Tall by Jez Alborough: Virtual Book Club for Kids

I am really excited to be linking up with many other blogs for this month’s Virtual Book Club for Kids! The author for the month of July is Jez Alborough. Evan and I headed to the library and checked out a few of his books. Evan really liked most of them, but some were a bit too long to keep his attention the entire time. The book Tall has very few words at all, but I made up my own “story” and Evan really seemed to enjoy it. He likes looking at the animals and, after a few readings, he enjoyed telling me which animal he thought was going to come next.

I wanted to create a hands on learning activity for this book, but Evan isn’t a big fan of crafts yet. Since the book deals with small/tall comparisons and ordering animals by size, I decided to make an activity that would reinforce these skills. I found some clip art of the types of animals in the story and sized them accordingly. I then printed them out and laminated them.

We read the book together and then I showed him the laminated animal cards. I asked him questions like “Which animal is the smallest?” and “Which animal is the tallest?” I then asked him to help me order the animals from smallest to tallest. I did this by asking him to place the smallest animal on the ground and then place the next smallest on the ground and so on. He did very well and quickly got the hang of what I wanted him to do. We then compared a few of the animals by size. I would show him two animals and then ask him to pick the tallest one or the smallest one.

You can accomplish a similar learning experience without gathering clip art and printing. You can order objects in your home from smallest to tallest. Things like stuffed animals, block towers, toys, etc. would work wonderfully. You could even rip up sheets of paper into varying sizes and order them. There are so many possibilities!