Lyle Walks the Dogs

A perfect story for counting, one-to-one correspondence and retelling skills!

Waber, Bernard.
Lyle Walks the Dogs: A Counting Book.
May 2010.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Review copy provided courtesy of publisher.

Well-known Lyle, Lyle Crocodile returns in this new counting book for children, who join him in his adventures at his new job as a dog-walker. Lyle loves walking... and he loves dogs... so the two combine, resulting in the perfect job for Lyle. In fact, he's so good at it, each day, for ten days he receives one new client, until he's walking a total of ten dogs, who all range in activity and behavior level.

Children will love the adventure Lyle and his ten clients face as they set forth on their daily walks. The story is wonderful for counting practice (by encouraging children to count how many dogs appear on each two-page fold. It is also ideal for one-to-one correspondence (showing children a number and then also pointing out how many objects that numeral represents). The way in which the dogs are presented also make this book great to use when testing children's recall skills (you could create a flannel board set or just print the snapshots of each of Lyle's 10 clients and have your child put the dogs in order from first client to tenth). This is definitely a wonderful book and I'm very excited to try it out with my preschoolers this year!

Learning/Reading Activity:

• Scan the snapshot images of Lyle and the dogs he is walking. Practice your child(ren)'s ability to recall the events of the story by having them retell the story with the props. You could also turn this into a felt board activity by gluing the images to felt!
• While reading, have your child(ren) practice counting skills by searching for specific objects on each page of the book, as suggested by the back cover (shown below).

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