Goodnight Gorilla

Goodnight Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann is the biggest page-turner in our house right now. I've read it to Calvin about a hundred times, commenting on the pictures as I go. When we get to the page where they turn out the lights and all the animals say
"goodnight" and then there's the page with just the wife's eyes in the darkness, I've always made a gasping noise to show her surprise. Now when Calvin hands me the book he rushes to that page and makes the gasping noise himself.

How to Hook Your Kids on Books

I recently read How to Hook Your Kids on Books; Create a love for reading that will last a lifetime, by Karen O'Connor. It was a real quick read that basically lists ideas of how to saturate your family life with books.

Some of the ideas, like visit the library often, were no-brainers, but she also had a lot of ideas that would definitely make reading more exciting. Some of my favorites were:

Mingle books and toys. Especially with babies and toddlers, let them get their hands on the books. Add books to the toy box, or leave a basket of books on the floor where they can reach it and throw in a few toys. This way kids learn right away that books are fun.

Build a home library. I told my husband that as soon as Calvin can hold a hammer he should do this. Have your kids help you build or assemble a simple book shelf. Then paint it. This will give them an extra sense of pride over where they keep their books and it will be a fun memory to share.

Decorate with books. You can get book posters by contacting the publicity department of any major children's book publishers. Another fun suggestion was to make a mobile based on the characters in a book.

Organize reading and writing parties.

Get a pen pal or write a letter to a favorite author.

It would be cool if everyone's family was as into books as O'Connor's. Leave a comment with any other ideas to make reading more fun than it already is.

Use all the senses

If you want to teach your preschooler to read, get them interested in the finer points of reading using the five senses.

Sight. Readers of English are so used to looking from left to right and from top to bottom that you forget that babies don't automatically know that that's the way it goes. Run your finger underneath the words when you read to show them the direction of thoughts on the page.

Touch. Make or buy letters that babies can hold or trace with their fingers.

Sound. Sing about letters and make up silly songs about words that sound alike (I recently made up a song about how ducks have flippers, but dogs have paws). For ideas about what to sing about, "They Might be Giants" has two great DVDs, one about http://store.theymightbemerch.com/herecomeabcscd.html and another about numbers. I especially like their song about vowels.

Taste. Make pancakes out of letters, spell "hot dog" with ketchup and mustard and carry on conversations about the foods that you and your kids are eating.

Smell. Spend a day talking about the things that you smell; the citrus smell of an orange, peanut butter, trash, flowers, pepper. Make a big show out of pronouncing the letters.

For more ideas about how to teach kids to read before they reach kindergarten, check out Barbara Curtis's website, www.mommyteachme.net. I'm currently reading Mommy Teach Me To Read!

I want Calvin to teach me to talk

Saturday, January 10, 2009
I want Calvin to teach me to talk
I disagree with parents who say that you shouldn't talk baby talk with your baby. You know the type. They brag about how they always talked to their babies as if they were adults and by the time they were two they were reading aloud from Proust.

Pish posh, I say. Language is made up of little sounds put together and baby talk is a baby's way of experimenting and practicing making those sounds. I can talk to my baby like he's an adult all day, but the first time I got a reaction was when I started making fart noises while changing his diaper. He likes fart noises, and bee noises, and barks and whistles. He likes kazoo sounds and drum sounds.

And the noises that he makes to express joy make me wish that I was a baby with a chance to start all over with language. When he's pleasantly occupied, with a toy or an electrical chord, he makes a buzzing noise with his tongue. When he see's something that he thinks is neat, like a ceiling fan or an altar full of candles he says ha-Tah! and when he sees something that he's really impressed by, say, a Christmas tree or a carnival ride he lets out the heartiest Dang! I've ever heard.

I appreciate his sounds, and there are new ones every day. When he hears us copy him, even if he's doing something babyish, he feels good about his sounds and we let him know that we're listening.

Read to him whether he likes it or not!

Some of my friends say that their kids won't sit and listen to an entire story, and so they spend their time working on a puzzle or talking about the pictures. You can learn a lot from puzzles and pictures, but when it comes to reading stories from beginning to end, I never wait until my baby looks like he' s paying attention, I just plow ahead.

I mean, Calvin is a baby not an Oxford graduate student. He's never going to sit there with his hands folded and a thoughtful look on his face. He spends his time trying to eat the pages and rip off the moving tabs and flaps, but still, I plow ahead.

Tonight I read him The Saggy Baggy Elephant. He grabbed it while he cruised past the couch, and so I started to read it to him under the kitchen table, but then he crawled into the hallway, and I followed him, still reading, and finished the book with him laying on the kitchen floor waving a wire whisk. I think he enjoyed the story more when I crawled around the floor reading it to him.

Laughing about underpants brings our family together

My husband and I have been reading the Captain Underpants series, by Dav Pilkey to Calvin for months. We think the books are hilarious, and get a huge kick out of the Flip o' Rama chapters. Whether or not Calvin remembers the stories, having us get together and read something silly at an early age has been important. We have "mandatory meetings" where we sit on the couch with Calvin on our laps and read a few chapters. In Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, the character Professor Poopypants devised an elaborate system where everyone got a silly name. Calvin's was Pinky Bananabuns. We still call him that.

Calvin's Favorite Books

When I was pregnant Quinn and I visited the Banks Street Book Store in NYC. I was looking at the little cardboard books, but Quinn didn't want to get a bunch of cardboard books. He wanted the big fancy picture books for our little precious. Little did he know what these people are like....

Reading a big fancy picture book to a baby is a challenge because he just wants to grab it and rip it and chew it. It could be enough to make you give up, but there are so many books out there that are designed to appeal to babies (Geez, this sounds so duh now that I've written it out....oh well). A few in particular:

I see a Monster: It starts out "I see a monster, hairy and red. Where is he hiding?"...and you fold the flap and see a huge red fuzzy monster "Under the bed!"
Calvin loves this book because it's touch and feel and because it's full of monsters.

Any book by Matthew Van Fleet: He has a book with the letters of the alphabet, and the animals that begin with those letters. Van fleet books are so full of flaps and textures and moving parts and scratch and sniff that we'll spend five minutes looking at one page. The letters of the alphabet book came with a free poster with flaps for each letter (Calvin loved it but he's already ripped it to shreds). There's also a dog book with fur that you can touch and tails and different breeds doing awesome things. And today I just got a book about tails. All the books have tons of unusual animals to learn about. Calvin loves them because they're mega stimulating.

Sandra Boynton books are great because they're short, funny and nearly indestructible. My favorites are the Belly Button Book and Hippos go Berserk. I said that I would be listing Calvin's favorites, but since I read them out loud to him it makes a difference if I think it's funny.

David Shannon Books: I just got "No David" and we also have a couple of others. It's nice because it's mainly pictures of David doing crazy boy things that Calvin does. He gets into lots of trouble but at the end we see that his mommy loves him. I get a kick out of them.

Llama Llama Mad at Mama, by Anna Dewdney. I just got this through a book club but I love it. The baby llama has to go shopping with his mom and she's dragging him through the store until he has a temper tantrum. The pictures are great and it's rhyme and meter are very good.

There you have it. Calvin's favorites.