When I was first pregnant with BookBairn I was pretty much convinced I was having a boy. I was drawn to all the cute little boy clothes i...

Amazing Machines

Wednesday, August 10, 2016 BookBairn 14 Comments


When I was first pregnant with BookBairn I was pretty much convinced I was having a boy. I was drawn to all the cute little boy clothes in the shops. And when I found out she was a girl, I was surprised and it took me a while to get used to pink. I'm not really a pink girl myself. And that newborn collection is always the most sugary pink. In the end I needn't have bothered embracing all things girly and pink. Now that BookBairn is becoming old enough (and willful enough) to express her own interests it turns out she's not that into pink either (unless it's her new Peppa Pig pyjamas which she is obsessed with!). She loves "ga-reeeen" (green) and favours orange toys (she always puts the orange coins in her piggy bank last).

And she loves vehicles. She loves her toy cars and her train set and let's not even mention buses! She's full on obsessed with spotting buses. It makes our walks out and about a bit more interesting that those I previously mentioned in our 'All Kinds of Cars' post. We are lucky because we live in farming country and are near the farmer's fields so we often see tractors and combine harvesters on our walk. And we walk past both the fire and police stations and beside the railway line on our walks to the park or duck pond. We have lots of interesting transport on our door step! Perfect for my little transport fan!

I recently picked up another couple of brand new shiny books in our library (you know how much I love those - read here). The 'Amazing Machines' series by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker are a great collection of early word primers that all focus on different vehicles. Each book focuses on a different theme: numbers, colours, sounds and opposites. Packed full of fascinating vehicles these books have really engaged BookBairn.

Her favourite is definitely the 'Sounds' book and she loves doing impressions of the train and the fire engine (I don't particularly like, however, that the plane goes "bump bump" - I hate turbulence!). But she loves seeing all the different vehicles and flicks through the pages often and names what she can see. We also enjoy the 'Colours' book as it has a submarine on the cover which she now easily recognises thanks to her play submarine.

BookBairn has just started becoming interested in numbers and I think the 'Numbers' book would be great for her when she is a bit older (at the moment she just randomly says two, six and ten). And the 'Opposites' book is great but the concepts are a little bit beyond her understanding when presented in illustrations rather than in a real world context, but again, she would love this one when she gets a bit older.

All of the books are wonderfully illustrated using bold and bright colours against plain white backgrounds making the vehicles the stars of the show! They also feature an array of animals operating the vehicles which makes them seem cute: it feels odd to describe a digger as "cute" but these illustration really are. Each book also features a 'review' style page at the end with miniature images of all the illustrations from the book and repeats the vocabulary. These are hidden under a large flap, encouraging little ones to reveal the page showing all the vehicles.

They are a lovely little collection if you have a vehicle-lover like me! I'm sure we will be out and about spotting cars, buses, tractors, etc on out walks again soon and I hope these books will help to expand BookBairn's vocabulary encouraging her to describe them with colours or repeat the sounds they make.

Happy Tractor-Spotting!
Mummy and BookBairn xx



*DISCLAIMER* We borrowed these from our library!



MamaMummyMum

14 comments:

  1. Love the disclaimer and library name-check, as well as those gorgeous books

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    1. Our library is so good to us! They deserve a name-check!

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  2. These books look great. BookBairn will enjoy them because she really is interested in the different types of transport. I'm glad she likes playing with her toy cars especially after the embarrassment of the Baby Toot Toots singing on the bus when I was bringing them home from the toy shop. :-)

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    1. She certainly enjoys her cars doesn't she?! She would have loved to be on the bus with you though!

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  3. Love shiny new library books - we may just have been the first to borrow "Oi Dog!" Fans of everything with wheels here too. Another lovely post and more fab pictures :)

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    1. It's hard to beat that feeling of getting the books first! Thanks Kate! x

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  4. I love board books like these, so vibrant :) Thanks for sharing with #ReadWithMe

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    1. Sometimes I wish book designers would pay as much attention to books for grown ups as they do for little ones! x

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  5. We love The Amazing Machines books here. Amazing Aeroplanes is a great one to explain a first plane journey :)

    #readwithme

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    1. Not seen that one but sounds great. I'm not brave enough to take BookBairn on a plane yet!

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  6. These are definitely books my grandson would like. Funny but his mum was obsessed with cars and the like when she was tiny too.
    #readwithme

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  7. These sound lovely, my 13 month old is just starting to get interested in vehicles. Like you we see plenty of farm vehicles so we can often be found stopped on the pavement waving at tractors!
    #readwithme

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    1. For us it's definitely more buses than tractors! Haha!

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