In honour of World Book Day today,
I thought my next blog post would be all about... books!
We are a big fan of books in our house. From a very early age, we always read with the boys and a story is always part of our bedtime routine.
We have several book storage places throughout our house; two in the playroom, one in the landing upstairs and one bookcase in each of the boy's rooms. This is so the boys can access books more easily and as and when they would like to.
I honestly believe reading is good for your soul. It opens up your imagination to all different sorts of things and allows you to explore the world (or different universes!) without even leaving your home. So I encourage my children to love books, just as much as I do. My husband is a big bookworm too and he is on the same page as me (sorry, reading pun!)
So I thought I would share with you some of our favourite books...
Baby
We love the "that's not my.." series of books. We must have about 10 of them! Baby loves finding the bit of the picture you can stroke or touch or pull on! Toddler still enjoys these books too and he can now follow along with when I describe the words and tell me what the animal is.
Number and picture books are brilliant for baby. He loves opening this one up and pointing at all the different items. He has even started counting them all, with a little prompting. The books exposes him to different colours, different numbers and it's a board book too so he can't damage it (too much!)
Where's Mr Duck? Another fab touchy feel-y book. This time with a "hide and seek" element to it! On each page you have to find the animal which is behind a felt flap. Because it's a felt flap, baby cannot do too much damage to the book even if he tugs and pulls at the felt flap so it's a pretty ingenious idea! He is obsessed with ducks at the moment so when he opens the flap with the duck, he says "quack, quack, quack" quite loudly with a huge smile on his face!
Toddler
He has been reading books for a long time now and his attention span has really developed. He is able to sit for a long time reading book after book and sometimes the stories are quite long! He loves nothing more than being read to, particularly when he is feeling abit tired at the end of a long day of playing.
Some of his favourites are (but he has many!!):
The Gruffalo: This is a modern classic. A true favourite of many of toddler's friends also.
He loves this story and also many other Julia Donaldson books. I almost make it my mission to collect as many of her books as I can find so we have quite the collection now. I love the illustrations by Axel Scheffler, they really bring the story alive!
The Jungle Run: I must have read this story about a million times. Toddler absolutely loves this story and he actually knows most of it off by heart. He often reads it aloud when I am saying it now. He really enjoys books about animals in particularly. And these animals go on an amazing race through the jungle. Since I found this book for toddler, I have kept an eye open for other books by Tony Mitton and Guy Parker-Rees and again I am building a collection of their books. They seem to have a winning formula for how they write and draw as Toddler enjoys each and every one of their books I have found .
Supertato: I only recently discovered his book series "Supertato" and for a Toddler that is getting into his superheros at the moment, this is a brilliant find! He thoroughly enjoys this book, especially when his daddy puts on funny voices which really brings the characters alive! (It's now a TV series which you can watch on cbeebies too which compliments the book series!).
This extract from the book "Dummy" by Matt Coyne (aka. Man Vs Baby) sums up my feelings about books and about why I want to pass this love onto my boys....
"And so, knowing that I sound like a bit of a pious tosser, I find myself, when it comes to books, finally in agreement with the experts and the scientists. But, not for the dry epithets of cognitive development and all that shit, but to instil a love. Books can be educational and instructive, but at their best they can be redemptive, crushing, life-defining, and perfect. Testament to the best of us, a record of the worst, a eulogy or monument to the very essence of what it means to be human."
What books to you enjoy reading to your children?
I hope you have a fab World Book Day!
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