In Focus - Reading

Last week on In Focus: Reading we bought you information on how to structure a successful storytime with your child. This week we will share age appropriate book features and themes.

We (bubs about town partners and children) recently attended books and babies at our local library and thoroughly recommend it. Our children were exposed to a variety of board books with rhymes, textures, flaps and engaging illustrations.

Board books are durable and the thick pages are perfect for little fingers making it easier to turn the pages back and forth.

Lift the flap books are fantastic for babies and young children as they build suspense, excitement and over time the children start to anticipate what is behind the flap (if your child is anything like my son he starts to brace himself for the snap of a crocodile on his leg or a lion roar in his ear)

Books with textures are a fantastic learning tool for toddlers and give so much opportunity for learning new vocabularly to apply to the world around them. (Babies just love to feel the different textures under their fingers)

Fabric books are very popular with young children as they are very versatile and durable. Children are able to chew on them and drag them around the house behind them. A firm favourite for infants has to be Discovery Farm by Lamaze which has fantastic flaps and movable animals to keep little minds entertained.

Pop up books are another favourite and although they are very engaging they can often be quite fragile and run the risk of becoming ripped and damaged by inquiring minds and exploring fingers. But read with an adult these can be part of a fabulous and fun story time.
Moving away from book features now, it’s time to think about the content or theme of books as these also need to be age appropriate to gain maximum interest from the child.

Books with one word on each page labeling the picture are fantastic and quick to read with a young baby with a short attention span. Most appropriate would be ones that contain objects from the world around them such as clothes, food, animals, transport etc. An example of this is the first word series, commonly found in most book stores and libraries.

Progressing onto to simple repetitive sentences and rhymes such as the Spot series or Dr Suess books is next for children who are gaining a greater attention span.

Books with characters speaking provide a fabulous opportunity to get creative and bring life and imagination to reading aloud and are most appropriate for ages 1+. Even school aged children love to hear mum or dad creating crazy voices for different characters.

As your child get’s older more complicated and longer stories will become appropriate. But remember timeless storybooks such as Diary of a Wombat and The Hungry Caterpillar can be enjoyed at all ages as long as your child will sit still long enough to enjoy it!

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