Yikes! He's learned to say (and read) "No!"

Everyone tells me that I should dread the day my son learns the word "no." Well he's done it. We've been reading No David! by David Shannon, and the back of the book is covered with the word no. Before going to bed he had a book frenzy and spent ten minutes waving his finger at the book and saying no. Quinn was surprised. "How does he know that that says no?"

Then in the morning Calvin went straight to a big no no, the humidifier, and started shaking the tank, saying "no." I was about to say no myself. Then he noticed the electrical outlet behind him and his baby finger went for it. "NO!" I cried, and took him downstairs to find some trouble there.

He's getting demanding!

Calvin just turned one and he's started to get so demanding with books. He waves his books at us and begs us to read it. If we don't he throws himself on the floor or pulls on our legs and yells or cries. It kind of makes me proud to know that he likes his books so much, but it's one after the other and sometimes he wants the same book four or five times in a row!

So Quinn and I have been teaching him to say "please" before we read the book. At first he didn't know how to pronounce it, so it was frustrating, but we read if anything came out that even remotely sounded like please. He was sitting on the floor like King Tut, wanting to hear The Belly Button Book, and Quinn said, "say please," and he spewed "pppluhhhh!"

But since he makes us read to him so much, he's starting to remember the names of the books themselves. He actually says "cookie" when he wants to hear When you Give a Mouse a Cookie. Quinn was still trying to get him to say please, but Calvin was baby yelling the title of the book, and for a few days, before Quinn could tell what Calvin was saying, there were some frustrating times when Calvin said "Zoo" and Quinn was refusing to read "Dear Zoo" because he wasn't saying please.

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.