4 out of 4 stars
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Caldecott Activity Book: to be used with Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes is a detailed activity book written for an adult, like a parent or teacher, to use with a child or class of children. The author, Claudia Krause, includes a range of activities that follow the book chronologically. These activities and discussion prompts encourage the child to think more deeply about the kitten’s thoughts and feelings while engaging in art, writing, math, and science.
This book has a much wider and more detailed range of activities than I expected when I selected it to review. The author has created multiple activities in different categories to go with each page of the original book. This works well for the adult coordinating the activities because they can choose one or two that work best for them from the many choices provided to accompany each page.
I especially enjoyed that the book included activities that pertained to every subject taught in school. One page of the book could inspire an art activity in which the children copy the drawing on the page, a writing activity in which kids find synonyms for a word used on the page, a science activity in which the kids learn more about cats, and a math activity in which the children count the number of fireflies on the page. It’s clear that the author has a great deal of experience with children and knows the types of activities that can hold their attention while inspiring them to think about the world around them.
I tried to find something to criticize about this book, but there really isn’t much that I would want changed. I think it would be easier for the adult if the author started a new page each time the activities coordinated with a new page of the original book. I also thought it would be nice to have a table of contents listing all the pages on which activities to teach a certain subject (art, writing, etc.) could be found. Finally, pages 64 and 65 of the book were blank, which may just be an issue with the pdf copy I received.
Overall, I would rate this activity book 4 out of 4 stars. It includes a wide range of ideas for activities that can be used by parents or teachers with individual children or classes. I only had a few small criticisms of the book, and I don’t think they’re reason enough to remove a star, especially because the book appears to be professionally edited. The activities in this book could be used for children ages 3 to 10, but an adult would definitely need to coordinate the activities because many of them require the internet or physical materials like paint and glue.
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Caldecott Activity Book: to be used with Kitten's First Full Moon, by Kevin Henkes
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