Wordless Books

Have you ever been to the bookstore and found a book with nothing but pictures and thought, "well, what's the point of this?". Before teaching, I used think the same thing. Now finding a wordless book seems to be a treasure for me. We have several wordless books at home that we often look at. Not only do they benefit my two boys, but my baby also gets something out of it. These books have nothing but beautiful colorful pictures in them, with NO WORDS! Why would that excite me? There is so much we can do with these books. Instead of me reading them a bedtime story, they can "read" it to me. They can look at the pictures and figure out what the story can be about...and the good thing is, the story doesn't have to be the same each time we "read" it. Because we're not bound to words but only guided by the illustrations, we can use our creative minds to create new stories over and over. It's great. Wordless books are not intimidating, in fact, it promotes an important reading skill...comprehension. Isn't that the reason why we learn to read? To understand what we're reading? Try a couple of these selected books we use at home...and remember to save them for later, they make great writing activities at home. But that's saved for a another blog post.