Things To Love....About Reading with Infants and Toddlers

While visiting baby bookworm's grandparents this week (and my parents), I found Richard Scarry's Things To Love hiding in her book basket at their house and thought - how appropriate given Valentine's Day is coming up soon.

I've been a fan of Richard Scarry's books since I was a little girl, and I am happy to report that baby bookworm is also becoming a fan.  After reading the book, oh say, fifteen times while on our visit, it inspired me to count.....

Things to Love about Reading with Infants and Toddlers

(in no particular order)

1. Cuddle time 


Reading with your child provides a great bonding experience, and forming emotional attachments early in life is an essential piece of the learning process; emotion and learning are closely linked, and children who feel loved develop a sense of security that is often necessary for early learning to take place. 


2. New words

Yes, reading will help your young child will help him to utter such phrases as, "My strawberries are scrumptious" or "pass me that scarlet crayon".  In fact, children learn more new words through books than from television and conversation.  Why is vocabulary so important anyway? The larger your child's vocabulary, the more spoken language he will understand, and the more written language he will comprehend which = a greater chance of success in school.


3. Fun  


You and your child can be transformed to a land where animals talk, or to a place where skies are green and grass is blue.  Words can be sung, pictures can pop out at you, and objects can be discovered under flaps. 


And that's fun. What's not to love?  


4. Using imagination


Books like Harold and the Purple Crayon are perfect for encouraging your child to use his imagination.  The added bonus of imaginative reading - gained skills in cognition and language.


5. Meeting interesting characters 


Fancy Nancy. David. Elmo. Pinkalicious. Arthur. Max. Pigeon. Brother and Sister Bear.  The Cat in the Hat. Piggie and Gerald.  


The list is endless of new friends that your little one will meet and welcome into his life, and ultimately grow to love.  


6. The Ah-HA moments 


It's the nine hundred and fifteenth time you've read Goodnight Moon......and then.....your child looks at you, smiles, looks at the book, points at the picture and says "cow".  Ah-HA!  He was listening after all!  It only took nine hundred and fifteen times, but that moment makes every repetition worth it.  


7. Getting inspired


Children's books often spark great ideas.  Whether you do a neat activity based on the book you read, try to enhance creativity through an art project, or act out the story - reading with your child can encourage you to think about something in a whole new way.


8. Fostering language development


The more you speak to and read with your child, the better your child's language and reading skills will become.  So read, read, and read some more!


9. Giving your child a head start on literacy


Children's books teach many pre-reading skills.  Read nursery rhymes, and you'll be giving your child a lesson in phonemic awareness.  Read an alphabet book and your child is learning to recognize those important symbols we call letters.  Point to the words as you read them to your toddler, and he'll begin to understand that there are rules about how reading works.  


10. Learning life lessons


Many children's books have some kind of message, or problem to solve.  What a great way to talk to your child about some important topics like sharing, being yourself, moving to a new town, visiting the doctor, or making room for that new little baby sister or brother!


This list could easily be longer, so I ask you....
What do you love about reading with your infant or toddler?

Toddler Technology: Three Learning Apps You Don't Want to Miss

If you are not new here, then you know that many of my posts pair a book with an activity.  Today, though, I'm talking about books and fun, educational apps.

Here are three great apps for the toddler age group, and books that will help to reinforce the skills learned from the apps even more!

1) Caillou's World

Based on the popular show Caillou which airs on PBS, this app is perfect for the pre-reader.  To play, the child selects a scene (such as the playground or crosswalk), and an object in the scene flashes in bright colors.  When the child taps on the flashing object, it is enlarged and the child is prompted to choose which letter the object starts with.

Why an educational psychologist likes this app (um...that's me):  Phonemic awareness activities, such as the phonemic isolation in this app, aid literacy skills!

Why baby bookworm likes this app: Caillou!  Seriously, this kid is obsessed with this bald-headed character.

Why you'll like this app:  Your child won't mind practicing phonemic isolation in the least with the help of Caillou.

Related books: There is a whole host of Caillou books and the cool thing is that you can find books on this site by theme, and that are appropriate for your child's age.

Learning tips:  Take some time to guide your child through the app a few times until he gets the hang of it.  When you read the Caillou books, make connections back to Caillou's World.  You could even use the app and book together by finding an object in the illustrations that also begins with the same letter as the object in the game.

Critique:  If I have to make one minor critique of this app, it's that sometimes the flashing objects in the scene are difficult to spot because they are small.  But, with a little help from an adult, your child will catch on and if he doesn't find the object, the game does move forward automatically.

2)  Richard Scarry's Busytown

This app is modeled after Richard Scarry's beloved word books and resembles Busy, Busy Town.  At the start of the app, the child selects a character (bunny, cat, pig or fox), gives him a name, and dresses him up.  Then that character picks a place to explore such as the kitchen, grocery store, playground, firehouse, bedroom or bathroom.  The object of the game is to help another furry friend find an item in the room selected.

Dressing her character

This app is an amped up version of the popular books that adds a "search and find" aspect for kids that is really enjoyable.  What's also cool?  Tap an object and the word will appear with voice over, and some of the objects are interactive.

Why I like this app:  The search and find aspect of the app aids a lot of skills such as matching, memory, comparison, and object recognition!  Oh, and of course the word labels are fostering the development of literacy skills, too.

Why baby bookworm likes this app:  She LOVES selecting the character and dressing him or her up!

Why you'll like this app: It brings the popular books and characters "to life".

Related books:  If you aren't familiar with Richard Scarry's books - get familiar!  I can remember reading them as a child and am thrilled to have passed my books on to my own daughter.  I only wish I'd had a fun app like this one when I was a kid!

Learning tips:  After your child is done playing, ask him about what he learned.  What objects did he have to find?  What character did he choose? What was his favorite room to explore?

3) Counting with the Very Hungry Caterpillar

Given the name, I'm sure you can figure out that this app is based on the ever so popular book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Explore numbers, counting, and vocabulary in this colorful app that will challenge your child for years to come.

Why I like this app: It's great for practicing one-to-one correspondence (each item has its own counting label), the cardinality rule (the name of last item you count represents the quantity of the entire set of items), and the flexible application rule (no matter what objects you are counting, whether it's strawberries or lollipops, you count them in the same way, using the same counting words).

Counting sausages 

Why baby bookworm likes this app: She likes to name and eat the objects!

Why you'll like this app: It grows with your child.  Thanks to 5 difficulty levels, there's no chance your child is getting bored with it anytime soon!  

Related books:  The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  Reinforce the number and counting skills learned in the app by playing your own game with the book!

Learning tips: Challenge your child and support his learning by playing the app with him on a level that is slightly above their ability level.

All three of these apps are from Night & Day Studios (and they also have a really cute Go Away Big Green Monster app that I wrote about a few months ago) and can be purchased for just a few dollars.

Disclosure: I did receive free copies of these apps from Night & Day Studios, but it in no way influenced my opinion (or baby bookworm's). 

Library "Daze" - Once Upon a Time Books

Last week we took a trip to the library specifically to get books that actually begin with "Once Upon a Time".  You'd think we would have done this a long time ago considering these words are the inspiration for this blog's title, but I held off on "once upon a time" stories until baby bookworm had the attention span for them, and (more importantly) I held off on these books until we were just about ready to take a trip (what I now imagine will be an annual one) to Idlewild Park.

I've written about Idlewild Park before, which is a very kid-friendly amusement park located in Western, PA.  I think it even claims to have been voted the best kid amusement park in the world?! (not sure voted by whom, though, and while it's a very good park - this statement is quite the stretch!).  It has a "Ricky Raccoon" park with rides for toddlers and young children, "A Mister Rogers Neighborhood" that includes a trolley ride to meet all of the characters in the land of make believe, a "Soak Zone" with lots of water slides and an enormous swimming pool, and a "jumpin' jungle" that has things for young kids like a sack slide and giant net to climb.  Of course, there is stuff for older kids and grown ups too in the "Olde Idlewild" part of the park like a merry-go-round, tilt-a-whirl, and the ricketiest wooden roller coaster I've ever seen;  BUT, in my humble opinion (and mind you, I AM a bookworm) the best part of the park is its "Story Book Forest".  Here, tales such as The Three Little Bears, The Billy Goats Gruff, and Little Red Riding Hood come alive.  Here are some pictures to show you what I mean.



Grandmother's house from Little Red Riding Hood




The Big Bad Wolf dressed as Granny



The smart pig who built his house out of bricks

So to familiarize baby bookworm with these beloved stories and characters before going to Story Book Forest, I selected a few versions of these tales that appealed to toddlers.  There are lots and lots of versions of these stories (Book Aunt does a WONDERFUL job at highlighting a bunch of fairy-tale books), but I was really looking for renditions that had bright pictures, and that retold the tale in as few words as possible.  What we got:

1). Yummy: Eight Favorite Fairy Tales
by Lucy Cousins

If you are familiar with the Maisy book series, then you are familiar with Lucy Cousins' distinctive illustrations.  They are simple, but bright and vibrant.  In fact, they are so distinctive that when I picked this book off of the shelf, baby bookworm exclaimed, "Maisy"!  I love the clever name for this collection of fairy tales which includes: Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Enormous Turnip, Henny Penny, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Little Red Hen, The Three Little Pigs, and The Musicians of Bremen.  Some of the pictures are a tiny bit graphic (like the hunter chopping off the "big bad wolf's" head), so use your own discretion!  I do think it is a nice collection that lends itself well to a toddler audience.  Baby bookworm particularly likes The Three Billy Goats Gruff, for whatever reason! 



The Billy Goats Gruff at Idlewild

All that's left of the poor troll

2). The Three Bears
by Byron Barton

We actually got this book because it was coincidentally read during the family story time (the theme was houses, though, not fairy tales) and baby bookworm kept exclaiming, "Papa bear, papa bear!"  Was it his cute little shorts that got her attention?  I'm not sure, but even Miss Carla the story time leader noticed, so she suggested we take this one home with us.  Barton's retelling of this story is very well suited to babies and toddlers (although I'm sure older kids would like it too) because it is written simply with colorful illustrations.  By "simply" I mean that baby bookworm almost has this book memorized, which is great, really!  She has even tried to say "mama bear, medium-sized bowl".  The story of The Three Bears also has many great learning opportunities embedded in it (like the concept of small, medium, and large, just to name one) which is another reason this book gets a gold star in our eyes.  Barton has written many children's books, and I really think bookworm and I will check out a few of his others.

The Three Bear's "Real" House

Mama, Baby, and the Beloved Papa Bear

3). Richard Scarry's Best Mother Goose Ever

Ok, so not a fairy-tale book, but I came across this book while looking in the fairy-tale section, and I LOVE Richard Scarry's illustrations. Love, love.  His Animal Nursery Tales book was one of my all-time favorites growing up, and baby bookworm and I read it often.  So, when I saw this book on the shelf in the library, we had to get it for two reasons.  One, Story Book Forest also features many nursery rhymes in addition to fairy tales, and two, nursery rhymes are a HUGE learning opportunity for young children because they teach phonemic awareness, an important skill in learning how to read.  In fact, research has shown a strong link between knowledge of nursery rhymes and reading success.  If you want some tips on how to use nursery rhymes as a learning tool, check out this paper: Nursery Rhymes and Phonemic Awareness.  You better believe I will be using many of these suggestions! 

Rock-a-bye baby from Story Book Forest

Hickory Dickory Dock

Mary Mary Quite Contrary

I hope this post finds you and your baby bookworm not only reading fairy tales, but living in your own land of once upon a time with a happily-ever-after ending.