Reading to Toddlers

Tips for reading with young children:

• Give your child options (do you want to read Brown bear or Goodnight Moon)
• You don’t have to read the words on each page, try labeling items on the page, and pairing with a fun sound (i.e., cow…The cow says moo, car… The car goes vroom, bus…The bus goes beep beep, sun… The sun is HOT!).
• Let your child be an active part of reading and work on following directions by telling them to open the book, turn the page, and close the book.
• Give characters different voices when reading and use fun sounds to continue to engage them
• Repetitive reading is crucial for learning so read the same book all week and pair with fun themed activities like:
  • Eating items found in hungry caterpillar book,
  • Go on a “Scavenger hunt” to find items from the book
  • Draw pictures of characters from the book for your child to color
  • Find familiar toys that are in the book to associate with pictures
• After you have read the book a few different times, read a familiar line and pause for 3 seconds to wait and give your child a turn to fill in the pause (brown bear brown bear what do you…….see; I see a red bird looking at……me). Give visual cues by pointing to your eyes or patting your chest to help your child learn the word.
• Pick an object or animal that occurs on multiple pages in a book to point to on each page to expose your child to repetitive language and after they have seen you point to it a few times, let them have a turn (help them out if they don’t point to it by taking their hand and helping them touch or point to the item named)