This week at Ready to Read we made our very best farm animal noises as we read barnyard books.

Hello Day! by Anita Lobel

We started off our farm storytime with Hello Day! The book follows a simple pattern: The cow said Moo! The cat said Meow! and so on. There are lots of opportunities for interaction and asking children to identify both the animal and the sound that it makes. The full-size colourful animal illustrations are also gorgeous and just another reason why this makes a great read for little ones.

Down on the Farm by Merrily Kutner ; illustrated by Will Hillenbrand

Down on the Farm is a fun rhyming read with a repitition: Down on the farm, down on the farm. You can say the words, but it’s a lot more fun to sing them! The noise the animal makes always rhymes with the phrase above so children are usually able to figure it out easily. Rhyming things together raises phonological awareness (or becoming aware of the smaller sounds that make up words) and children who have an understanding of phonological awareness have an easier time learning to read which is why books like Cat in the Hat are so great!

Blue Goose by Nancy Tafuri

Nancy Tafuri writes excellent books for young readers and this one is no exception! Learning colour theory has never been so fun! The barnyard animals decide they should paint their grey farm, so red hen grabs red paint, blue goose grabs blue paint and so on. The animals also cooperate to make new colours like green and orange and purple. After the story, have fun mixing your own paint (though make sure you don’t have any grey walls around that are just dying to be painted!)