Good Books For Early Learners
Reading to and with your child is a very important way to support their learning, no matter how young or old your child is. However, if you‘re not a great reader and most of your reading is confined to the newspaper and a few magazines or recipe books, where do you start? What books are best to read to your children at which stage?
Babies: Simple look and point books are best, especially as attention spans are shorter at this stage. Books that focus on a category, with one big picture per page plus the name of the thing in the picture plus a sentence or so, are ideal. Nursery rhyme books are also good, as babies love the rhymes and rhythms.
Toddlers: You can now move onto picture books with more of a story to them “just as well, as children at this age want favorites read again and again. You‘ve got a huge range of books to choose from: everything from older books such as Beatrix Potter ‘s Peter Rabbit series to newer ones such as Mick Inkpen ‘s Kipper books and Lynley Dodd ‘s Hairy Maclary series.
Preschoolers: You‘ll probably still read your favorite picture books, but you can also introduce books with more emphasis on the story and less on the picture. Short stories are ideal Winnie the Pooh and Milly-Molly-Mandy and the My Naughty Little Sister stories are classics of this type. This is a good stage to introduce fairy and folk tales.
School age: Proper chapter books can be introduced at about this stage you‘ve got hundreds to choose from in all genres. Choose books depending on the tastes and interests of your child there really is something for everyone.
Reading is a good habit that parents should inculcate in their children. You can make the story reading sessions more interesting by enacting the stories. You can even use masks and small toys to make the sessions lively.
My daughter simply can’t have enough of Milly-Molly-Mandy. She insists me to read the same stories over and over again. She has almost learnt the stories my heart. Often I skip a line knowingly to watch her reaction. She points my mistake and makes me read the story all over again. I enjoy our time together.