Bip, Bop, and Boo Get Ready for School

July 1, 2015
Lots of preschool lessons are packed into a single, oversized board-book package. Three main characters lead children through the many activities that pack the pages of this educational title. Bip the Cat introduces numbers and counting, Bob the Elephant focuses on words and stories, and activities involving creativity and art are the domain of Boo the Monkey. Each double-page spread is devoted to a place, such as the bedroom, the kitchen, the playroom, etc., and each includes multiple activities that ask kids to practice counting, naming, sorting, and matching objects, as well as identifying shapes and colors. For example, in the kitchen, children are asked to identify items in a lunch box by color and shape and to count cups and fruit. In many cases, kids can check their answers by lifting flaps. While the activities are fairly interesting and certainly educational, they will likely require a caregiver's guidance to put little learners through their paces. And because there is so much going on, caregivers may want to choose just one or two double-page spreads to work with at a time. A note on the inside front cover provides some good advice about how "to get the most from this book." It's a little busy, but caregivers looking for plenty of skills practice in one volume may find this one a good value. (Board book. 2-5)

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