Category 1 Silver award
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Title :Preschool Adventure (Seikkailujen eskari)
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Authors :Kati Lassila, Virpi Marttila, Minna Salminen, Siri Kolu
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Publisher :
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Country :Finland
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Evaluation :
- The book is practically organized for young learners and for their teachers as one part is about literacy and the other part about numeracy. It is also good to present literacy and numeracy as parallel skills.
- The book has funny illustrations of small animals that most of the children will know from their home environment. The animals are different in size, clothes and attitudes, just as children are.
- The characters are seen in the preschool environment and at home and are involved in activities connected not only to literacy and numeracy but also to environmental education and to the promotion of social skills.
- The activities are recognizable for most children. There are also illustrations of children showing differences in ethnical background.
- The content seems to have a clear progression going from mostly drawing and colouring to learning letters, forms and numbers. There are also exercises for children who can read.
- Many of the math exercises are problem solving and give a good basis for further math education.
- The booklet is a training book that can be used outside preschool and has many exercises connected to letters and forms, but also colouring and drawing.
- There is a rich internet-based teacher's guide where every spread is displayed and commented on, along with songs and additional material.
- The overall design of the learner's manual is straightforward and relevant as well as age-appropriate.
- The activities and tasks of the Learner s' book and workbook are suitably labelled enabling the learners to easily carry them out in the two books.
- Humour is nicely integrated via a collection of funny illustrations of small animals throughout the books.
- The material not only deals with literacy and numeracy but also usefully include concern for environmental and social issues.
- Intercultural consciousness is seriously taken into account as some illustrations involve young children of different cultures and countries.
- The online comprehensive teacher's manual guide provides guidance through the various units as well as supplementary materials including songs likely to help the teacher increase his/her learners 'motivation
- The reversible workbook is funny and inspiring and invites the child to enter one of the two worlds of life either the world of stories (fiction and experiences) or the world of mathematics (interestingly the world of mathematics is 6 pages bigger/longer than the world of stories). But in the pupils book it is the other way around: stories have 65 pages, math 31 pages.
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Funny drawings in the material clearly invites learners to take part into discussions.