This week we explored our first search and find books and we love them! I found these two in the “Easter is coming” section in our local bookstore and had put them aside for the Easter basket, but have put them into play earlier due to the coronavirus “lockdown”. Such a lovely discovery! My very busy gosling asked for them every morning and spent quite some time on them every day, keeping busier than with any other activity.
We started with the Easter themed one, which is easier (recommended for 2+). It took him a bit to understand what needed to be done and in the beginning mommy helped along, breaking down the illustrations into smaller pictures and asking about each item “is it here?”, but he quickly got the hang of it. He keeps playing the “is it here?” game on his own and almost chants “noooo” in reply 😂. He found confusing at first to search for items depicting drawings or framed pictures of one of the characters, he was always pointing to the character, but he got it eventually. I was so amazed he could identify nuances of the same colour! And wow, what an observation sense and visual memory he has! These are great tools to help with that.
The Easter book tells a cute little story about a chick, Piou-Piou, who loves Easter and dreams about becoming an Easter bunny when he grows up. He sets out to help the Easter bunny in painting the eggs and hiding them for the egg hunt. It is sweet, beautifully colored and a lovely introduction to the motifs and joys of the Easter holiday. Each double-sided page includes one para of text (in French) and asks kids to observe and find four items in the attached illustration: lots of decorated eggs, chicks, bunnies, sheep, birds, flowers and bells. Little gosling would ask to “read piou-piou”, brings the book, opens to the pages he wants and simply says “read that” and then he plays to finding the items. He loves finding the Easter eggs.
The one with the seasons is quite a big format, but still easy to grasp for a toddler, and includes nine pretty double-paged illustrations filled with seasonal motifs, animals and happenings, two per season (three for summer). On each of them, kids are encouraged to identify seven items (animals, plants, activities) as well as observe what a cute little mouse is up to. There is no story, which provides so much space for story lines and language development, and the names of the items are written down (some of them, quite usefully so, with the book being in French). Again, I found this a useful, interactive introduction to seasons for my toddler. Particularly as for each season, one of the illustrations depicts the transformations the same garden goes through, in terms of tree foliage, colours, fruits, vegetables, animals. There’s a lot of information on these pages, without it feeling crammed. The favourites so far (love at first sight) were the depictions of a blue dragon-fly (“libellule” in French, “libelula” in Romanian – one of the favourite words, currently) and one of the spring illustrations showing toddlers enjoying a picnic “à la française“, with different cheeses, baguette and strawberries. He stares at it and we inevitably end up enjoying together a platter of cheese, fruits and cashew nuts. What a treat!
Little gosling keeps repeating the books – yes, he found all the items in both and when we go through them now he points to them in no time. But I’m already looking at other search and find books, of different sizes and different themes….
