Date : May 7, 2021
Baby board books aren’t just thicker picture books for infants – they’re designed with your baby’s best interest in mind! There are clear benefits to sharing a board book with your baby aside from it being the first step to early literacy. You help nurture a love of books and reading, you provide sensory stimulation that helps support your baby’s brain development, you encourage the development of their language skills, and you create loving connections between you and your baby. All a big win/win! Put down those picture books and pick up board books for your baby – the results will speak for themselves!
The key benefits of baby board books
Encouraging your baby to develop a love of books and reading is something every parent wants, right? What better way to do it than to start when they’re brand new, with beautiful, colourful board books? Board books for babies are a brilliant way to foster and develop early literacy in your child – here’s why!
Sturdy pages
Board books are made sturdy with your baby in mind. At this early age, your baby learns best through exploration, particularly through tasting and touching. Board books encourage this! Leave out a few of your baby’s favourite books and let them play with them at will. The thick pages make it easy for baby to pick them up, and the shiny surface on the pages means that if baby decides to mouth the book, you can just wipe it off.
Stimulating textures, patterns and colours
Board books are generally made with interesting textures, patterns, and colours designed to keep baby engaged in the story. Often the pages will include different textures for baby to touch and explore, and the illustrations will be simple but colourful. Babies love looking at faces of people, familiar objects like balls or milk bottles, and images of other babies or animals they’re familiar with. All of these things encourage babies to engage with the story and encourages them to examine things of interest. This can often lead to baby being able to distinguish between colours, textures and shapes – which are the building blocks of literacy.
Age-appropriate stories and text
Board books contain stories designed for babies and young toddlers. The words are often simple, and usually contain rhyming words and repetition, which is fun for your baby to hear. Reading these stories helps build a rich network of words in your baby’s brain – the start of a vocabulary! Little ones whose parents read frequently to them know more words by age 2 than children who haven’t been read to – so it’s a no brainer really. These kids are also more likely to learn to read sooner, and become voracious readers as they age.
For more information on early childhood literacy and reading to you baby, check out May Gibbs for wonderful insights
Librarian Bec
Right now, Librarian Bec’s hard at work at your local library, sharing a passion for reading with little people and big. Bec writes about inspiring little readers and embracing lovely literature.
