My Doctor and Me ABC: Children's Book Review

** I received a digital copy of this book to preview as a gift. After reading and enjoying, I agreed to write a review. The opinions expressed in this post are my own. I was not compensated financially in any way. Also included in this post are my Amazon Affiliate links to the book.**

If you are a regular follower of little illuminations, you know that one of my passions is children's literature. I love collecting it, reading it and especially sharing it! I try to provide my students with a wide variety of reading material on our bookshelf relating to the topic we are currently discussing. Just before beginning our study on community helpers, the stars aligned and I received a message asking if I would like to preview an e-copy of a new book for children about going to the doctor called "My Doctor and Me ABC" written by Dr. Stephanie Cox, M.D. and illustrated by Emily Burger. Score!!!

Photos from "My Doctor a.nd Me ABC" used with permission from author

"My Doctor and Me ABC" is an adorably fun book that presents a healthy habit, body part, instrument or  medical exam component using a medical vocabulary word that goes with each letter of the alphabet, along with a little rhyme. It is like taking a mini field trip to the doctor's office!

Photos from "My Doctor a.nd Me ABC" used with permission from author

The illustrations are adorable and illustrate each concept well.

Photos from "My Doctor a.nd Me ABC" used with permission from author

Photos from "My Doctor a.nd Me ABC" used with permission from author

Dr. Stephanie Cox is a Family Physician in Iowa and enjoys caring for the children in her practice. She wrote the book in an effort to ease fears for children experiencing a doctor's visit. 

"My Doctor and Me ABC" has already received some notable attention. It has just won an Honorable Mention from the 2014 Readers' Choice 2014 International Book Awards. I'm sure it will be on some of the other book award lists soon!

I love the rhyming text and the use of common medical jargon. I think it is never too early to start helping children learn correct terminology--and this book does this beautifully without going over their heads!

Photos from "My Doctor a.nd Me ABC" used with permission from author

I read the book to my class and they LOVED it! I would definitely recommend getting this book for children before visiting the doctor's office or for teachers to use when learning about health and wellness or doctors/community helpers.

If you would like to purchase the book, you may click on my Amazon Affiliate link below:

Dr. Cox also has a facebook page for the book: "My Doctor and Me ABC" on which she shares about the book and posts and articles about kids' health. Stop by and give her page a "like" and be sure to let her know little illuminations sent you!

I love to read your thoughts and comments! Please share them in the "Comments" section below this post!

Going To The Doctor: Our Community Helpers

****Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.****

Going to the doctor can be scary for kids. When we talk about community helpers, I always include discussions and books about people in the medical profession. We talk about why it is important to have regular check-ups, going for sick visits and even immunizations. No one likes getting a shot, and preschoolers are often even more apprehensive since they are precisely at an age where many of the booster immunizations are administered. I think helping children know what to anticipate during a visit can be reassuring and helps to alleviate some of the fear. Whenever possible, I try to have parents (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) come in and share what they do. 

One of our parents (a doctor) came to visit and shared a sweet book called "What's In A Doctor's Bag?" by Neil Shulman and Sibley Fleming. She then pulled out items from her doctor's bag and demonstrated each item. Later, she let the kids explore and experiment with the items. The children listened to their heartbeats and had their reflexes tested. 

In our small groups later in the week, children made a little doctor kit, placing some of the first aid supplies inside while discussing what each item was used for.

 

We had a pharmacist (another parent) come to speak to our class. She talked about medicines, first aid and spreading germs. We did a great little experiment on spreading germs. She added some fine glitter to a bottle of hand sanitizer to simulate germs and gave two children a little squirt to rub on their hands. Each child shook hands with another student and that student continued to pass on the handshake. After everyone had finished, we looked at our hands. Even though only two people had the hand sanitizer germs, almost everyone had a little glitter on their hands! This really helped illustrate the concept of spreading germs in a concrete way. 

After talking about simple wound care (such as bug bites, cuts and scrapes), she gave use a little first aid kit for our class. We already have a pretty extensive first aid kit both in our classroom and in our school office, but this one is perfect to use on the fly for field trips. 

One of our neighboring classes did a cute craft about x rays. The students traced around their arms with chalk on black paper and glued cotton swabs to represent bones on the x ray. Too cute!!!!

I am so fortunate to have such great parents that are willing to come in to share their occupations with the class! I think many of the children's fears were eased by getting to know our community helpers and asking questions. Thank you, Dr. Syed, and Mrs. Williams for sharing your time and expertise with us!

If you'd like more information about the book Dr. Syed read to our class, click the link below.  My Amazon Affiliate link:

And a few links for "medical" supplies for doctor/medical play:

           

I'd love to read your thoughts or comments! Please share them below the post!

Our Pre-K Community

Last week, we talked about our community and the people who work around us, as well as the jobs they do. We've built a mini-community in our classroom, using each center as a different location. We have a doctor's office, construction area, restaurant, school, police department and even an outdoor cafe!

The doctor's office was set up in our science center, so the doctors could do research in between seeing patients.

 

One of small group activities was to talk about some of the things you might find in a doctor's kit and glue them onto our "doctor's bag". We used band aids, craft stick (tongue depressor), q-tip, gauze and a cotton ball.

Our little indoor restaurant was hopping with lunch orders.

It's such a small community that the firefighters and policemen have second jobs working the register at the local cafe!

Our block center was a construction zone. Buildings were going up left and right, so I guess the economy is good in our community!

Our "Roads and Bridges" department was located in our sensory table. The children enjoyed bulldozing new roads and making hills!

To get a little fine motor practice, we used grocery store sale circulars and a few magazines to cut our pictures of food. We glued these on construction paper to make "menus" for our restaurant and outdoor cafe.

Deborah Stewart, over at Teach Preschool, posted about an outdoor cafe she created at her new school. I was so taken by the idea and was writing my lesson plans for our "Community" week, so I just added that in. We do a lot of changing to various areas of our learning environment, but I hadn't really extended dramatic play outside. I thought this might give us the perfect chance to do it! The kids have loved it. I think we'll keep our "Sidewalk Cafe" theme box by the door for a while, then we'll switch it out. Thanks, Deborah, for the inspiration, the kids are loving this!

One day, we drew flowers on the sidewalk with chalk all around the cafe. It's made a nice little garden to dine by!

 

My favorite meal served at the Sidewalk Cafe: SPAGHETTI & MEATBALLS! I thought it was pretty ingenious of the kids to use the sweet gum balls as meatballs, but many of the younger kids call them "meatballs" when they find them on the playground, so it's probably not a stretch of the imagination to them!

Bon Appitite!

A Visit To The Fire Station

October is Fire Safety month and we always plan a trip to the fire station. We have several nearby in our community that we've visited in the past, but we have a new one that also serves as the headquarters for the local fire department. We were fortunate to get in, even booking in August.

The Martinez-Columbia Fire Rescue Headquarters is a beautiful building. We started the tour upstairs in the living quarters.Each firefighter has his own little bedroom. There is a day room and living area. (Sorry, my hands were full during this part of the tour and I couldn't get many pictures.)

The living quarters have a balcony that over looks the garage. There are two ways down: the stairs or the fire pole. We took the stairs. :)

As we went downstairs, the firefighters met us by sliding down the pole.

We met on the floor of the fire station garage.

We gathered around and sat on the floor and began to talk about safety. I was thrilled that these guys really got down on the kids' level and really enjoyed teaching my little friends.

We talked about having the protective gear ready to go in a flash was important.

And having lockers to keep everyone organized was also important.

The firefighter began to dress in his gear.

We were surprised at the number of layers they wear.

We talked about how the full gear can make a firefighter seem scary, especially when he's breathing through the mask.

We practiced stop, drop and roll and stay low and go. The firefighters showed us exactly how we should react in an emergency.

Before we left, we got a class picture in front of the fire truck.

And if the firefighters weren't nice enough, they gave us really cool coloring books and fire hats to take home!

A big THANK YOU to the Martinez-Columbia Fire Rescue. They do a fantastic job and are truly heroes!