This is a read-aloud book – the child following along with you as you read the story and explore the ideas with them. Each time you read the story, you can pick the concepts you want to emphasize – the members of a family, things you find in a home or school, comparisons – big, small, different textures, and positions like in, on, under.

Let children follow along with their finger on the words as you read to them. Discuss pictures with them, having them act out the story. As children get familiar with the story, pause to let them fill in the words or concepts you are emphasizing as you read each page

  It is under the ____ (table).

Draw their attention to words like appa or button that occur on almost every page and have them find it with you.

Have children bring in buttons from home and work together in groups to select buttons for each page. Children will develop good reasoning skills as they identify characteristics of each button – it is plastic, it is not big and so on. Have children create “sets” of buttons based on their characteristics, and have them describe each set with two sentences – one stating what it is, and the other, what it is not

  These are all plastic buttons and they are not big;
  These are all small buttons, and they are not plastic.

Young children with low vision may need to learn how to use their vision efficiently. The book provides children with plenty of experience in scanning, an important pre-reading skill, and reasoning and recognition based of few visual clues. Some elements of the pictures in book will be more easily visible to the child while others will not. Through the story, the child needs to learn to make sense of what they are seeing in the pictures.

Help children develop the capacity to search visually, using their knowledge of the real world. Give the child real buttons to feel and trace. Draw their attention to the shape – circle, the easiest shape to perceive. Now, have the child locate the button in each page. Help the child use the words on the page as a clue to finding the button. For example, in the picture of the button and in the bag, one hand must hold a button and the other a bag. The child needs to figure out which hand has a circular shape in it to find the button. Although the button in the shelf is hard to see, the child will figure out where to search and make a “best guess” which is how children will have to find things in the real world.