Reading books at home with your child is a great way to develop language, new words, and pre-reading skills. There are so many books to choose from, so which books are our favourites?

Infants and Toddlers

Our favourite books for infants and toddlers are nursery rhyme books, rhyming books, and touch & feel books like:

• Itsy Bitsy Spider
• Down By the Bay
• Goodnight Moon
• That’s Not My Puppy (many other books in this series)
• Never Touch a Dinosaur (many other books in this series)

These books are perfect because they incorporate song into reading as well as fun textures to feel. With these books children not only learn new words, but they can also follow directions (“that’s not my….” – touch the shaggy ears on the dog) and can fill in the blanks (“itsy bitsy spider”- down came the ______[rain] and washed the spider out).

Preschool and Kindergarten-Aged Children

Some favourite books for Preschool and Kindergarten-Aged Children are rhyming and sequencing books like:

• There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly (many other books in this series)
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (many other books in this series)
• Goodnight Gorilla
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
• Chicka, Chicka Boom Boom
• Llama Llama Red Pajama

Books such as these are great as they help children retell the story (first, then, last) and learn pre-reading skills like rhyming (fly, why, cry). Children can also answer wh-questions while listening or reading the story (Who is that? What is that character doing? How does that character feel?).

These are only a few of our favourite books we use here at Wildflowers. We love to incorporate books into our time with our preschool, groups, and clients of all ages.

Written by Morgan Zenner, Registered Speech-Language Pathologist with Wildflowers