Bulldozer, Bulldozer, What do you see?

I don't think I would be any more proud of the little guy if he had a deal with an actual publisher. Little Jonathan wrote and colored his first book tonight -- it was so much fun!

This week we read Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? , and Jonathan loves "reading" it now, since the pictures allow him to anticipate each sentence and read with me. While we were putting on his pajamas last night, Jonathan started saying, "Bulldozer, Bulldozer, what do you see? I see a Backhoe Loader passing by me.... Backhoe Loader, Backhoe Loader, what do you see? I see an excavator, digging by me!" He is just obsessed with trucks and construction vehicles at the moment and amused both of us with a string of trucks and their actions... digging, driving, vroooming, cement mixing, etc.

So this afternoon I went to this little site and printed pictures of a crane, bulldozer, backhoe loader, steamroller, dump truck, cement mixer, etc. Jonathan, whose attention span for coloring is usually about 60 seconds, was excited to color every one of the pages. He then picked the first page to start off, "Tall crane, tall crane, what do you see?" and picked up the pages in sequence for me to write on, assigning an action to each of the vehicles as he went. "I see a backhoe loader, digging by me." All the words are his own, so some of the trucks (i.e. "Claw bulldozer" -- which I think is called a steam shovel by some) have a very personalized touch :) I tried to make my one contribution to the last page by suggesting the last sentence be, "I see Jonathan, playing with trucks!" but he didn't like that. So since he's the author, he decided on, "I see Bob the Builder, waiting for me." He was so excited he wanted to show his book to Nonnie and Papa, but Skype video went on blitz. Seeing how rough he is on his books collection, I think I'll mount the pages on cardstock in plastic page protectors so he can "read" his book without destroying it.