I Love Pasta (pages 16 and 17)

• Need help pronouncing the pasta names in this poem? You'll find the September audio edition of High Five at www.highlights.com/high-five.
• After counting the boxes of lasagna and penne, have your child count the letters in the pasta names. Which has the most? Which has the fewest? Are any of the letters in your child's name?

Print is everywhere. Like the boy in this illustration, your child can look for and identify letters as you drive to the store, move up and down the grocery-store aisles, or take a walk through the neighborhood.

*Literacy: Print Awareness & Concepts (Recognizes a word as a unit of print, and understands that letters are grouped to form words.)

*Literacy: Alphabet Knowledge (Identifies at least 10 letters of the alphabet, especially those in his or her own name.)

Veggie Prints (page 32)

• Making a large sheet of wrapping paper may be overwhelming for younger children. For them, creating a small print to hang on the wall might be a better choice.
• Worried about the mess? Have your child use one cut vegetable for each color.

Pressing cut vegetables into paint and then onto a piece of paper—and doing it again and again—is a delightful, sensory experience. It can also be an opportunity to experiment. What happens when I press hard? What happens when I press twice before dipping the vegetable into the paint again? What happens if I mix the colors together?

*Creative Arts: Art (Uses art materials in a variety of ways for creative expression.)

*Approaches to Learning: Engagement & Persistence (Grows in ability to persist in and complete a variety of tasks, activities, projects, and experiences.)

Look at the Kittens (page 35)

• As you read and talk about the kittens, your child will understand the meaning of the words litter, cub, and tame.
• Counting the two groups of kittens and then finding the total number also provides practice in basic addition.

As you and your child read this nonfiction feature, you're modeling how we read to gather information.

*Language Development: Listening & Understanding (Understands an increasingly complex and varied vocabulary.)

*Mathematics: Number & Operations (Develops increased ability to combine, separate, and name "how many" concrete objects.)

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