Set aside time for reading every day with your baby — even if it’s only a few minutes.
Babies love books with bright colors, baby faces, flaps, textures or simple activities. You might find yourself reading the same book over and over, which is normal and good, they learn from repetition. Babies love when you add facial expressions, sound effects and voices for various characters. My advice is to set aside a special time every day in your schedule for storytime as early as you can!
I have a few book baskets within easy reach at our house so my baby can explore books whenever the mood strikes her. We has a Book Basket in Baby’s Room, My Room and the Family room. I just grabbed some cheap containers at the Dollar Tree to keep them in.
Now the question is where to get all these books? The local library is a great resource for all kinds of book, even Board Books. That way you don’t have to invest money in a lot board books. I just give them a quick wipe down to ensure they’re clean. We have a few fabric books too that my daughter enjoys too. Of course having your own book collection is recommended too. We rotate books from her closet too so that she doesn’t get bored of the same books.
Karen Katz is probably one of my favorite authors. We have collected most of her books over the years and even my 5 year old enjoys going back to them and reading them to her baby sister. Her’s her website, There’s just something special to me about her illustrations and stories that kept my daughter and me wanting more and more.
Teacher Tip:
The benefits of reading to your baby are so important. It helps them to build their communication, vocabulary, memory and listening skills, as well as help them learn new concepts and help their imagination grow. It’s a special bonding time with you as well focusing on emotions and expressions. Here’s a great site with Reading Advice for babies.
From our Readers:
I would love to hear what your Baby’s Favorite Book is! Post a Comment!
Love that book!! We've had it since my first was little! Too cute!
We're big fans of Curious George and the Urban Babies Wear Black series.
Thanks Kim for some great suggestions! We were just at the library and saw "Ten Tiny Babies" by Karen Katz. We haven't read many of her books before and Nicholas just LOVED it. I don't think we would have grabbed it without your post.
Amanda I had no idea how many she's published until I looked her up on Amazon. Now I have a whole bunch more I'm looking up a our library. Did you know you can also put in requests at our library if they don't have something that you think others might be intersted in too?
Kim – requesting books has become a personal hobby of mine =) he he he. I love that we can request books and try to take one day every month to request new books that I (and others) would enjoy reading. They have unfortunately given me the "we do not have $ in our budget to purchace these items" multiple times. I did this for some of the new quilt books and "A Gruffalo's Child." Once, they even did an interlibrary loan from a military library to get me a book on natural playscapes. It was very cool and worth the e-mail request. Please do put some of her books down to order =) I think our library needs some new kids books that are well written!!! Plus, the librarians will have someone else to bug them too =) Do you think if we both put in a request for similar books it would increase our chances of actually getting them in our library?
Amanda-I'm not sure about multiple requests but it wouldn't hurt to request. We pay so much in our taxes to our local libraries that even the smallest children deserve a great selection. It's offical the last day of the month we should put in our requests… after we have reviewed all the great suggeestions from the bloggers for the month 🙂