Pokemon

Let me tell you why I'm loving The Complete Pokemon Pocket Guide. It's a whole phonics, vocabulary, and language arts curriculum. The main thing is that just about all of the Pokemon names are nonsense words that have to be either sounded out or figured out using phonics rules.

You have names like "Metapod" and "Onix", that are sound-outable.

Then there are "Machop", "Machoke", and "Machamp" (the stages of one pokemon in various stages of his evolution) that use more phonetic rules.

Then there's "Hoothoot" (a compound word of sorts) that evolves into "Noctowl" - which led to a discussion of the Latin root "noct" meaning night. Lots of pokemon names use Latin and Greek root words.

One pokemon is named "Ditto" because he can change into other pokemon at will.

The seahorse-looking pokemon is named "Horsea". I like the word reversal. W got a kick out of that one.

"Charmander", "Charmeleon", and "Charizard" are the evolutionary names of a lizard-like pokemon. Notice the endings are from different lizards.

And how "Caterpie" evolves into "Metapod" and then "Butterfree". Get it?

Another cool thing is how some pokemon names sound like other words, like: "Raticate", "Empoleon", and "Masquerain" that describe the particular pokemon. Vocabulary words everywhere.

Each page has the name, picture, type, abilities, height, weight, and evolutionary line of each pokemon. The back has an alphabetical list of all pokemon in both pocket-guide volumes.

Recently, W has been looking at these books pretty often. He not only enjoys reading it, but it helps him make so many connections. I say, if your kid likes Pokemon, encourage that interest and you'll more than likely be surprised at all the learning in all of it. :)