Let's Get Ready Series-Review and Giveaway

******and the winner is…julia***

Have you ever wondered exactly what your children should learn BEFORE they get to Kindergarten?  I have.

As we move toward starting homeschool preschool, and become more deliberate about mixing learning time with play time, I wanted to make sure that I am teaching the things that my children need to know to succeed in school.  Which is why we were excited when Stacey Kannenberg contacted us with an opportunity to review the Let’s Get Ready Series, from Cedar Valley Publishing.   Stacey is the co-author of the award winning and state approved, Let’s Get Ready series with Let’s Get Ready For Kindergarten! and Let’s Get Ready For First Grade! as well as the Spanish/English Bilingual Edition of Let’s Get Ready For Kindergarten!

The Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten book starts with a list of Early Childhood Skills that should be introduced and practiced at home…

• Sharing, taking turns, and listening quietly
• Waiting patiently and using words to communicate
• Recognizing and using full name
• Knowing parents’ and/or caregiver’s first and last name
• Using the toilet independently
• Getting dressed
• Knowing how to zip, snap, tie, button, and fasten clothing
• Knowing the alphabet and recognizing letters
• Knowing left and right
• Knowing basic colors, shapes, and numbers 0-20
• Recognizing coins (penny, nickel, dime, quarter) and dollar bill
• Using positional words (over, under, up, down)
• Printing first name, uppercase for first letter only
• Knowing address and phone number
• Knowing how to use a pencil, crayons, glue, and scissors

That page alone made the review worth it to me.  Finally, a concise list!  And confirmation that I was heading in the right direction.

The book then starts off with an introduction to Mrs. Good and the children at Cedar Valley, as well as Peek-a-Blue, a cute blue hippo that finds his way into the scene illustrations.  The Cedar Valley Kids represent different ethnicities.  From there, the book tackles many of the items on the Early Childhood Skills list, including the alphabet, colors, shapes, direction, counting, etc.  The book pages are thick cardstock and are professionally laminated, so that they can be written on with a dry erase marker.  I haven’t allowed my kids to write on them, because they wouldn’t understand yet why it is okay to write in one book, but not another.  I, however, did try it out, and the page wiped clean with a facial tissue.

The pages are colorful and present the information in a no fuss manner.  Whether you read the entire book, or just cover a subject at a time, it is easy to keep even a young child engaged.  The book also has helpful little tips at the bottom of the pages, to help the parent/teacher along.

Mister and Sister both really enjoy reading the book with Daddy.

They enjoy pointing to the pages and calling out what is shown.

Two of their favorite pages are the Let’s Find Your Hand pages.

Sister hasn’t quite mastered it yet, but Mister is getting pretty good.

The Spanish/English Bilingual Edition of Let’s Get Ready For Kindergarten! covers the same information as the English version, but adds the Spanish words to each item, as well as adding pages for the Spanish alphabet and for words that start with each letter in the Spanish alphabet.

The Let’s Get Ready for First Grade book also has a list of Pre-First Grade Skills on the front cover.

• Write and spell full name and phone number
• Knowing uppercase/lowercase numbers and letters in and out of sequence
• Knowing colors and shapes
• Knowing numbers 1-30
• Ability to count to 100
• Recognizing patterns
• Skip counting by 5’s and 10’s.
• Knowing money and value
• Ability to read a basic sentence
• Knowing days of the week and months of the year
• Understanding weather concepts

The book introduces the teacher, Ms. Best, and the children in class, then tackles vowels, consonants, short sounds, long sounds, prefixes, suffixes, etc.  This book is also dry erase marker safe.

I really like the Let’s Get Ready Series, and hope that Stacey plans to publish books for the rest of the elementary grades.

Buy it… You can purchase The Let’s Get Ready Series at http://cedarvalleypublishing.com/ or  on Amazon.com

Win it… Stacey and Cedar Valley Publishing have generously offered to give one lucky Lady V dZine reader either the English only or the Spanish/English Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten (winner’s choice), along with the Let’s Get Ready for First Grade book.

Mandatory Entry… Visit Cedar Valley Publishing and comment back here with who your favorite Cedar Valley Kid is.

***Please note- this must be done before any bonus entries will count***

Bonus entries–

• 1 entry-    Follow me on GFC—right side bar, comment with your user name.
• 1 entry-    Like Lady V dZine on Facebook and comment back here with your screen name.
• 1 entry-    Subscribe to Lady V dZine by RSS or email and comment back with the e-mail you signed up with (one each)
• 1 entry-    Follow Lady V dZine on Twitter AND tweet this contest using @ladyvdzine and linking back to this post- comment with your tweet status (may be done up to 4x/day, at least 30 minutes apart)
  • May use “#win Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten/1stGrade from @StaceyKann at @ladyvdzine (9/28) #preschool #giveaway #spanish #kids  bit.ly/aFbcU1”
• 1 entry-     Follow Stacey Kannenberg on Twitter and comment back here with your twitter name.
• 1 entry-     For each current giveaway that you enter- comment with name of giveaway
• 1 entry-     For each non-giveaway post that you submit to Stumble Upon *may use the button in the top/bottom of each post to submit- comment back with your Stumble Upon profile and name of the post you submitted.
• 1 entry-     For each non-giveaway post that you leave a RELEVANT comment on- comment back with post title or link to post.
• 5 entries-  Blog this contest linking to this post- leave 5 comments here with a link to your post

The fine print…

Contest open globally.  Contest ends at 11:59 p.m. CST on 09/28/2010.  Winner will be selected randomly.  Winner will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to respond with mailing address.  If no response is received from the winning entrant, a new winner will be selected.  Prize will be forfeited and donated to charity if not claimed by primary or alternate winners.

Disclosure- Cedar Valley Publishing provided me with complimentary copies of the three aforementioned books to facilitate my honest review.  No other compensation was received.  Cedar Valley Publishing is providing the prize for this contest.  100% my own and are based on my own experience.  Your experience may differ.

cmp.ly/5/wyadsz