Homeschool Friday - Turtle and Snake Go Camping

Homeschool Friday is a feature here at Somewhere Only We Know that showcases books my family reads during homeschool and provides a mini-review for each.

Turtle and Snake Go Camping

By: Kate Spohn

Publication: June 1, 2000 by Penguin Young Readers

32 pages

Genre: Children's, First Readers

Source: Personal Library

( Goodreads | Amazon )

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Goodreads description--Turtle and Snake are going camping. Where should they put their tent? They splash through a brook, climb over some rocks, and paddle across a pond, before they find the perfect spot. But the forest is a little too scary at night. These endearing characters help beginning readers gain confidence.

Turtle and Snake Go Camping is one that my son voluntarily pulled from our stack of level-1 readers. He will often say a book looks "boring" or "cheesy", so for him to choose a book is a big thing. I was worried that he might not be at a level to actually read this book because "turtle" isn't a word that he's learned the phonics principles yet (words that end in le). But number 1, the word "turtle" isn't actually in the book, only the title. And number 2, he has been doing surprisingly well using context clues to help him with words that he doesn't know or hasn't learned the phonics to be able to sound out completely.

I'm always looking for books that are repetitive with words or sounds because that helps build fluency without each sentence being a repeat. Turtle and Snake Go Camping was a good method of doing this because Turtle and Snake go camping and then come back home. So the actions they do to get there are the same actions they take to go back home. And this provided repetition without it being "cheesy" as my son might say. He did give me a little giggle there at the end also. Turtle and Snake Go Camping gets 4 Stars. Have you or your child read Turtle and Snake Go Camping? What did you think? Let me know!