What really matters- Books & Reading- Books can be treated like another material or interesting item for rich exploration. There are lots of aspects of books our toddlers are interested in. They want to know how to hold them and to turn the pages. They want to see the pictures and the words on the page. They like to point at the pictures of interest and can frequently label them. Most importantly they will begin to understand the mental representations, concepts and ideas associated with the images and words and the more we can make these ideas come to life for our toddlers and help them explore them at their level the better off their skills and love of reading will be. Healthy exposure to books is all about interacting and having fun with them together.

How to put it into practice-

My Experience-

Whit & I loved our little bedtime routine of reading together. Whitney went through a phase of almost parroting back the words she heard so picture books were great since they had one word we could focus on per page. Whit would parrot back “ip” for ship; “a pain”, for airplane; “ba” for bus. We would read a couple books before bed every night. (see Bedtime Reading video)

Tuning In-

I was not certain whether Whitney actually knew that the word “ship” meant that picture in the book or that she could relate it to other experiences with ships. For example, did it call up the concept of those big things floating on top of water she actually sees. In general, toddlers are not great with abstraction and a little two dimensional illustration decontextualized, although pictorial and iconic. is still an symbol and abstraction for our toddlers. It would have been helpful for me to talk about the ships we saw out on the water or when last down at the docks and see if she responded in any way.

Extending/Bridging-

With the ever popular picture book (as the one in video), naming the objects on the page is certainly a solid place to begin. But as mentioned previously, there are lots of directions to take the book to make a richer exploration. In addition to the interactive beyond- the-page strategies mentioned in the previous “Vocabulary” write up, you can also dive deeper into what’s on the page. For example, when naming the object on the page, we should not stop with just the noun or one simple word. As your child develops more vocabulary, describe in more detail the pages of your picture books. Instead of just labeling the objects in single terms "socks" or "frog" or "crayon", try saying "green socks", "jumping frog" or "blue crayon".  As our toddlers become increasingly bored with these enhanced descriptions, We can try even more complex descriptions, "green checkered socks", "spotted jumping frog" or "long blue crayon". Be sensitive to where our toddlers start off simple and as you see signs such as continuing to point insistently at objects in books even though we have already labeled them.