Our monthly reading guides help enhance your Ranger Rick Jr. subscription by recommending ways you can use the magazine to encourage a strong foundation for your child’s literacy development.
Each month Ranger Rick Jr. brings fun and educational articles to your home. The August issue has many interesting opportunities to read with your child while learning about animals.
What do animals eat? In A Tale of Two Turtles on page 8, we learn box turtles eat “almost anything”. Ricky and Pals in The Very Hungry Rabbit on page 20 tells us rabbits eat lettuce and carrots. While reading these two articles, ask the child or children what other animals eatdogs (meat, dry dog food), cats (birds, mice, milk), elephants (leaves, grass, peanuts), squirrels (acorns and seeds), bats (mosquitoes), cows (grass, hay), horses (hay, oats, carrots). Use your imagination to think of other animals. What is the child’s favorite food – ice cream, watermelon, chicken, French fries, hamburgers? This theme of animal foods can be expanded by introducing new words: carnivores (animals that eat meat), herbivores (animals that eat plants), and omnivores (animals that eat both plants and meat). Ask the child if she or he is a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore.
Ricky and his pals have vivid imaginations in the story The Very Hungry Rabbit on pages 20-23. As you read, it can be fun for the child to hear Ricky, Bizzie, Mitzi, and Flora speak in different voices. Ricky Raccoon could be a young boy’s voice, Bizzie Beaver could have a deeper voice, and Mitzi Mink and Flora Skunk could have girl voices. Use your normal speaking voice for the narrator.
When following along with your finger as you read, ask the child if she or he recognizes a word – begin with “Ricky” and have the child read that word every time your finger comes to it on the page. To help your child recognize alphabet letters, ask her or him to underline words that begin with the same letter as the child’s name – for example The and Tyler, Mitzi and Makayla, house and Hailey. There are words that begin with the letter of every child’s name.
Every time you read to a child it improves her or his vocabulary, imagination and interest. Use the variety of stories, pictures and activities in Ranger Rick Jr. to spend time with children.
Prepared by Mike Wilson
Prekindergarten Reading Encouragement Project (PREP) Founder
PREP – Helping childhood literacy one family at a time.