Pamela Chanko

A little boy is on vacation and is excited to go to Grandma’s house. He tries to decide what to take, but doesn’t know what the weather will be like. As he imagines each possibility, he thinks of something new to pack, ending up with six suitcases . . . and Grandma lives right next door!

Part of the Vocabulary Tales series, this book introduces eight key weather words that are important for young readers to know. The key words are highlighted in the story, then reviewed in a trio of show more activities that follow the story. Young readers can complete a Meaning Match, Vocabulary Fill-Ins, and Vocabulary Questions, all focused on the various types of weather shown in the story.

Brightly colored illustrations show the boy imagining having fun doing a variety of weather-related activities with his grandmother. The rhyming, easy-to-read text highlights the key words and separates them into a box where a simple definition and a sample sentence are also included.

The target audience for this vocabulary builder story is the young reader, ages five through seven, in the lower primary grades. Designed as a foundation vocabulary builder, this fun tale helps young readers enrich and expand their vocabularies as it introduces and reinforces must-know words. [The must-know weather words in “Going to Grandma’s” are blizzard, breezy, chilly, drizzle, forecast, freeze, humid, and hurricane.]

Highly recommended for young readers. show less

The point of this book is to give travelers attractions they can look for when they are traveling across the country or to another state. I like how it gives a picture of the attraction and the location on one said and on the other it gives fun facts about the specific place. I also like in the back they have a numbered map of the United States of where each one is located.

I thought that this book was great for a couple of reasons. The illustrations were very realistic and I like that diagrams and a glossary were added in the story. This gives students great visuals to better understand the story. I liked the writing style of this book because it written in a story and didn’t simply state facts. I found the writing engaging and interesting, as most children don’t know how the flag came about. The plot was quite interesting and I enjoyed learning about what show more the American flag used to look like before the one that we have today. The overall big idea of this story was to teach children about Betsy Ross and how our American flag came about. show less

This book is good to have in a science classroom because the realistic pictures allow students to see a real life approach to the world around them. The simple text is also good for students new to English because the concept of bees is something that should be somewhat familiar to them and the simple text allows for them to follow along with the pictures. I think this book would be good to teach students on what they should look for in a science text. For example the students can be taught show more how to look for descriptive attributes. They can describe what a bee looks like or cause and effect and how the bee interacts with the world around them and how they impact the environment. show less