Jen the Hen. (Fun with Phonics: Jen the Hen - Sue Graves)

Member Name: tb4ms

Product:	Fun with Phonics: Jen the Hen - Sue Graves
Date:	01/04/08 (120 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great rhyming text.

Disadvantages: Not the most exciting story line.

- The story -

Ben has ten hens, one of which a.k.a. Jen goes missing. Some men offer to help find Jen........They hunt in different places like the sheep's pen and Ben's den.

Eventually they find Jen in a bucket of what can only be described as 'slops' in the pig pen.
So as you can see, the story is full of rhyming phonetic words.

- Style, Format and Educational Values -

The series of books is 'designed to help the development of literacy skills in children learning to read and spell three letter words or as I call them CVC words.

This book is one of 5 books in an excellent series of books called 'Fun with Phonics'.

This is quite a large book and is unusual in it's layout. Half of it contains the book part, the other half (which is forms the back, thicker card) shows the 8 main CVC rhyming words from the story alongside pictures of the items / things. At the bottom of this section there is a wheel turning with a large 'at' shown. As the wheel is turned the word can be changed to show words such as hen, men, ten, Jen etc... In other words it's an interactive letter wheel!

The text is very large and simple enough for emergent readers to sound out the 3 letter words or join in from memory with the other words.
There are quite a few speech bubbles used, a good introduction to speech bubbles.

This book is ideal for any child who is ready for sounding out CVC words (consonant - vowel - consonant) but it can also be enjoyed by pre-readers.It is a great educational resource:
encourages rhyme recognition.
identify onset and rime of 3 words.
Sounding out skills can be encouraged.
Develops early reading skills.
Identify the necessity for capital letters in names, e.g. Ben, Len and Jen.

To name but a few!

- Illustrations -

The characters in the drawings are very large which I hope you can tell from the photos.

The drawings are bold, simple and very colourful but what they lack in comparison to the other books in this series is a humorous element.

- Price -

ISBN: 1-902367-12-X
This cost me £3.50.

- Other Books by Sue Graves -

Busy Week
Miss Muffet and the spider
Oh George!
Fizz Whiz
Get up Tim

- My verdict -

This is a good book with great educational values. A simple storyline.
What it lacks is a humorous element which some of the others in the series have. It's great the first time round but I've found that it can become a little tedious after the first few readings.
What appeals to children is the fact that because it is so simple, the majority are able to commit it to memory after the first few readings and therefore 'pretend' to read it.

It is however best read on a one to one basis as if it is read to a large group, they don't all get a turn of making the words on the interactive wheel.

Other books in this series:
Fat Cat
Posy the Pig
Dog in the fog
Baby bug

Summary: One of a series of interactive phonic books.