Ollie and the Wind
This book is best for:
- /l/ sound
- /w/ sound
- conjunction (but)
- identifying obstacles to an action
- personification
- pronouns (he, his)
Review
Ollie lives on a sparsely populated island. There is lots of space to play, but not many friends to play with. One day the sneaky wind steals Ollie’s hat, then it takes his scarf and his balloon too! Ollie wonders why the wind is being so naughty, but then decides that the wind must just want to play. He tries to play with the wind using all his favourite toys, but the wind isn’t interested. Being the problem solver that he is, Ollie keeps persisting until he figures out how to play with the wind.
Ollie and the Wind is a sweet story that personifies the wind. Children will enjoy identifying the obstacles to Ollie’s actions (e.g. why can’t he catch the wind with a net or with a can? Why can’t the wind play chess? etc). This also allows children to work on using the conjunction ‘but’ in their sentences (e.g. He tried…. but….). The pronouns ‘he’ and ‘his’ are repeated many times throughout the book, making it a great choice if your little one is working on this goal. The illustrations are delightful and will encourage children to make inferences about the story. I particularly enjoy the final pages of the book showing a wordless scene of the wind ‘returning’ Ollie’s hat and scarf.
Book Details
Narrative Structure: Complete Episode
Story Plot: Wishing Tale
Themes:
- beach / ocean
- clothing
- problem solving
- toys
- weather
- wind
Speech and Language Targets
Speech Sounds:
- /d/ - day, dance, idea, island, wind, outside, found
- /l/ - lay, Ollie, island, balloon, small, ball, fell
- /s/ - search, saw, sun, outside, pieces, chase, chess, dance
- /s/ blends - scarf, sky, sneaky, small, stars, string
- voiced /th/ - there, the, that, then, together
- voiceless /th/ - thought, things, threw, with
- /w/ - wind, walk, want, with, wave, anywhere, away
Grammar:
- conjunction (but)
- copula (was)
- regular past tense verbs
- irregular past tense verbs (flew, took, ran, thought, brought, threw, fell, found, held)
- possessive pronoun (his)
- subjective pronoun (he)
- action verbs (play, walk, fly, search, chase, dance, catch, offer, search)
- mental verb (thought)
Semantics:
- labelling
- explaining means to a goal
- identifying obstacles to an action
- making inferences (from the pictures)
Concepts:
- location (off, up, outside)
- temporal (day, night)
Social-Emotional:
- problem solving
Narrative:
- setting
- weather
- problem
- plans
- resolution
Book Info
Published by Random House Australia in 2015 (ISBN: 9780857988485)