It is never too early to start reading to your baby. Research shows that reading to babies from the newborn stage onwards has noticeable benefits. Children who have been read to regularly since birth have a much more developed vocabulary than those who haven’t. Reading books together from a very young age gives your little one the building blocks they need for when they eventually start speaking.
But surely a newborn baby won’t be interested in books? Wrong, there are many different kinds of books for the different stages of development.
What to should I read to my baby?
Books for Newborns
Newborns are all about black and white to begin with. Newborn babies’ eyesight is very underdeveloped compared to ours, when first born they can only see about a foot in front of them, everything else is a blur. They don’t develop color vision until about 1 month old, and even then, it is only red that they can identify. The baby’s color vision develops more and more between 2 – 4 months.
High contrast, mainly black and white, cloth books or board books are perfect for the newborn stage. These books don’t have stories to read out, they are more for helping their eyesight develop. Focusing and tracking are skills that will be built upon in your baby’s first few months of life and high contrast books are a great way to work on this. An added bonus is that a lot of these books have a mirror built in on the last page of the book which baby will enjoy looking at.
High contrast cloth books with textures are also good for entertaining your newborn and your baby will also enjoy them as they grow, so you’ll get your money’s worth. Jungly Tails is a great example of sensory cloth book.
Books for Older Babies
Picture Books
As your baby grows, their wake windows will increase, giving you more time to read books together. Picture books that rhyme, have repetitive language or onomatopoeia are great for reading to baby. These books are usually marketed at 2-4 year olds but babies love singy-songy language; you are far more likely to hold their attention reading a rhyming book rather than a plain story book. You can start reading rhyming picture books from newborn depending on how long your child’s wake windows are. They won’t understand the story but they will enjoy hearing your voice and looking at the pictures. Your baby also won’t make it through a full picture book but reading parts of rhyming books is a nice bonding activity.
As for when your baby will have the attention span for a full picture book, it depends on your child. They are all individuals, my son was able to listen to whole story books at 8 months old, my daughter wasn’t ready until 20 months old.
Nursery Rhyme Books
There are also nursery books, a whole picture book that is dedicated to a nursery rhyme or well known song. For example ‘The Whales on the Bus‘ is a book that is sung to the tune of ‘The wheels on the bus’. There are countless more books like this for every nursery rhyme you can think of.
Sensory Books
There are also sensory books for babies once they have the hand coordination to touch a specific part of a page.
- There are texture books such as the ‘That’s not my…’ Series or the ‘Never touch a …’ Series.
- There are sound books that have little buttons to press that make noises in line with the story being told such as ‘What a noisy farm’ or ‘Jungle Sounds’.
- There are also a combination of the two where the sound button is textured such as the ‘Don’t tickle the…’ Series.
Interactive Books
Interactive books are also great for when they have adequate hand dexterity, ‘Where’s Spot?’ or ‘Where ‘s Mr …’ are great lift the flap books for baby to engage with from around 7 months onwards. There are also interactive books that have sliders rather than flaps such as the ‘Peekaboo’ series.
Puppet Books
There are also puppet books, these come in different shapes and sizes, babies generally like hand puppets, therefore should enjoy books that have a puppet built in.
Teething Books
There are cloth books for young babies that have teething toys either built into the pages or attached to the pages for baby to chew on when they are teething.
Bath books
Bath books are similar to cloth books in that they won’t have much of a story but will have bright pictures to look at, and are completely waterproof. Our favorite was ‘Colour Me: Who’s in the water?’ as the book changes color when it gets wet.
Reading to babies is more important now than ever, especially with the increase in technology use. Studies have found that due to the increase in technology/screens, children’s vocabulary and communication skills are not what they used to be in previous generations.
