The Tortoise and the Hare

Posted: Monday, October 22, 2007, 9:00 am

A tortoise demonstrates why slow and steady wins the race, while helping to increase your child's early literacy skills.

This is a fun story for 3- to 6-year-olds. During the story, children can move in place slowly like the tortoise and quickly when the hare is featured. Explain that a tortoise is like a turtle and a hare is similar to a rabbit. This will enlarge your child's vocabulary, which in turn will help with word recognition once s/he starts reading.

Other things you can do to help build vocabulary are:

• Make a game of trying to list all the animals you know.
• Go to the zoo or look at a book to discover some animals you are not familiar with.
• Try imitating the way some of the animals move.

More like this: early literacy storytime Audio and video for Preschoolers