Ned Halley

This is an informational book, it reads like a picture dictionary, only relating to farm life. All text is organized in small print paragraphs, rarely more than a handful of sentences. Everything accompanies a picture. Everything about farming is in this book, crops, livestock, harvesting, cutting sheep for wool, etc; it's quite comprehensive.
I like this series for my pre-kindergarteners because it allows me to expose them to a unit plan/topic, and by flipping through the pages I can gauge which part of the topic they are interested in. I do this in small groups, two children at a time. I pull two children at a time during center and prompt them to flip through the book. Two seems to work nicely so far; any more would cause a management problem, fighting over the book, when to flip the pages, etc. I pull these children depending on how well they work together, and informally observe which pages they spend the most time on, and which pages they breeze past. I also listen to their conversation to hear what they're thinking and how I can use that in my lesson planning.… (more)