Thursday, May 5, 2016

Counting Book of Bugs

Count 13 ladybugs, snails, grasshoppers, cicadas, dragonflies, beetles, caterpillars and moreI published my first e-book with Kindle Desktop Publishing on April 19th, and just completed a print version too.
What a learning curve! The Counting Book of Bugs has 130 bug photographs - 13 photos each of ladybugs, grasshoppers, butterflies, cicadas, snails, ants, honey bees, dragonflies, beetles and caterpillars. Most of the photos were sourced for Pixabay.com.

Why count to 13?
I wanted to be able to sing the words to the tune of 'Ten Little Indians' (singing is a great way to learn something) and counting to 13 fitted the tune. However, there are other good reasons to start with 1 - 12 instead of 1 - 10. Clocks have 12 numbers, so once kids are familiar with 1 - 12, they can start telling the time. Also, from a language learning point of view, it makes more sense to group 11 and 12 with numbers 1-10, then group the teens together. Finally, learning 12 and 20 in separate groups of numbers will help kids avoid mixing them up (as they so often do!)

I wanted to make a book about bugs because I find them fascinating and I know lots of kids, especially little boys, do too. There are many books about bugs with cute illustrations, but in my opinion there should be more books for kids with real photos as illustrations. Honestly, some real bugs look like aliens, right? But the truth is there are more of them than us on the earth!

I'm looking forward to using the book in my ESL classes.

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