There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

I really enjoy blogging about the resources I use most often, especially books, and apparently, people enjoy reading about them! My two top posts in terms of hits (usually as a result of Google searches) are I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie and Is Your Mama a Llama?, which just happen to be two of my favorite books.

I have another book to add to the vault...one you've probably read or heard time and again. This particular version of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is colorfully illustrated by Pam Adams and is from the Books with Holes series, published by Child's Play International. You can find a link to the book on Amazon here. I love that this book has thick (but not overly so) pages and is rather large - it gets the attention of my student and keeps it for the duration of the story.

Each phrase in the book ends with "perhaps she'll die". I don't feel that this is appropriate for young children (though it is the traditional verse), so I always substitute "cry" for "die".

This book is a wonderful tool for animal and color identification, memorization skills, attention to task, reading sight words, and more. It is effective because the illustrations are visually stimulating, and the story is just plain fun :)