Bizzy Bear: Find and Follow On the Building Site

By Author / Illustrator

Benji Davies, Kristin Atherton

Genre

Early Skills

Publisher

Nosy Crow Ltd

ISBN

9781839947643

Format

Board book

Published

01-02-2024

Synopsis

Join Bizzy Bear on the building site in this chunky new board book with sliding counters. Bizzy Bear is helping the builders build a house today. There are lots of jobs to do and he needs your help! Push the rubble, build the walls and get the garden ready with four easy-to-use moving counters.

Learn farm vocabulary with simple first words and helpful text prompts to encourage talking. Then push Bizzy Bear along four different tracks with a moving counter on every spread, plus an extra one on the cover! The perfect book for children who love things that go, busy building sites and love being in control of the story!

Other titles in the series include: On the Farm, At the Zoo and In Space.

Reviews

Bizzy Bear: Find and Follow On the Building Site is the perfect book for an energetic toddler who is always on the go! Bizzy Bear has certainly got his work cut out for him… He must shift the sand with his bulldozer, tip the rubble from the dump truck, hammer nails into the wood and even rake the garden. Bizzy bear is in desperate need of some little hands to help him complete these jobs. Can you slide Bizzy Bear around the building site and help him?

This book has many uses and can really ignite children's will to read and their enjoyment of books. Why not put this book next to the sand pit area? Or perhaps alongside some construction toys? My favourite thing about this book is the way it can ignite the development of both gross and fine motor skills. It's likely that children will want to reenact Bizzy Bear's day. Invite children to do this through play by manipulating diggers and vehicles with sand or by using construction blocks and tools to build.

These activities are great for developing gross motor skills. Gross motor skills are integral to the development of fine motor skills. Fine motor skills help our children to do everyday tasks such as eating and getting dressed. The sliding counters on every page are a great support for this. This interactive element can be used further by encouraging children to practice using a different finger each time to move the sliders around the varying paths on each page. Encourage them to consider how much pressure is needed to move the counter. Can they use a different body part to move the counter?

The wonderful thing about sharing books with children is that we are able to read words to children that are beyond their reading ability. The left-hand side of every page provides this opportunity perfectly. There are labels alongside images the child can see in the busy scene, for example: bulldozer, crane, clipboard, spanner and rake. With an adult encouraging children to articulate these new words, this book can facilitate substantial vocabulary growth. But be prepared - my little one is now spotting diggers and dumpers everywhere we go!

Board book / Reviewed by Jessica Bunney, teacher