Books for Teaching Sound and Light Waves in First Grade

The 2016-17 school year was my second year teaching NGSS Sound and Light Waves in first grade. It was a real struggle trying to find age appropriate resources, especially in Spanish.  In my classroom, content is first taught in Spanish and then later in English.  I found a few "just right" books when I was looking in 2015.  Many of the resources were not available through the public libraries in the area, so I had to take a leap of faith and purchase online.  Luckily, I was right on with a few of them!

Here are my honest opinions of a few books I found and used along with a link. Please note that this post does contain affiliate links, but that the reviews are purely my unbiased opinions.  My goal is to help you out!

Just right books:

• Light: Shadows, Mirrors and Rainbows (La luz: Sombras, espejos y arco iris) by Natalie M. Rosinsky
• Sound: Loud, Soft, High, and Low (El sonido: Fuerte, suave, alto y bajo) by Natalie M. Rosinsky
• Me and My Shadow (Mi sombra y yo: Un libro sobre la luz) by Buffy Silverman

The two books by Natalie M. Rosinsky are the first books I read aloud with my unit.  They go along well with the PowerPoints I use to introduce keywords for light and sound through total physical response (TPR) as well as the mini books I created for this unit (Shameless plug for my Teachers Pay Teachers store: Find the mini books here - Blonde Bilingual's Science products).

Better for English only rooms:

The following books are all part of the "Light and Sound Waves Close Up" series by Robin Johnson in English.  For my dual language immersion classroom, these books were a little high, but I was able to pull sections from them to read to my students and apply to the lesson of the day.  These titles might work well in a classroom where English is the main language of instruction.

• What Are Light Waves? by Robin Johnson
• What Are Shadows and Reflections? by Robin Johnson
• What Are Sound Waves? by Robin Johnson

Higher level books:

• Light (La luz) by Sally Walker
• Sound (El sonido) by Sally Walker

I love all of the information packed into these books, but they were written for older students.  Some of the pages go along well with topics that I teach, so I flag those sections to read those when appropriate.  They are good for teaching non-fiction text features!