Book Review: Wonderful Me

Before talking about anatomy and the changes kids go through in puberty, it’s great to have a base of information on what self-care looks like and what it means to be healthy. Wonderful Me: A First Guide to Taking Care of Yourself by Nancy Shapiro, walks kids through all the ways they can care for themselves and others.

The book generally covers aspects of the body, relationships and feelings, covering things like getting enough sleep, taking care of your body, getting exercise and learning how to check in with your body; being a good friend, establishing boundaries, balancing time alone and with others, asking for and offering help and learning to say no; communicating your feelings and using creative ways to express them and relaxing through balloon breathing.

Each topic is covered on a single page or a two-page spread, so it’s a pretty basic overview of these and other issues, but it’s a good place to start for early elementary school kids who are starting to learn to do things for themselves and express their needs more fluently than they could earlier in life.

The book includes illustrations by Vânia Sacramento showing kids with a range of skin tones and physical differences (there’s a child in a wheelchair and one with a hearing aid) so kids should be able to see themselves in the book and recognize that these are things they should be thinking about and doing in their own lives.

It doesn’t touch on anatomy or gender differences and doesn’t get into anything potentially scary (there are some mentions of talking to adults when things don’t feel right or someone asks you to do something you don’t want to do) and would be a fine book for use in a classroom (with an emphasis on being a good friend and being respectful of yourself and others) or at home if these are things you want to make sure your kids know about and do.

About the book: 48 pages, hardcover, published 2024 by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, suggested retail price $16.99

A classic manipulative in the preschool and early elementary classroom is the snap cube, also known as math cubes, unifix cubes or unit cubes. These little one inch cubes often come in a set of 100 in 10 different colors, and they snap together so they’re easy to use for all sorts of math learning, measuring and more.

No Time for Flashcards has a cute robot printable to use with cubes to measure the height of each robot. That one is free but they also have other printable cube mats that are a paid resource.

Catherine & Co uses math cubes to teach kids about measuring volume. They make a letter from cubes and then measure the volume (there’s a printable worksheet in the post).

Pattern recognition is another fun and easy activity you can do with the cubes. You can use printables like these from Planning Playtime, or just make a pattern from cubes and have kids repeat it or figure out what comes next. There’s another good set of pattern printables at English Created Resources.

Because there are 10 sets of 10 cubes in a pack, these are great for teaching one to one correspondence, counting, sorting and basic addition and subtraction. English Created Resources has great printable number mats you can use to form the number from cubes and count out the number of cubes that corresponds to that number.

ParenTutor has a great collection of snap cube activity ideas, most of which are just pictures, but it’s work taking a look through the post for ideas for using them at home or in the classroom.

To give just a few of their examples, you can match linked blocks to the corresponding number of pieces, use blocks to find different ways to add up to 10, compare numbers and determine which one is more or less, skip counting and weighing different numbers of blocks.

You can also use unit cubes to learn letters, like with these super cute alphabet mats from Fun Learning for Kids. Kids can trace the letter, make it out of cubes and practice writing a word that starts with that letter.

Of course you can also use them to build things, since they are blocks, and there are tons of pattern mats on Teachers Pay Teachers. I also love these dinosaur themed mats from Lets Go to Learn on Etsy.

Have you read?

Leave a Reply