Because the text of this book is a song, it has a wonderful rhythm for reading aloud. Alternatively, you can sing it while turning the pages! Rojankovsky's illustrations have a lovely sketched quality which present charming pastoral scenes for each animal family without the animals becoming anthromorphized. This book also helps with learning the counting numbers 1-10, as the song progresses from the tortoise with one tortoise child to the rabbit with ten rabbit children. Cecelia loves to listen to and sing the song while following the illustrations in the book.

Over the Meadow by John Langstaff is a wonderful counting book. I enjoyed reading the book because each page brought a new animal and illustrations. The book starts off with one turtle and the turtle's offspring and as the book progresses it has a new animals with more offspring on each page. The illustrations shows details of each habitat. This aspect of the book made following along extremely easy. The text was very repetitive but i think this feature of the book is appropriate for the age attended. Each page of the text was same expect for the animal, the number of animals, and the sound each animal makes. The overall message of the book was counting and coming familiar with different animals in a meadow. ( )

This is an excellent poem to read aloud to young students for a multitude of reasons. It has a great rhythm and a predictable rhyme scheme that students can help complete the words to while you read it aloud to them. The animals throughout the story are completing actions that students can perform as a part of a short sensory break or kinesthetic activity. Finally, This poem seems like it would connect with students in a very fundamental sense because it is describing families and what they do together. I think this book has a lot of applications for various activities in the classroom and is an excellent book for teachers to use with students. ( )

I love, love, love this book. The illustrations are gorgeous, this is the song my mother used to sing to me when I was little. Boy was I surprised a couple of years ago when I found this book and realized she hadn't made up the song just for me. ( )

The classic rhyme/song about an old mother turtle and her little turtle one, as well as foxes, robinsm chipmunks, bees, beavers, frogs, owls, spiders, and rabbits. Numbers 1 to ten. ( )