Balikbayan Box: Journey to the Philippines has simple and repetitive text to help reinforce vocabulary to younger audiences. This book introduces prepositions in an easy to understand format. Prepositions link nouns, pronouns, and phrases to other words in a sentence.
Most children show an understanding of prepositions (they can follow a command to look "on the table" for an item. "On" being the preposition in that sentence). While many children's books emphasize naming words (nouns), action words (verbs), or descriptive words (adjectives), very few focus on prepositions. However, prepositions contribute to spatial awareness and deserve some focus. It is another reason why Balikbayan Box: Journey to the Philippines can be used to develop vocabulary that many other children’s books overlook.
The following activities were created to help foster growth in this particular area of language development.
In mathematical terms, this story also introduces children to spatial ideas. As the Balikbayan Box takes a journey to the Philippines, children learn: · To describe the location of objects using spatial words, such as inside. · To describe the direction of objects using spatial words, such as going on. · To name spatial words that are the opposite of one another, such as upside down and right-side up.
The Math Storybook Guide includes a Discussion Guide as you read the story.