It was a warm one this week! But we had a wonderful turn out, with some new friends joining some familiar faces for a lovely, lively story time.
This week I brought in two delightful board books with photographic illustrations – this is one of my favourite formats (not just because I have two board books with photograph illustrations to my name), and one that I don’t think gets nearly enough love and attention. In fact, I love board books with photographs so much that I wrote an entire guest post on the topic on the Nerdy Book Club, if you want to find out some of my favourites!
I might have included my own books on that list – what can I say, I’m proud of my work!
This week, I read:
KIDS LIKE ME…LEARN COLORS
Not only is this a great diverse color primer that joyfully showcases children with Down Syndrome, it’s also Spanish-English bilingual! We have a few Spanish-speakers in our program, and it was so fun to see one of the older kiddos recognize the Spanish color words.
HELLO, BABY
Then it was time to say hello in 15 different languages, several of which were represented by families in our group! This book is absolutely adorable, with such cute, happy babies. The little ones were drawn to it like a magnet!
We had a large group of Brazilian mamas in the group this week, who were quite excited to see Portuguese represented in our story time pick!
We did a lot of the same songs and rhymes this week, as repetition is such an important learning tool for grown up and babies alike. I did keep things a bit more subdued as it was hot in our space, even at 10:00 in the morning, and I didn’t think folks would be much in the mood for a heavy lifter like the elevator song. We still did some movement songs, though, as I’m a big believer in modelling a wide range of songs and rhymes that caregivers can use at home.
My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean is such a fun song to sing with a baby, swaying them from side to side with the music, and it can be as soothing or as rousing an experience as the mood calls for – again, with that heat in mind, we kept things pretty gentle.
We also did another old chestnut – Go In And Out The Window, swooping our babies in and out of the circle, with much cooing and giggling.
I can’t wait for more baby fun after the long weekend!