Lizard in a Blizzard

Usborne Books & More has a series of books that fall under the category Usborne Phonics Readers. These books, written with the intention of increasing phonemic awareness, always have a funny component to keep children engaged!

Are you familiar with the term ‘phonemic awareness’? This is an important skill for children to learn prior to, and as they are beginning to, read. It simply means understanding that words are made up of different sounds (a phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that holds meaning). Therefore, the book uses rhyme and alliteration to encourage phonemic awareness.

These are books that you can begin reading to children when they are babies – it is so good for children of all ages to hear rhyming text and alliteration (that is why nursery rhymes are SO SO SO good for them!).

Here are some speech and language ideas as you read this book:

• Rhyming: lizard/blizzard/wizard, sun/fun, snow/know/slow/go, sigh/sky, down/frown, now/how
• Alliteration:
  • Softly at first, fat white flakes flutter down
  • ‘I want to see snow’, Lizard says, with a sigh
• L-blends: float, clever, flicks, flakes, flutter, please, blur, blizzard
• R-blends: grins, friends, try, pretty, frown, freezing, cream, dream, cries
• S-blends: snow, slow, snowflakes, sky, stuff, switch, starts, storm, scrumptious
• /w/ – we, want, wizards, well, white, whirl, wish, warms
• Pronouns I, you, he his, she, us, we

I always enjoy when I can pair a non-fiction book with a fictional book and do a little compare/contrast with my kids. At a young age, children can start to learn what books are true books and which ones are not true. Older children can make comparisons between the fictional lizard and a real one.

See inside Lizard in a Blizzard as well as the nonfiction book, Lizards, below.

Feel free to check out these books on my e-commerce site. Find Lizard in a Blizzard here, Lizards here and What is Snow (another great non-fiction book to pair with this book) here.