Grow a Pumpkin Pie!
(My First Hello Reader)
by Jane Gerver
illustrated by Tammie Lyon
We pull out Grow a Pumpkin Pie! every fall, especially around Halloween time, because it's a perfect fit for many our first graders' reading level at that point in the year. This rollicking rhyming book shows young readers how pumpkins grow when the air becomes chilly and the leaves fall off of the trees. It also shows how, with the help of sugar and spices, pumpkins can be made into a delicious treat!
For teachers, this book doesn't provide enough information on pumpkins (the life cycle, etc) to replace your materials in your units (direct instruction), but it's a great literacy link to your lesson. Once we've taught about pumpkins, we have our reluctant readers read this book to us, and thanks to their prior knowledge (from your lesson), decoding isn't quite so hard....and they do great. :)
Below are the first three spreads from inside this cute but simple book.As you can see, the words are simple, mostly decodable, and there's a lot of picture support that is vital for early readers' success and confidence! We think this is a must have book for early education classrooms.
