Party Animals! Written by Tali Kellerstein & Illustrated by Elise Conlin
You are invited to a lively celebration with the adorable furry friends of Party Animals! Explore a collection of thoughtful speech sound poems created by author and speech pathologist Tali Kellerstein. With intentional sequence, Kellerstein writes rhythmic verses popping with alliteration, fun, and creativity for exciting read-aloud entertainment. Unique animals complement each initial consonant sound, like Beach Baboon, Yard Sale Yak, Fashion Show Ferret, and more! Vibrant and playful animal art created by illustrator Elise Conlin dances across each adorable page, evoking interest and curiosity in little readers. Each narrative poem is complimented by engaging illustrations, providing learning opportunities for comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, and fluency. Special features on each page invite the reader to a wild word scavenger hunt and multisensory sound discovery. It's the perfect book to introduce children to twenty-one essential speech sounds via this special speech and sound soiree, and to be noticed is the speech sound cake graphic at the back to give you a sweet taste of the average ages for English consonant acquisition. Children will be gifted a party bag of valuable tips and tricks at the end of the book and learn about the various air, lip, tongue, and teeth sounds. A special note to teachers, educators, and speech-language pathologists provides essential information regarding phonemic awareness, phonics, and other literary elements that enable you and your children to make the most of this enriching extravaganza. So get ready, get wild, and enjoy your time immersed in this furry friend fiesta that supports language development and literacy skills!
Tali Kellerstein is a speech-language pathologist, author, speaker, and founder of The Speak Boutique. In 2020 she launched Party Animals! and has developed additional products to support speech and language. These products include a poster, sound cards, storytelling cards, and she is in the process of creating a board game!
I have had the privilege of speaking with Tali virtually. We shared a common passion of colorful and fun things, phonological awareness, and educating little ones. I personally consider Party Animals! a true treasure to have in my classroom. As a dyslexia therapist, I understand the importance of phonological awareness. It is difficult for little ones with dyslexia. Party Animals is such a fun way to share the essential speech sound consonants with kids in an engaging way. Here are additional activities in how you can use Tali’s collection of poems in the literacy classroom:
At the end of each narrative poem, ask students explicit and implicit comprehension questions. The whimsical and playful illustrations can serve as a guide for retelling and summarizing the story as well!
The vocabulary words on the bottom of the page can be used to create new stories and sentences and also used for grammar word sorts, finding synonyms and antonyms. and even rhyming words. There are lots of opportunity for word play with the words Tali has already selected.
Because each narrative poem follows a word pattern with alliteration, invite your children and students to add an extra verse to each page! They can even create their own poem book with the same characters or a different one, following the author’s verse rhythm.
Party Animals describes the adventures of so many unique animals that children may not be aware of. Invite your children and students to research one of the animals and write their own poem with alliteration using the information gathered.
This book lends itself for fun opportunities to engage in choral reading and echo reading with your little ones. This is a great way to practice fluency or expression, accuracy reading rate. Choral reading is when you and the child read together and echo reading is when you as the adult read a line or stanza first and then the little one echos it. Opportunities for shared reading and dividing this poem into reading parts is a fun idea as well. In other words, one reader will read one line, then the second reader the next line. Add some expression or movement to the poems for a special bonding experience!
To learn more about The Speak Boutique and to view more of Tali Kellerstein’s products, visit her website here .
