The Berenstain Bears Trim the Tree

Today's Book is The Berenstain Bears Trim the Tree by Mike and Jan Berenstain. We read this book on our iPad but you can also purchase a traditional copy.

Summary: A cute lift-the-flap book perfect for toddlers and preschoolers. The Berenstain Bears work together to decorate their Christmas tree.

The traditional book and the Trim the Tree iPad app from Oceanhouse Media both have lift-the-flap features! What I like about the ipad app is that it has three different modes to choose: Read to Me, Read it Myself, and Auto Play. For my little girls, I use this like a listening center. They can listen to the book on their own--which they did multiple times.

To promote reading in young children, individual words are highlighted as the story is read and words zoom up when pictures are touched. You can see in the picture above that she just lifted the flap to reveal a kitten, and when she touched the kitten, the word appeared. The narrator also says the word name too.

Since the book was all about Christmas tree decorations, I thought it would be a perfect time to work on our tradition of decorating wooden photo ornaments. Each child does one each year to hang on our tree. I usually have my younger kids use markers to decorate the ornaments since they usually create less of a mess this way and have more control over where the color goes.

I love looking at the photo ornaments each year, seeing how each child has grown up in just a year's time.

Do you have any Christmas ornament traditions?

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