Babies and books: why you should read to them
Researchers claim that babies in the womb learn to recognise their mother's voice. Certainly babies respond to the voices of their carers, and to the rhythms and rhymes of language, in the early months of their lives. Nursery rhymes, stories and lullabies have been told and sung to generations of babies and are still enjoyed today. Books, too, should become a regular part of children's lives from the very beginning - it really is never too soon to share a book with your baby and to lead her gently into the wonderful world of words. As very young children listen to stories and rhymes they will develop 'an ear for language'. This will be a huge help in predicting and understanding the rhythms of texts as they move into reading.
Books for babies are fabulous today; they're creative and extremely varied. For the under ones, look for tough board books with bold, colourful pictures and texts that are full of great sounding words - such as 'squelch' and 'splish splosh' in Helen Oxenbury's child-centred board book, Tickle, Tickle (Walker 0 7445 6784 X). Your baby may not fully understand the words but will love the sound of them, and the sound of your voice reading them.
Sharing books is fun for both adult and child, just as soon as the baby gets used to sitting on your knee, listening to your voice and looking at pictures as you point to them. They'll want to join in with rhyming words, repeated words - whenever the book offers an opportunity. Alex Ayliffe's Boo Barney
(Little Orchard 1 84121 2091) invites the baby to play peepo, to swing and to wave. Animal Noises (Usborne 07460 4104 7) will have your baby attempting to 'moo' and 'woof' as the text is read. This is a very simple book but there are little extras in the pictures for the parent to point out and talk about; it is a book that you will find yourself reading again and again. Let children help to turn the pages as soon as they want to - this is the start of learning how a book works. Soon, as you point to words and pictures, they will learn to look from left to right and eventually all these little bits of learning will come together as your child becomes a reader.
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