The Story of Little Bear (Hard Copy Book)

These three and two part harmonies as well as the musical alphabet have been integrated into a forty page book called Sounds into Syllables®-The Story of Little Bear. As the child progresses through the story, Little Bear experiences the six universal emotions as a result of various adventures he has along his journey. When an emotion page is reached, the applicable harmony is played before and after the emotion word is read and spelled. The drawings on these pages serve to emphasis the change in the facial expression of Little Bear as well as the reason for the change. Example: On page 13 Little Bear is angry because the bears hid the honey.

The six harmonies mirror the emotions they represent so as to evoke an emotional response from the child, stimulate interest and reinforce perception of the changing face and feelings of Little Bear.

Each of the remaining pages of the story contains one simple sentence and each sentence emphasis a noun, verb, adjective or combination. Example: Page 2 emphasis an adjective with the sentence “He was a little bear.” In the above example, the sentence is read and the adjective is spelled. A two part harmony is played before and after the child spells the word. This serves to identify it as a describing word in the sentence. The same process is used with nouns and verbs. Explanations for these concepts rely upon repeated use of examples, and avoid conceptual details. Textured letters, colored drawings and color coding are used throughout the book as reinforcement. As the child progresses through the book, different pages may emphasis two grammatical structures in the same sentence. Example: Page 15 emphasizes an adjective and noun with the sentence “He jumped into a red boat.” This is to assist the child in learning to combine different words together in a sentence that will make sense. As with Parts 1 and 2 there is a companion workbook.

The Story of Little Bear (Computer Book)

The Story of Little Bear has been reformatted as a computer book with a number of additional features. Each page of the electronic book illustrates a computer keyboard which has been modified with the six yellow emotion faces; three color coded grammatical circles and the musical alphabet letters. These keyboards are fully interactive so that when the child is reading the emotion page for happy, he/she can click on the yellow happy face and will hear the three part harmony for happy. The child can do the same with the remaining five three part harmonies and three two part harmonies.

Rollover images are used for all the emotion pages so that the child can rollover the neutral face of Little Bear and it will change to happy, sad or any one of the other emotional expressions used in the book. Animations have been created and introduced throughout to continue to create the link between nouns and verbs and to provide fun and interest in the story.