Go Ahead and Read to Your Baby!

This is one of the first set activities I did with J.  At about 2 months old, I consistently brought J into our room after he woke in the morning.  We talked with daddy as he got ready for work and then once he left, we sat in bed, reading stories.  He loved reading from the very beginning.  At first, he mostly like books with simple pictures; if the illustrations were too busy, he wasn’t interested.  He also liked books with a rhyming story.  His absolute favorite was  In the Beginning by Dandi Daley Mackall.  He would laugh almost every time I read it.  I think he liked the sing song story most of all. 

Story time certainly transformed as J got older. 

For a period of time (around 4 months?), he became very frustrated while looking at books.  He had just learned to grasp things with his hands and was disappointed that he couldn’t grasp the pictures in the book.  Cloth books and touch and feel books seemed to bring the most enjoyment during this stage. 

I read an article one time that mentioned reading to babies and pretoddlers also helps them to learn basic reading skills (example: we read left to right – both pages and text).

Tummy Time for Infants

Another helpful activity during infancy is tummy time.  When they spend so much time on their backs/in arms, time on their stomachs require them to develop muscles in their necks and eventually arms (as they push up).  J wasn’t wild about tummy time at first.  I found he did much better if he could see me, so I would place him on our bed or an ottoman and then kneel down on the floor in front of him.  He was fine as long as I was talking with him.  We started out with just a short amount of time (3 or 4 minutes) and worked up.