Oh, A-Hunting We Will Go - Predictable Patterned Language Book

Oh, A-Hunting We Will Go, by John Langstaff, was an EXTREMELY patterned and predictable book! Every two pages were exactly "Oh, a-hunting we will go, A-hunting we will go; We'll catch a ________ And put him in a ___________, And then we'll let him go!" While I thought this may be good for preschool aged children and maybe kindergarten, I did not feel that it would be good for children older than that because it was TOO repetitive.

While I enjoyed most of the rhymes, some of them seemed strange for such young children, such as putting the lamb in a "pram" or having an armadillo and a brontosaurus. I would most likely not have understood without explanation what a pram was at that age.

What I did enjoy about this book, however, was the pictures. They were well done and looked like they had been colored in with a colored pencil. They were fairly simple and I felt that they illustrated well what was happening in the story. I laughed when the lamb in the pram had a French flag in the picture though I realize that probably would not make many preschoolers think. Overall I don't think I would use this book in my classroom unless I was in a preschool or using it for the song in the back which I would also most likely use in a preschool.