School Books

This is our last week with our program for this year, Animals and Their Worlds from Winter Promise and we've finished off several of our books we've been using with the curriculum. Here are the final books we've used and the brief reviews I wrote for LibraryThing.


One Small Square: Coral Reef by Donald M. Silver
Beautiful illustrations are the main focus on each page drawing the child into the book. An engaging text, combined with the illustrations, encourages one to linger over the pages. My 7yo enjoyed the book immensely. We have used almost all of the One Small Square series and this one was our absolute favourite. Recommended for ages 7 and up.



Kids' Easy-to-Create Wildlife Habitats by Emily Stetson
Detailed information and instruction on how to turn your backyard into an inviting habitat for local wildlife from rabbits and birds to butterflies and frogs. While most of the ideas are more suitable to those living in houses with decent sized backyards, suggestions are also given for city and apartment dwellers. Projects are very do-able, with minimum of expense. In fact, the majority use simple household or natural items. My 7yo son has his head full of ideas to implement this summer. Last summer we used the bird ideas and have enjoyed the increased visits by our feathered friends. Nature loving kids will be sure to be find plenty in this book to keep them busy.

Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever!
A collection of previously published stories and poems by Richard Scarry. Topics include words, colours, alphabet, numbers, fables, mother goose, cars, planes, manners, animals and much more.

This is a fun book for young children. The topics are most suitable to very young children but those a bit older will be able to read most of the text. We used this book with our curriculum this year, reading a few stories spread out over the whole year. He was always happy when it time to read the stories and he's enjoyed reading some of it on his own. Recommended.



Animal Habitats! by Judy Press
Divided into habitats, each section includes paper type arts and crafts projects. Each project includes information about the animal or plant. Some include extra art suggestions, websites to visit and books to read.

We used this book all year long as part of our curriculum and my 7yo loved each and every project. This is one of his favourite books we used this year and when we finished the last page he very sorry to see it end. Highly recommended.


The Kids' Wildlife Book by Warner Shedd
This book concentrates on North American animals, divided into large and small mammals, amphibians and birds. Written in an engaging text each animal starts off with a range map and food key and tracks are shown across the top of each page. The usual type of information is given along with environmental info, native legends, fiction reading suggestions and crafts.

We used this book all year long as part of our curriculum. We found the text extremely interesting though it did get a little dry at times. The cartoon b/w illustrations were engaging and the book is very informational. The crafts are mostly quite involved and we did not do very many of them. Overall, this is a good engaging book for interacting with North American wildlife.


Animals in Motion: How Animals Swim, Jump, Slither and Glide by Pamela Hickman
Informative and interesting text tells all the different ways in which animals move. All types of animals are included from all over the world. This book does not have as many experiments and demonstrations as the others in this series but the few it did have were simple and enjoyable. Large bold, bright illustrations are appealing. My 7yo enjoyed this book very much, as he did all the others in the series. Recommended




DK Animal Encyclopedia
What can I say? This is Dorling Kindersley at their best! Beautiful photography and interesting text. Arranged alphabetically, information is easy to find. The pictures make this book interesting to even the youngest child while the more mature text make this a useful resource through the early teen years.

My 7yo loves this book so much. We have used it all year long as part of our curriculum but he has spent a lot of time browsing through the pages. This is the type of book a kid just likes to lie on his tummy on the floor and slowly turn the pages. Definitely a keeper!

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