Happy Birthday Levels 1-2

Celebrate turning six with this joyful story that captures the excitement of birthdays and the love of family. In Happy Birthday, a young girl's special day is filled with heartfelt wishes from everyone around her, including her family members, each with their own unique expression. This engaging and relatable story encourages early readers to connect with familiar events in their own lives. The rich visual cues support students' understanding, while subtle variations in text prompt careful attention to print. High-frequency words, repeated sounds, and consonant blends offer strong scaffolding for emerging readers. The book also introduces digraphs and compound words in context. The illustrations provide additional clues and warmth, portraying family relationships and helping students interpret meaning. Speech bubbles and a split picture layout offer opportunities to explore different formats of text and visual storytelling. Themes of celebration and family make this book ideal for classroom discussions about personal experiences and cultural traditions.

Educational Benefits:

• Develops comprehension skills such as using prior knowledge and making text-to-self connections.
• Reinforces recognition and decoding of high-frequency words and blends.
• Supports visual literacy through detailed illustrations and varied text formats.
• Encourages expressive reading with repetitive sentence structures and speech bubbles.

Classroom Ideas:

• Invite students to write about or draw their own birthday memories.
• Create a class birthday chart and explore the months of the year.
• Use the book as a model for writing cards or speech bubbles.
• Identify and sort words by initial sounds and digraphs.

Safety & Information:

• Ages: 4+
• Size: 150mm x 210mm
• Safety: No small parts; suitable for classroom use.