"A colorful look at language arts"
354393
Though the format and the illustrations indicate this oversized picture book is for young children, the content will be helpful for any reader who wants to master the skill of showing, rather than telling, when it comes to writing.  Classroom teachers will find it useful when teaching their budding young writers to choose their nouns and adjectives carefully.

It did bother me to see a couple of misspelled words.

-Hope Irvin Marston, author of EYE ON THE IDITAROD:  AISLING'S QUEST
463960
The book is amazing... All the teachers want to borrow it from my school. It's just that good! The book touches upon every suject and comes with worksheets and fun activities. It's has a lot of great stuff in it for teaching Language arts.
631474
Stephen Cartwright's illustrations make the 100 words come to life.  Each word has a picture.  Then, the magic of this book is that those pictures  are incorporated into a picture which takes up the top 2/3rds of two open  pages.  Not only can the child associate the picture with a word, they can  associate the pictures with objects in the scenes straight out of family  life.

At the beginning of the book, Betty Root (a language consultant)  explains how the process of learning starts at a very early age.  Once  children are able to recognize objects, they also need to see them in  pictures.  She notes how children will make many associations of words and  objects even before they start talking.

The first words are  "Daddy, Mommy, boy, girl, baby, dog and cat."  The last page has  words like "Sweater, table and window."  Most of the words are  all in a row at the base of two open pages.  The scenes from family life  above, all contain a picture of a yellow duck. The duck is hidden so well  in some places, even I had to really look for it.

This book is also  available in French, German and Spanish.  I love to wrap this book up along  with a baby shower gift.

~The Rebecca Review
4279402
My daughter is enjoying working through this book. We got it for her before a trip to a Spanish-speaking country, and I can't say that it helped her a lot with conversational Spanish, but it really did help her basic vocabulary. The pages are colorful and there are lots of activities to help kids apply the words they are learning to everyday objects, colors, etc. Perhaps as we get further into the book, there will be more information on how the verbs work and so on.
2869199
Stephen Pinker's recent foray in to the world of language is not for everyone.  The topic doesn't so deeply tackle our cherished notions of self like The Blank Slate and doesn't appeal to a wide audience but it does offer a window in to what it means to be human.  One of my least favorite topics in school was grammar and I will admit I found some of the sentence, verb and adjective deconstruction a bit tedious at first.  But once I delved further in to the book, I began to appreciate the linguistic deconstructions and I find myself analyzing words and sentence structure for fun.  The author makes connections with the way we phrase sentences and the way we use grammar to try and uncover a universal way that humans visualize the world.  He claims that the way we speak about the world is not a historical accident but is a demonstration of the way our mind works.  The findings that he uncovers are interesting but not earth-shattering.  Deciphering how we mix metaphors of physical objects with knowledge. when we 'gather information' as if information were seashells plucked from the beach is an example of a topic dissected in the book.  The study of linguistics that the author provides offers a unique look in to our neurology that is much less costly and invasive than brain scans and dissections.  Additionally, this book will give you a much greater appreciation for the development of language in humans and for the evolution of how we think about the world.
2714319
Anyone who regularly read children's books know that alphabet books come out with regularity. It takes something special to make one shine. This one does. The theme of this book is a circus parade, and each letter corresponds to a person or animal that might be at the circus. The rhyming text is fun to read. But it is the illustrations by Ag Jatkowska that really make this book stand out. They are colorful and fun to look at. Young children learning their letters should really enjoy this book. Recommended.
4552311
A beautiful book highlighting the importance of Language and Performance and how those two can be used as agency for education and social change.
788969
Awesome book. Very colorful and a great tool for advanced learning.  The author tied colors, letters, and animals together for a triple learning experience for children.  Very good job!
865289
The DVD is a two volume set on a single DVD, it plays for approximately 92 minutes, and it is rated for ages 6 years to adult.  Students learn phonics skills and phonemic awareness through cool music, very colorful action, and high interest games.

The visual affects grab students attention and keeps them focused throughout the lesson by using colorful graphics, comical animated characters, authentic characters, and playful songs.  I especially like the on-screen-mouth that demonstrates and enunciates how to make the sounds in each catagory.

Volume I contains the following:  Introduction, vowels, short vowel sounds, consonants with vowels, consonant-vowel-consonant game, special sounds of (c, g, qu, x), putting it all together, double consonants (words ending in ll, ss, ff), plural s and ending s, ending consonant blends, practice with ending blends, beginning consonant blends, three-consonant lends, consonant digraphs and trigraphs, silent e intro, silent e makes the long vowel sound, silent e practice, and a fun quiz.

Volume 2 contains the following:  Introduction, long a, long e, long i, long o, long u, r-controlled vowels (ar, er, ir, ur, or, ire, are, air), dipthongs (ai, oy, out, aw, au, aw, all, al), break it down (syllables), schwa sound, ending sounds, y and le endings, rule breakers, ph and gh, memory words, and silent consonants. The Rock and Learn series of DVDs are super tools for helping students learn about phonics.  The DVDs are a high interest method for reinforcing phonics, phonemic awareness, decoding skills, sight word recognition, and letter-sound recognition.

Repetition is the key to helping students grasp phonics skills and phonemic awareness.  The phonics lesson focuses on a specific skill while other skills are being introduced, and or reinforced.  Students watch the portion of the DVD for that particular skill, and in doing so their schema about that particular skill is boosted.

For example, students listen, watch, and engage in fun activities on the DVD related to beginning blends (bl).  Then, I present my students with a blends chart, on large chart paper, that focuses on words that begin with that particular blend (bl)--black, blend, block, bleak, blue, blood, Blake, blunt, etc.

I highlight the blend with a different color marker such as red, and the other letters are written in blue. My students and I use see-say, say-it-slow, and say-it fast to decode the words from the large chart paper.  I also use blends poetry to help my students practice what they have learned.

On early release days (Wednesdays), I divide students into groups of 3 or 4 and we choral read the blend poem together until students sound smooth and fluent.

Students then get an opportunity to practice the poem in their groups.  When everyone is prepared, each team takes their turn reading the poem as a fluency exercise.

The team with the least number of errors gets to choose three treats from the treasure box, second place selects two treats, and third place picks one treat.

I also us the precision teaching model to assess my students progress with that particular blend (bl).  When students have scored 80% or better we move on to a new blend, and or skill.
3434252
This book on academic literacy introduces readers to an important concept. As academia becomes more diverse, teachers of writing and literature encounter more students for whom English is a second language. This book is not so much about how to  t each or learn English, but how thinking in English is dependent on fluency in English, and thinking in another language can affect academic performance in the language of the academy. It is an interesting collection of essays that stand well on their own. I thought the editors could have arranged them in a more useful way.
1393311
My son is working his way through this book, and enjoying it. It is colorful and engaging. It covers topics like days of week, months of the year, colors, numbers, time, and objects at school and home. He uses this book in conjunction with flashcards, audio french, and the Memrise app for a more complete learning experience.
2453629
Colorful characters and the author's benevolent interest in their failures, foibles, and successes are among the special qualities of this book. Nancy Elizabeth Sephton, Editor and Author, Berkeley, California
I found Mr. Batchelder's presentation through example to be both instructional and entertaining.  As a student of handwriting analysis I found that I absorbed the principles without even trying.  Mike Goodman, Bike Shop Owner, Atlanta, Georgia
This is an ideal book for the novice in handwriting analysis.  The chapter titles are clever and grabs attention.  The traits in bold type makes it easy to identify in the appendices.  The book is fun to read and easy to follow.  Most importantly, it is accurate.  Elois S. Barrett, C.G.A. Certified Graphoanalyst (1973, Columbia, South Carolina
This unique collection of handwriting specimens and their accompanying analyses will provide, for those new this art, a fascinating inside look at the theory and complexity of the art of handwriting analysis.  Helen Harvey, Well known Atlanta, Georgia Potter and Artist
The author, Joshua Batchelder...ever a gregarious, optimistic, and enthusiastic student of human behavior, gathers a book full of interesting people and makes them even more interesting by his careful attention to their unique personalities as revealed through their handwriting.  Helen Harvey, Well known Atlanta, Georgia Potter and Artist
2634750
This is an interesting and colorful book with excellent photos. Each two page spread has five items of the color and a cut out circle showing part of an item with a question. For example, the red page shows cherries, dress, car, fish, drum, and the question by the cutout is "This helps to put out fires. What is it?" Lifting the flap shows a fire truck. The photos are excellent and the book design adds interest. The 2005 edition is an improved redesign of an earlier edition. Karen Woodworth Roman
2350743
I would recommend this book to all those who love language, who are considering writing or who teach English.
Helpful and enlightening.
830001
This beautiful book explores color and our world through one girl's imagination. The text is beautiful and at times meditative. I love that seasons are also explored. The illustrations are dynamic and you can see the strokes/textures. A beautiful book.
339482
The purpose of this book is to teach languages; some linguistics is taught in the process, but the emphasis is on languages. The main body of the book consists of six chapters, one for each continent (Oceania is grouped with Australia), and one for pidgin languages. The surrounding material consists of chapters on classification of languages and writing systems, and a set of language maps.

Each chapter in the main body starts with a summary of the languages found in the region concerned, followed by "sketches" of two languages from the region; exercises introducing a few more languages and selected literature references conclude the chapter. This approach gives quite a balanced view of the languages of the world.

The languages featured are: Europe: Russian and Finnish (with exercises about Turkish and Sanskrit); Asia: Mandarin Chinese and Classical Tibetan (+ Hmong and Japanese); Africa: Modern Literary Arabic and Swahili (+ !Xu (Khoisan)); Oceania: Hawaiian and Dyirbal (+ Tagalog, Fijian and Buang (Papuan)); Americas: Yup'ik (Eskimo) and Quechua (+ Hixkaryana, Aztec, and Huave); Pidgin and Creole: Tok Pisin (+ Hawaiian Creole English. Each "sketch", which is actually a description of reasonable depth, covers the background, phonetics, morphology, and syntax of the language, in about twenty pages. This knowledge is then applied to analyse a small (about fifteen sentences) text; the analysis consists of a literal morpheme-by-morpheme translation, explanatory notes and a translation to normal English. These sketches are of high quality; seriously working your way through such a "sketch" gives one a good grasp of the language and may well allow one to decipher simple texts in it, using a dictionary. The treatment of the languages in the exercises is of course much more restricted.

The chapter in pidgins and creoles has this same structure, and Tok Pisin (Talk Pidgin) gets the same treatment as, for example, Finnish or Quechua. It is remarkable how much Tok Pisin looks like a normal language under this treatment, even though it is evident that the English original is never far away: "Dispela man i kam asde em i papa bilong me" = This-fellow  man he come yesterday him he father belong me = This man who came yesterday is my father.

In summary this book gives the student/reader some knowledge of a very wide range of languages and their features, supplemented by more in-depth knowledge of a dozen or so specific languages; a good combination it seems to me.
Having finished the book I came away with the intuitive impression that actually all languages are the same. For example, some languages have prepositions, some have postpositions, and others have case endings, and so on, but even these differences repeat themselves so often that they become next to meaningless.
3540098
This product offers a fun way to practice sight words and can engage students in fluent reading. The content of the poetry is fun for students to read and illustrate. Many skills can be introduced throgh the poetry in this book.