This is a great book for idioms and learning about figures of speech.

Also could be used for poetry and rhyming words

My kids loved this book! This book is set up in a repetative poetry style and introduces the reader to different idioms. It has side notes to explain to the children what the idiom means as well as where it came from. My kids loved it. I used it to have them become more familiar with poetry, the concept of stanzas, and idioms. The pictures in this book are hilarious as well. This is a great book! ( )

My Momma Likes to Say is an excellent mentor text to use in the classroom to teach students about idioms and the use of figurative language. The book features extremely interesting literal illustrations of the figurative idioms. For instance, for the idiom “it’s raining cats and dogs” the illustration is a literal depiction of cats and dogs raining down from the sky. Or, for the idiom “cat’s got your tongue” the illustration is a literal depiction of a cat pulling a boy by his long stretched out tongue. Also, for each idiom, the book provides an explanation of what the idiom means and how it originated. I would recommend this picture book for both lower and upper elementary students and it is an excellent mentor text to use to help teach students how to use idioms in their writing. A great activity that goes along with this is to have students draw their own literal interpretations of familiar idiom expressions, find the actual meaning of the idiom, and use an idiom in an excerpt of their own writing. ( )

This would be a great read aloud- I would tend to only read the bold text together. But it would also be a great independent reading book for those kids that want to know more of the why behind the idioms origin-smaller text independently. This books design reminds me of the ABC books such as D is for Drinking water. At the end of the book there is a place to add special things you momma says to you. It would be fun to do a project for mother's day of phrases that kids hear their momma say a lot.