Pinterest, Anyone?

Well, after 2 months of covering our office manager’s maternity leave, I am now getting back to all of the things I left unattended in her absence. This blog would be one of them! Somehow, though, I managed to find time to become a fan of Pinterest in the meantime. If you are unfamiliar with Pinterest, it is a virtual ‘bulletin board’ where you can save links into categories and your friends can follow you and comment on the links and repin them if they want. You, too, can follow your friends and see what they are pinning. Each link is represented by a picture and you can have several boards to organize your pins by category. For example, people often have a recipes board, a craft board, a places I want to go board, etc. So what does this have to do with children’s books and child development you ask?

Thanksgiving Books

So, I went to Barnes and Noble this weekend and they had many Thanksgiving books! If you have a favorite character, chances are they have a Thanksgiving book. Biscuit, Fancy Nancy, Marley, Clifford, and Curious George were all represented.

We have the Curious George Thanksgiving book and I will say it is definitely for an older preschooler (3-4 years of age) as it is really a collection of short stories about Thanksgiving topics such as a parade, cooking dinner, serving dinner, and crafts. The neat part of it is that each story has a pictorial tab on the side of the book, making a table of contents of sorts. So it is a great visual way of teaching older preschoolers about the concept of a table of contents.

If you want to start to teach your younger child about the history of Thanksgiving, you could pick up a copy of “The First Thanksgiving, A Lift-the-Flap Book” by Nancy Davis. The text is simple and rhymes and there are many flaps (more than just one a page) through out.

For a 3-4 year old,

My Favorite Way to Buy Books

I just had an opportunity to buy books my favorite way last night. From Scholastic flyers that our children’s preschool sends home each month! I was able to find some Thanksgiving books to add to our collection, bought a Clifford book for $1, bought a set of social stories for work and did some Christmas shopping. The social stories books were: “Hands are Not For Hitting”, “Germs are Not For Sharing”, and “Words are Not for Hurting”. (What preschoolers couldn’t benefit from those?!) The Christmas presents included a set of 3 Corduroy books for $10 and a Natural Geographic book of dinosaurs with a corresponding dinosaur floor puzzle.

Scholastic books are often deeply discounted (usually there is a $1 book per flyer) and the flyers contain almost every popular

Simple Storybooks

We have talked about different types of what I have called “First Books”: those with simple photos, manipulative aspects such as ‘touch and feel’ or ‘lift the flap’, and/or repetitive lines. Once your child is sitting for about five minutes for a book and appears to listen to you as you name pictures or read short text, then it is time to introduce storybooks. There is no need to stop reading the previously mentioned books (unless of course your child has lost interest in them), but by adding storybooks to what you read, you will be increasing the language concepts your child is hearing, teaching him sequencing (first, then, last), and broadening his knowledge of the world.

So what are storybooks? These are books that

Happy Halloween!!

So I was supposed to write about beginning storybooks this week, but then I realized Halloween is Monday. And if I don’t write about Halloween books this week, then it will have to wait a whole year and what fun is that? Every year at the beginning of October, I pull out our Halloween books and I always make sure to add one or two each year. (Grandma typically adds 1 or 2, too!) It’s always fun to pull out the books we haven’t seen in a year and to take a break from what we have been reading.

But why read Halloween books?

“Off-the-Shelf” Social Stories

Last week we talked about using Social Stories to help prepare children for new situations or to correct undesirable behaviors. There are many children’s books that deal with many of the topics that homemade Social Stories address. If you’re like me and you would rather buy something than make it yourself, these books may meet your needs. However, some children may find them too abstract to generalize to their own life and/or the language level of the book may not be appropriate for your particular child. So you may want to start by checking out these books at the library before you invest in them for your home.

For our very young ones, Leslie Patricelli has written “No No Yes Yes” and “Yummy Yucky” to teach children appropriate behaviors such as ‘drawing with crayons on the wall’-“No No”, ‘drawing on paper’- “Yes Yes” or “Soup is yummy”, “Soap is yucky”. These have very simple text and pictures.

A newer series that we love at our house

Social Stories

Has your child ever been fearful of a new situation or not known how to act in a new situation? (Did every parent just say ‘yes’?!) Then maybe he could use a Social Story.

Social Stories were originally created to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), but really they can help anyone with new or challenging situations. As adults, we often ask questions before going into a new situation about who will be there, what will occur, what our role will be, etc. However, children do not have the ability, yet, to prepare themselves for new situations in this manner so we need a way to help them do this.

A Social Story provides information about the events and social cues that will occur in the situation, how to respond to those cues and events, and reactions that the child might encounter or have expected of him. The goal is

Expanding Repetitive Line Books

We talked about basic repetitive line books last week, which are good for building language skills. A variation of this type of book is the expanding repetitive line book. These are books that start with one line and then this line is repeated on the next page and an additional line is added. Then these two lines are repeated on the next page with yet another additional line added. This continues throughout the book.

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

Since it is almost Halloween, I will use “The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything” by Linda Williams as an example. The story starts with a little old lady who goes for a walk and encounters a pair of shoes that go “clomp, clomp”.

Repetitive Line Books

We have been talking about lots of beginning books that are good for learning some object names and descriptive words. If your child is starting to name objects and use some other single words, then it is time to for her to start to learn to put words together into short phrases.

Great Repetitive Line Book!

Repetitive line books are great for teaching children how to make short phrases because the same line is used throughout the book and often children quickly learn to fill in parts of the line themselves. A popular example is “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do you See?” By Eric Carle and Bill Martin Jr. The two repetitive lines are “what do you see?” and “I see a ________ looking at me”. The blank is a color + animal such as “yellow duck”, making it a great book to work on colors and animal names, as well.

After I read this book to a child a few times and they have become engaged in it, I will

Setting the Mood

So, we have talked about what types of books are good ones to start with little ones or with other children who have difficulty attending to books, but having the right materials is probably not enough. So let’s talk a little about ‘setting the mood’ so that your child can attend to the books you are presenting to him.

Reading in a Bean Bag Chair

Pick the right time of day. Try to figure out when your child is in a calm (or at least calmer than usual) state. It may be when she first wakes up in the morning or from a nap. Or it might be right before bed. Or maybe it is when her belly is full. This will be the best time to introduce books to your child. You can also have books available around the house and see if your child naturally starts to interact with them. “Interact” at this point may mean