Encouraging babies to enjoy books
Oooh, I found this test your vocab to test the size of your vocabulary. Ok, so it’s nothing to do with children (well, if you have kids, you can test theirs as well which will help with the researchers), but it’s really interesting especially if like me you love books and reading.
Actually, vocabulary is to do with children. I love books (unlike my OH whose limited reading is the Farmer’s Weekly, Shooting Times, cattle market reports and the newspaper), and am definitely keen that N will also read a lot and enjoy losing himself in stories and information.
From when he was only a few weeks old I started showing him books and reading pages to him. He’s quite happy for several minutes looking at pictures and moving the pages back and forth, but unfortunately for the last couple of months he’s just obsessed with chewing and ripping paper so I have to keep normal books at arms reach. Fabric books work well, and he’s quite partial to the sounds and pictures in his Baby Einstein and VTech nursery rhymes book. I can’t bear to see books pulled to pieces, so hopefully he’ll get over the ripping & chewing stage soon.
He probably has nearly as many books as toys. Luckily friends have passed us books their children have finished with, and there’s always bargains to be had at the NCT nearly new sales. I also tend to pick up books from places like The Works and Poundland. New books at bargain prices.
So far his favourite books are:
- Each peach, pear plum – one of my childhood favourites, I think I can recite its entirety
- Any of the ‘That’s not my…’ series. We’ve got about 6 of them, and they’re great touchy feely books
- A digger book. It’s for pre-school children really, but it’s got different material/textures in it, and for someone who lives on a farm, he’s bound to be interested in them in the future
So we’ve started early, and hopefully he’ll grow up having books as part of his life and wanting to find out further information by using them.
So now you can go off and test your vocabulary.