The World Around Us: Get Set for Kindergarten #3: Social Studies is a book that, as is implied from the titles, helps Prekindergarten students get prepared to go to Kindergarten. This book is essentially a very basic introduction to the idea of social studies. The World Around Us explains maps, communities, continents, and many other simple ways of talking about a topic previously not taught. This book was also interactive, suggesting different activities at the end of certain pages. Some who are using this to teach will find these suggestions helpful. The characters of this story are animals, which I feel will appeal to the age of the target audience. The illustrations are cute, helping explain the story. ( )

Mrs. Jenkins teaches a class that tackles a variety of topics ranging from different types of homes to who makes up their families to community helpers in their town.

Personally, I was not a huge fan of this book. For starters, it is way too didactic and heavy-handed, with essentially little creativity, plot, or characterization. To add on to that mess, it is all over the place in its lessons. Several of the topics mentioned in the class are very specific, close-to-home items children of almost any age could relate to -- personal qualities, family life, ways to be a helper, etc. But then there's also some random geographic bits about continents and flags as well as a brief bit (arguably, too shallow) about holidays. And finally, the illustrations are far too basic and cartoon-like for my taste.

That being said, I do appreciate what the book is trying to do, which is to help parents and others extend reading beyond a simple recitation of the words on the page, instead engaging children in the story by asking questions, examining illustrations closely, and relating what's on the page to things in the readers' own personal lives. Having a background in education and librarianship, I'm well aware of how to do this with any picture book and preferably one that has a better written and more interesting plot line than this one. However, I'm also aware that many parents (especially new ones) aren't aware of this and could use some prodding in that regards.

In addition, I found that several children I read this book aloud to were actually quite captivated by it, listened intently, and answered the questions presented, thus opening up conversations. They even asked to hear it a second and third time in some cases. So while I wouldn't necessarily put this book on my list of "best of" titles, I do see its value in certain cases. ( )

I had mixed feelings about the book “The World Around Us” by Rosemary Wells. One thing that I really enjoyed about the book is that it is very engaging and includes activities that go along with each page. These activities include drawing a picture of your family, writing an all about me page, drawing a picture of your home, and discussing what holidays you celebrate. These activities would be very engaging for a child, and is also a good way for a teacher to get to know her class, and for the students to get to know each other. However, one reason I did not like the book is because it covered so many topics in such a short book. It talked about family, places in the community, community workers, states, transportation, holidays, and hobbies. It seems to me that this would be very overwhelming for a young reader to cover so many topics in one story. Rather, the author should have chosen fewer topics and covered them more in depth. The main idea of the book is for children to think about their life and the community that they live in. ( )

This book has to do with different animals playing the roles of being students in Mrs. Jenkin's Class at Hilltop School. Throughout the story, the students are asked to draw pictures and to identify the different surroundings in the community such as transportation, hobbies, jobs, helpers, etc. Different cultures are shared and the students are able to express themselves and all share their ideas on what they see or know about the different things within their family, community, and world. I think this is very important in the real world. When I have my own classroom one day as a future educator, i want to incorporate activities like the animated teacher in the book did.

This book first starts off with the teacher, Mrs. Jenkins, asking her students to write something down about themselves. Next the teacher goes on to talk about the different types of families, where families live, the community,police officers, firefighters, and mail carriers. She encourages her students to keep their community safe and clean. Then she starts to talk about the world, the different continents, the flags for each country,how peple get from one place to another, and even holidays. Mrs. Jenkins goes over alot of different things that day at school.