Come and Play (pages 20 and 21)

• Before you read the poem, ask your child to describe what the pigs are doing.
• After you've read the poem, help your child find the Ps in the illustration. If your child is interested, you could also count the Ps in the poem.

Learning to recognize and name individual letters is an important early-reading skill. Does your child want to hunt for more letters? Look for the smiling H hidden in each cover. (You'll find it this month in the mama pig's ear!) Or count the number of Ts in "Time for Bed" (page 4).

*Language Development: Speaking & Communicating (Develops increasing ability to understand and use language to communicate.)

*Literacy: Alphabet Knowledge (Associates the names of letters with their shapes.)

Good Morning! (pages 26 and 27)

• As you read each poem aloud, encourage your child to look in the corresponding illustration for the objects, people, and animals mentioned in the poem.
• Because these illustrations have different settings, it may be difficult for your child to talk about how they are the same. You might point out that each scene has a sun, a school bus, someone sweeping, birds, trees, vehicles, and a child wearing a backpack.

Comparing and contrasting life in the city and the country, noticing small details in illustrations, listening for and identifying rhyming words—this activity covers a lot of ground!

*Social & Emotional Development: Knowledge of Families & Communities (Progresses in understanding similarities and respecting differences among people, such as race, language, culture, and family structures.)

*Approaches to Learning: Reasoning & Problem Solving (Develops increasing ability to classify, compare, and contrast objects, events and experiences.)

Silly Billy (Bonus Pages)

• If your child can name the days of the week, pause before you read page 3. He or she may have already discovered this story's pattern and be ready to chime in before you read the word Wednesday.
• After you've read the book, encourage your child to use the pictures to "read" it to you.

When young children retell a story in their own words, they develop confidence in their ability to make sense of the printed page. Don't worry if your child's retelling isn't exact. Using the pictures to remember and retell the story is a great beginning reading strategy.

*Literacy: Book Knowledge & Appreciation (Progresses in learning how to handle and care for books and knows to view one page at a time in sequence from front to back.)

*Language Development: Speaking & Communicating (Progresses in ability to retell stories from books.)

*Early childhood standards based on the U.S. Head Start Child Outcomes Framework.