Ladybird Tuesday - Talkabout holidays

With the summer holidays upon us and many people off, or about to set off, on their family hols this book seemed a good choice for this week’s Ladybird Tuesday post.   Talkabout holidays was  published in 1977, compiled by Margaret West, illustrated by Robert Ayton and Martin Aitchison, with cover design by Harry Wingfield. 

“Most children become excited at the mention of holidays and this interest can be encouraged and developed to increase vocabulary.  Planning a holiday involves choosing; a place to go, a type of holiday whether you go by road, or rail, or air.  Packing brings in the question of volume and weight: how much will go into a suitcase, how much will it weigh, can you carry it?”

This Ladybird book is from the ‘Talkabout’ series, to be read - and enjoyed - with pre-school aged children.  Talkabout holidays was produced by Ladybird with the aid of qualified nursery school advisers, to encourage comment and discussion, with young children.  The Talkabout series covers a range of topics that young children would be familiar with and is intended to help parents develop their children’s appreciation of books and ready them for learning to read once they start school.  I’ve already covered Talkabout home and Talkabout starting school in previous Ladybird Tuesday posts.

Each page heading and picture is the starting point for conversation about an aspect of holidaying.
Illustrations are realistic and representative of familiar situations to enable young children to identify objects, creatures and situations.  This recognition and interest is used to encourage their verbal development with simple counting, identification of objects, shapes and descriptive vocabulary, positional language and many other skills useful in developing effective communication and learning to read.

There are also these comic strip pages that allow children to look at the pictures and tell the story themselves.  Not only is this a fun and creative activity, but learning that pictures in sequence can tell a story is a useful strategy to employ as they learn to read.

Ladybird provides parents with notes at the back of the book to enable them to make the fullest use of this book.  

So, we're having a lovely time, how are your summer hols going?  We’ve been bike riding and  scootering, dog walking and garden visiting, painting, sewing, crafting and making to our little hearts content.  And with the British weather doing it’s best for us at the moment (Well, today's dog walk was in the rain, but...) we are having a wonderful time.

I love the summer holidays when there is no need to jump up and get the children off to school.  The little foxes sometimes argue a bit more than usual, as they are spending more time with each other, but, I feel that I am nagging and shouting less, with nothing that we have to get to in a hurry.  

Hurray for the holidays!  If only they could last forever...

This post is part of the Ladybird Tuesday linky started on the Being Mrs C blog, take a look at her posts here.

The rest of Mrs Fox's Ladybird Tuesday posts are here and if you have a collection of Ladybird books, please do feel free to join in.