Review: Fáilte go Sesame Street (Edco)

Fáilte go Sesame Street – Practise Irish with the Sesame Street Characters-New Irish Language Activity Book from The Educational Company of Ireland

Review

The Gaelscoil movement is growing with parents deciding to send their children to all-Irish speaking schools more and more these days. Putting the reasons aside, many parents don’t have the command of the language needed to support their child’s immersion in the language.

This is where Edco have stepped in. They have released an Irish book aimed at parents and pre-school age children who want to learn Irish.

First of all, we like to look at the strengths.  They are:

• Brilliant link between home-school learning-Each page is designed to be based on the themes of the Irish curriculum though am not sure how this will stand up to the new Language curriculum in 2015. Each page has an idea for extension activities in English for the parent. This is really useful as many parents just don’t know what to do next with Irish.
• The look and design of the book is very attractive-fabulous colour and child-friendly Sesame Street characters. Children and parents will be attracted to this.
• The books are designed in a similar style to many of Edco and other companies’ textbooks as in similar activities and themes.
• Suitable for pre-school and up to middle/end of Senior Infants.

This book is called an activity book but in reality, it is a textbook for writing, colouring and filling in and that will suit the parents and children who want to learn Gaeilge that way. There are so any other ways to learn a new language and in fairness, this book aims to bridge that gap. A technological resource online could be developed, children learn by touchscreen and youtube now as well as the traditional way of learning, the textbook.

Also, this book can get confused with what it actually is. It contains pre-writing skills activities, motor skills activities etc and one is left wondering if the learning outcome is Irish-language based or an activity book.

I would recommend this book to pre-schoolers and parents who might want to help their child before they go to school or teachers who want to supplement their work in the Junior Infant classroom.

Failte go Sesame Street is available now from edco at the price of €7.95 at http://www.edco.ie/Sesame-Street-Activity-Book/Default.4289.html