Support the success of every child and their family through quality early education and care. Enjoy the books and the activities chosen for this edition to support your child’s early literacy skills.
Peek-a-Boo Forest
by Lamaze
This is a fun and interactive infant book with engaging crinkle sounds and consistent rhyming: “Who is that sleeping under there? Peek-a-boo! It’s a bear!” Crinkling flaps encourage infants to use their motor skills and engage in page-turning.
Activity: Talking to babies is imperative to language development. Describe the world around them. Talk about what is happening. While reading the story to your infant, describe the book. “Look! The bear is underneath the leaf.” Encourage little hands to grab the crinkly pages and say “peek-a-boo” each time they find the animal. Emphasize the rhythm of the story by keeping a beat as you read. The repetition holds attention and helps them home in on the words being said, which encourages emergent literacy.
Ten Little Ladybugs
by Melanie Gerth and Laura Beith
Young children adore interacting and pointing to the page! Now they can count each lady bug and watch them fly away one by one from left to right. This helps young children develop early literacy and math skills.
Activity: While reading, encourage your toddler to count out loud. The rhyme and rhythm of the story will help your little ones know what number comes next. Do all ladybugs look the same in the book? How are they alike? How are they different? Do all ladybugs have the same number of dots? Take your child outside and look underneath some leaves; walk around and look in the grass to see what can be found. What creatures did you find? How many? Did your child find a ladybug?
Wiggling Worms at Work
by Wendy Pfeffer and Steve Jenkins
Imagine your children exploring the soil, when—poof!—out slithers an earthworm! During the hot months, children relish in discovering new elements within the soil as they dig. This book describes the value worms have for the soil and the environment, all while creating a cute story that children enjoy.
Activity: When reading to your preschooler, engage them by asking lots of questions about the story. Take their questions outdoors and begin digging! Document their findings and encourage them to take pictures of the items or creatures under the ground. Later, encourage your child to draw a picture of what they found. Create an outdoor adventure journal and write what your child describes underneath the pictures. Discuss what they found each day they go outside.
