Since my first nephew was born nearly 5 years ago, I have been making a trilingual picture book for them every birthday.
It started with “Avocado and Tomato” picture book because I had something that I wanted to share with my nephew (and many other mixed culture children).
After their birth, I based my picture books for them on what I heard from my sister like how he had a difficulty sleeping in his first year, which inspired me to make “Now, it’s time to sleep“.
Some of my picture books, fortunately has been a hit and has become a part of their bed time reading routine and some are an instant hit to them that they want it read over and over again (my nephew especially likes “Pigeon“).
Occasionally, it totally misses the mark and he didn’t really get it.
The one that wasn’t a hit was a picture book I made for him on his 3rd birthday about a story about what happened on one specific moment all around the world.
At this specific time, someone may have watched a sunrise, another picked fruits, a volcano erupted and a baby was born.
In retrospective, the concept probably was too abstract for a boy who just turned three.
As I’m in the middle of planning another picture book to gift my nephew who is soon turning 5 years old, I researched what 5 years old’s development level is like and what they should be learning.
Benefit of learning child’s development to create a picture book
The benefits of learning about the right cognitive and emotional level of the expected reader is that the visual, storyline and word choices can be adjusted so that they can enjoy the experience of being read to.
Also, it make me consider ways to incorporate developmental element into the picture book in a fun way to stimulate the little readers.
5 years old development level
According to an online education service provider since 2004, Time4Learning.com as well as Australian parenting website, raisingchildren.net.au here are a list of 5 year old developments.
I have selected developments that could relate to picture book story lines and visualisation.
- Writing their first and last name
- Recognizing and writing numbers up to 20
- Doing simple addition and subtraction problems
- Knowing the letters of the alphabet
- Reciting the days of the week and months of the year
- Identifying time to the nearest hour using digital and analog clocks
- Ordering events in a sequence
- Might start reading on their own
Improving and practicing phonetic skills - Ability to identify complex emotion like jealousy and fear of failure
- Having been able to do more things, 5 years old enjoy chances to do ‘show and tell’ to others.
- Going to kindergartens provides more indepedence, socialisation outside of home but love and affection from family remains essential.
- Time to play, doing some household chores and reading picture books to or with them are important bonding and development activities.
Based on these learnings, I’ll be working on a picture book that’ll hopefully be age approrpriate to a 5 year old that will be a hit (fingers crossed).
Source:
https://www.time4learning.com/how-to/homeschool-5-year-old.html
https://raisingchildren.net.au/school-age/development/development-tracker/5-6-years
