as they have you read it again and again.

Play It!

This is What I Like To Do Game
Players take turns leading others as they sing and add a different motion that everyone else must imitate, such as winding your arms, tapping your head, stamping a foot, wrinkling your nose, etc.

This is what I like to do, wouldn’t you like to do it too?
This is what I like to do....
Now we'll all follow you...(and the leader points to someone else.)

Yawn, Sneeze, Hiccup, Cough Game
This is an action memory game.
1. Player one does two actions
A yawn, a sneeze.
2. Player two must do the same two actions in the same order and add one more action.
A yawn, a sneeze, and a cough.
Player one or three repeats what Player two just did and add another action.
A yawn, sneeze, hiccup, hiccup

      The game goes on until the chain is broken and someone forgets. Kids have fun making these silly sounds while they are learning to listen and recall what has been done. It’s a playful way to build listening and memory skills.

        A few years ago we published several books with suggested books and follow-up games that extend the book experience. One collection Read It Play It is for playing with babies and toddlers. The other is for preschool and early school years children. We also did a collection in Spanish, featuring books that were in Spanish or were bilingual.

Age: Preschool. Award Year: 2011. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

We like everything about this except the title and the pressure it conveys. A good many of the concepts in these pages should be introduced in playful ways during the preschool years, but they are by no means concepts that most children master before they are five. That said, the colorful photographs of small toys make learning the letter sounds and counting fun. There are pages dedicated to colors, opposites, counting and the alphabet. The book is marked 1-5; we'd say more like 4-6.

Age: Preschool, Early School Years. Award Year: 2011. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

Learning to count is just more fun when you do it with rhymes and colorful photographs. Share this with toddlers, counting together and talking about the toys and things to eat on the colorful pages. For them it will be a knowing and naming game. Slightly older kids will love the challenge of pointing to the pictures and counting the objects in each set. Designed to relate to the Common Core Standards for Early Childhood, the toys and rhymes combine to make this a playful way to lead kids to basic concepts needed for beginning math. 2-7

Age: Preschool, Early School Years. Award Year: 2011. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

Kids do love to shout and in this "knowing and naming" book, Fleming invites them to do exactly that. She starts with colorful numerals that kids are invited to shout the nnames of as you point. She moves on from there to the letters of the alphabet, colors, and finally animals. Kids that know these things will find it fun, no doubt to shout them out. Those who are still unsure will gain from the repetition and no doubt enjoy shouting what they do know. Though adults may want earplugs, kids love any excuse to shout and this one is just right for storytime sharing in class, library or home.

Play It!
Now Hear This!
Tell the players that you are going to clap out a number. They must wait till you put your hands down before they can shout it out. The first person to guess your number gets to clap next. With older players you can do simple math facts by clapping out 2 pause 2..players must shout out 2 + 2 is 4.

Things That Go Together
Play a fast round of things that go together. A leader begins the game by thinking of two things that go together, such as salt and pepper. The leader says "Salt" the first person to say "Pepper" becomes the leader. You can play a variation of this with opposites. The leader says one word and someone must shout out the opposite, as in yes/no or high/low.

           A few years ago we published several books with suggested books and follow-up games that extend the book experience. One collection Read It Play It is for playing with babies and toddlers. The other is for preschool and early school years children. We also did a collection in Spanish, featuring books that were in Spanish or were bilingual.

Click here to buy Read It! Play It!

Age: Preschool, Early School Years. Award Year: 2011. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

Poor dragon is so tired, but there's a den of little dragons that keeps growing louder and bigger and keeping him from sleep. This is a zany counting book with a cast that keeps growing and keeping a very drowsy dragon from getting his shut-eye. Fun you can count on without any mean-spirited dragons doing dreadful things.

Age: Preschool. Award Year: 2010. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

Welcome back Lyle, everyone's favorite crocodile. In this counting book, Lyle has taken up dog walking and on each turn of the page he has another dog that joins the day's walk. There's not a lot of story here, but the counting is simple enough for beginners and ends on a happy note. Illustrated by Bernard Waber's daughter, Paulis, for whom the first Lyle book was dedicated many years ago.

Age: Preschool, Early School Years. Award Year: 2010. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.

For knowing and naming the clothes we wear, this zippy little book has a lots to look at, a simple rhyming text and pages that flip to put on those wonderful polka-dot boots. A multi-cultural cast of kids add to the fun. 2-5.

Age: Toddlers, Preschool. Award Year: 2010. Click here to purchase the product on Amazon.com.