My First Book About How Things Grow (My First Books) [Paperback] [Jan 01, 1873] Brooks, F

My First Book About How Things Grow is the only workbook I could find for a 3 year old to introduce basic plant biology. We intend to use it as part of his geography/science learning time. When a child cannot write yet, stickers are a good way to do workbooks. Though this workbook is not perfect, I am grateful it is on the market for our family.First, there were many choices that missed learning opportunities. If you have kids match a label of a word to the word on the page, then they did not learn where the label went or the concepts behind its placement - all they did was match letters and maybe even only the first letter at that. Not very effective.Second, the book ended up with less stickers than I expected. You would think that over 100 stickers is more than ample, but it was not. See below:Pages 2-3 have 12 stickers but none of them really taught anything. Should have had stickers to match the text like herbs, tomato plant, tree, bushes, etc. The stickers should be purposeful to add to the text.Pages 4-5 have 20 stickers with only 5 matching plants to their names & shadows. The other are 15 stickers are labels for parts of a plant and tree. (Note the stickers are labeled for pages 2-3 but actually go on this page). SHOULD have used blank boxes so the child would have to think about where the labels went.Pages 6-7 matches 15 seeds to their names & shadows.Pages 8-9 have 3 stickers. Have to decide which seeds are carried by the wind, animals, or are eaten (YES! made kids think!). SHOULD have made some stickers to put on the description parts even if it was merely putting stickers on the bunny's fur or wind to blow seeds away.Pages 10-11 have 14stickers. They build a plant life cycle.Pages 12-13 have 7 stickers. They match animals to their shadows and names. This section should be on pollinators but pollination completely ignored. SHOULD have stickers for the flower turning into a seed pod and should have addressed pollination.Pages 14-17 have no stickers. SHOULD have had stickers to add into each season's page like flowers in spring, fruits in summer, nuts & seeds in fall, and bare tree in winter.Page 18 has no stickers. SHOULD have had stickers because classifying which part of the plant is being eaten (flowers, stem, leaves, roots, or fruits). In fact, I think page 19 should also be part of this learning because cramming everything on page 18 makes it harder to understand.Page 19 has 5 stickers. You give rewards to the longest, biggest, smallest, and strangest veggies then award the best in show. Nice review of preschool skills, but not really pertinent to this book, so I would include it as the very last page in the workbook.Pages 20-21 have 8 stickers and merely label fruits on a cart. It is word to word matching so no real thinking involved. SHOULD have had stickers for classifying what plants grow on - trees, vines, bushes, etc. The page did not need a fruit cart if they did the teaching part right.Pages 22-23 have 7 stickers and match deciduous leaves to their names ad shadows. SHOULD have included ginkgo trees and some stickers on the evergreen page. Also thought it was odd that deciduous trees where not shown, only their leaves and on the evergreen page, the full trees were shown and the leaves were much much smaller and could not see clear detail. Both leaves and full trees should be shown for all of them.Page 24 matches 11 veggie garden plants to their shadows and names. SHOULD have placed after page 1 and followed it with a page teaching other plant foods growing on orchard trees. It really does not do much at the end of the book.Overall, because the book is so prescribed as to where everything goes and does not even cover pollination... it is only appropriate for first grade and under. It would also need to be done with an adult so the adult could read the material and explain it to them before putting on the stickers.

Very disappointing. A thin soft backed book with language too advanced for a very young child to learn about how things grow and isn't at all exciting or visual enough for them.A book with such a title could have such great potential in getting children interested in how plants/tress etc grow but this i found merely a disappointment. A big chunk of the book are stickers which i didn't expect.i will be returning book. The book if were sold for eg £3 I would keep it but is most definitely not worth the almost £6 I paid for it. Not delivered quickly neither.

A super little book with added stickers! A great activity for a child to do on their own or an adult to do with a child as they read it through. Great pictures & very simple too!!

Very detailed. The kids love it.

I bought this for my almost 2 year old daughter. She has learned most of the key words and she loves doing the stickers. Some of the content is still a bit advanced for her but she understands plants need sunlight and water to grow and we have now made a mini garden for her in pots. I plan to buy more of this type of book for her.

Bought as a present for my great-niece whose Gran is a great gardener. She loved it and said it was one of her favourite books, high praise indeed.