Hi,

When I was writing the word review in my title, I realized that there can really be no “REVIEW” on this all time classic series. I use review mainly as recommendation and for those who are specifically looking for books for their little ones.

Roly-poly, adorable Spot. Perfect for little kids who can identify with Spot, his family and friend. 🙂

A little about the book series by Eric Hill:

First published in 1980, “Where’s Spot?” was inspired while Eric was working in creative marketing; he noticed his three-year-old son was fascinated by the process of lifting up a paper, on a design he was creating. Captivated by this thought Eric created a story about a puppy which incorporated the flap design.

During the late 70s it was extraordinarily innovative concept, and it took some time for any publisher to take any notice of the idea before Puffin books decided to publish his book. Within weeks of the first book being released it topped the Bestseller list.

(Psst…Spot is just three years younger to me? No wonder, I like him so much!)

A little about Spot:

It is important to know the characters of the story and introduce them to the kids before you begin the stories. Below activities will give you some idea on how you could do that. To know the characters in this series, read below.

• Spot lives with his mum Sally and his dad Sam in a house with a big garden. Spot often spends time with his Grandma and Grandpa whose house is quite nearby.
• Spot’s dad is Sam. He is a farmer and drives a tractor. He loves to spoil Spot and introduces him to all the animals on the farm.
• Spot’s mum is Sally. Spot likes helping his mum to make cakes.
• Grandma has a cat called Kitty. She and Spot love reading stories together.
• Grandpa is a retired fireman and sometimes Spot and his friends go for a ride on Grandpa’s old fire engine.
• Spot shares his many adventures with his best friends Helen the hippo, Tom the crocodile and Steve the monkey.
• Steve the monkey lives next door to Spot. He loves climbing and playing all kinds of games. He is rather mischievous and likes jokes.
• Helen is a blue hippo. She enjoys ballet and making cookies, and she also loves riding her bicycle and going to the park with Spot to play.
• Tom is a green friendly crocodile who often comes to play with Spot and he also loves flying his kite in the park.

Books

Spot the dog has a long book series. I would recommend the “lift the flap” books because children are very curious to check beneath the flaps.

Extremely simple in the concept and language, these books are a hit with children. Start reading to your child early. Introduce books before you introduce animations. 🙂

Once you have read a few “Spot” books, you could show the kids the animations available on you tube.  Please note that these animations are very simple and in line with the ethos of the books. Personally, I loved the animations and also the “Spot theme song”. Let me know if you check these out.

Activities

There is a website, Fun with Spot. Unfortunately, when I tried to search for activities to do with my daughter, I got the message that the site was under renewal. 🙁 I have given the link here in case you want to try.

Here are the simple activities we managed to do. Hope they are useful for you to try them with your kids. 🙂

Introduce Spot’s family and friends.

Get a picture of Spot’s family and Friends. Use a card paper to stick the picture of Spot’s family above and then make a photo frame below it to insert your own family’s picture.

How does it help?: It helps in the child identifying the characters in the book and associating them with his own family and friends. Sorry for the bad picture quality but, posting these so that you can get some idea.

Believe it or not, cutting and pasting activities done regularly help motor skills and to develop love for doing these simple craft activities.

D is for Dog, Door, Doghouse.

I got this idea from this site called Crystanandcomp. So simple and fun. We used stickers available with us for decorating the D and “Pepper” stickers for the dog inside the doghouse. 🙂 Sorry, I forgot to click a pic of the completed dog house.

How does it help?: Introduction to D. Increase in vocabulary. Improvement in motor skills doing all the decorating and cutting, pasting activity.

(If you don’t know Pepper the dog, check this post – Books I enjoy with my three year old.)

Dog crafts

I kept wanting to do a real nice dog craft and I found Danielle’s space with many dog crafts. Here is our version of the Dog craft.

My daughter was able to put her tiny hand inside the cup and use it like a puppet. 🙂

Other activities

If you are reading the book “Spot goes to the farm”, you could try making some farm activities. Similarly for the other Spot titles.

Here’s one of our farm activity.

Spot magnet

We printed spot in color, cut out his shape and attached a magnet behind to be reminded of him everyday. 🙂

If you like our activities and try them out, do let us know.

How many of you already know “Spot the dog”? Drop a comment if you love Spot too.

Happy reading and see you soon,

Poornima