I’m not going to be writing a ‘New York Times Parents’ Guide to the Best Books for Children’ kind of post for this entry, but I’d like to share some of the books that the kids and I love, and how they have helped tremendously in making readers out of them. Hopefully, these recommendations would interest your child too, and get them to love reading like how they helped increase the Kao kids’ appetite for books and more books.

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• 0 – 18 months: Board books with lots of pictures

As a newborn, a baby responds to words, rhymes and songs by cooing, gurgling and smiling and enjoys the beat and tone of your voice while listening to stories. By the time baby turns 6 months, he begins to enjoy reading with his favourite person and bonds with you when you start reading to him. When he reaches 12-18 months, the child starts to understand and says simple words. He is able to answer “where is” questions by pointing and reacts to hand movements, faces, and changes in tone of voice. If you give him books with sturdy pages, he might even begin to start flipping them. If you read him enough interesting stories, he’s going to start preferring to have some books repeated more than others.

We’re very blessed to own an assortment of picture books, board books, flip-the-flap books and plastic books from friends who passed them on after their children outgrew them. They have entertained all three kids during this phase of exploration and learning. I place these books at the bottom shelves of our library so they are always within reach.

I highly recommend the following for this age. These are quite guaranteed to fascinate your little toddler and encourage them to pick up a book for the fun they would have!

1. Books with mirrors

It’s sheer pleasure for a little toddler to be seeing and hearing himself through such books. Especially if reading such books are occasions of bonding time he spends with a person who loves him! I’m sure the story and peek-a-boo bits would thrill the little one and get him excited about reading!

Motherkao recommends: Disney Baby Einstein: Mirror Me! – this busy book with a mirror on every spread (and a peekaboo finale!) teaches babies and young children parts of the face in a playful way.

2. Finger puppet books

Finger puppets are an excellent way to introduce reading and visual play to your toddler. With finger puppets, board books come to life for the little ones and offer the most natural and enjoyable way to engage young children in the process of reading.

Motherkao recommends: Little Finger Puppet Books by ImageBooks which features Little Puppy, Little Horse, Little Duck, Little Butterfly and many more little ones! Check out the whole series here.

3. Books with pull tabs or flaps

These books are aplenty now everywhere, designed with many fancy schmancies and bright colours to entertain children. Books now allow kids to lift flaps, pull tabs, feel textures and even scratch and sniff real smells! Indulge your little one with these, I say. They are only babies once, and such books are such wonderful exploration tools to get them interested in books.

Motherkao recommends: A Mini Magic Colour Book Series published by Pinwheel Children’s Books. I chanced upon these at a book fair and thought they really fascinating! We bought the entire collection and the kids learned their colours at a young age through these books, where the creatures turn into colourful things when the tabs are pulled.

• 18 – 24 months: Rhymes with Dr Seuss

From 18 months onwards, a child learns new words everyday. He may also start to recognise specific books by their covers and wants to be read to if you’ve already established a routine earlier on. By 24 months, a child’s vocabulary grows exponentially and he begins to use simple words in combination.

I say, it’s finally time to bring on the rhymes, and there’s only one man for the job!

Motherkao recommends: Dr Seuss Board Books.

No one does it better than dear Dr Seuss! It’s a good time to let the kids meet Horton, Mr Brown, the Knox, Pat, Pop and Pup and have a good laugh at nonsensical, silly rhymes and quirky illustrations that would tickle their funny bones. One can never get enough of this American writer, poet and cartoonist.

By the way, I am still very much tickled at this age, reading his books aloud to the kids! But be sure to get the ‘Bright and Early Board Books’ Series (Random House) which are simple and sturdy enough for the little one to flip and follow.

• 2.5 years old: Short tales, Phonics and well-loved children authors

At 2.5 years old, a child begins to speak in sentences and asks simple questions, especially “why” questions. He may also start to like reading aloud, and may join you in doing so. This is also the time when he is able to follow a storyline and remembers content, and likes hearing his favourite books read aloud over and over.

2.5 years old is also the time I would start developing a child’s phonemic awareness, and have them start their learning of the letters of the Alphabet and the sounds each letter makes. I would also, while teaching the letters of the Alphabet, begin on sight word reading which would involve getting the child acquainted with high frequency words which are commonly used and encouraging him to memorise the word as a whole by sight, so that he can automatically recognise these words in print without having to use any strategies to decode them. This is to prepare him to start reading on his own if and when he is ready.

My experience with Ben so far has been such: if given a choice, he would always want to be read aloud to, and I usually don’t pass on the opportunity to read aloud to him. But if he has no choice, and there’s nothing else to do (i.e. experiencing a common feeling called boredom), he would pick up a reader simple enough to read the book on his own, and revisit the story. This is the result of having started some routines of reading certain books at this age.

Motherkao recommends:

1. Scholastic’s AlphaTales

AlphaTales is a totally charming collection of alliterative stories. There is one for each letter of the alphabet and each book includes a simple story of a character plus a hide-and-seek picture page and a rhyming letter poem. At the back of each book, there is also a complete teacher’s guide filled with suggested activities and easy lessons.

This collection is a really good way to build phonemic awareness and get kids acquainted with the Alphabet. The Kao kids love this series, and the older ones would now pick up a book on their own to read and look for letter-related items in the hide-and-seek page.

2. Well-loved children’s books (by Eric Carle, Rod Campbell and Mem Fox)

At this age, we’re reading and repeating Dear Zoo (Rod Campbell), Where is the Green Sheep? (Mem Fox), The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Quiet Cricket and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See (Eric Carle) – for its predictability, simplicity, and beautiful illustrations. At this age, most children are also beginning to be fascinated with animals, and these books offer young readers the opportunity to learn something about animals and the world around them  in a really fun way.

I shared some lesson ideas in the earlier part of the year for Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Dear Zoo here and here.

• 3 years old: More inspiring stories and well-loved children books

By three, a child knows that it is letters and words that are being read in stories he hears, and starts to pay attention to distinct and similar sounds in language. He may also begin to play with language and make up silly sounds and words (more so if you’ve started reading Dr Seuss already!), and help you complete familiar stories and stories in what we call predictable books. Predictable books have language patterns and repeated refrains that children this age absolutely love, and I absolutely adore some of these stories which give me so much mileage in terms of creating and designing follow-up activities that allow us to revisit the story again and again in more ways than one.

Motherkao recommends:

1. More Eric Carle

As your child begins to acquire more language skills at this age, it’s time to bring on universal themes, more abstract concepts, more moving tales and books with more extensive vocabulary. I’m often found shopping at various online bookstores to acquire more well-loved children’s favourites, and I’m always thinking more Eric Carle at this point. Eric Carle’s list of printed books in English can be found here and his books in print number to 40. I wished I could buy them all! Some great reads to introduce the children at this age include Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too?, Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?, Little Cloud and Papa, Please Get the Moon For Me.

Stay tuned for some lesson activities we did with Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See? next month.

2. More Dr Seuss

It may be a little overwhelming and difficult to follow at first, but you absolutely need to transport your little ones to Seussville where fun is good and nonsense prevails.

Get them to meet all the nonsensical imaginative characters that would blow their mind away, and immerse them in a world of craziness and funniness of Dr Seuss! We’ve had so much fun meeting Thing 1, Thing 2, the Cat and Sam I Am reading Ten Apples Up on Top, Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat and McElligot’s Pool, and at this age where they are so very imaginative, the kids never say no to a good Dr Seuss book.

3. Mr Men and Little Miss series

We introduced Mr Men to the kids this year when Fatherkao decided to make it a routine to read aloud one book every night to the kids. I’ve never read this series by Roger Hargreaves as a kid, and my, I found all the ‘men’ in this series delightfully funny. Every little book is an enjoyable read – every story contains a simple moral lesson, brightly coloured illustrations and simple literal humour – and it also introduces adjectives like grumpy, clumsy, messy, sneezy to the kids. I like it when the kids get to build on their vocabulary listening to stories.

When I get my hands on the Little Miss Library, it will be my turn to read one book to them every night. Can’t wait!

• 4 years old: Non-fiction, Berenstain Bears and Shel Silverstein 

By four years of age, your child would be able to recognise alphabet sounds, sounds that are the same and sounds that are different, and some printed letters and numbers. He would also be able to focus on a specific task and take turns speaking in a conversation. By now, if he is an avid reader, he would have had some books memorised and can recognise rhyming words. According to the experts, if you have been reading 20 minutes a day with your child from birth, you would have, by now, given your child almost 400 hours of pre-literacy experience. 

This is the age where exploration of the world at the cognitive, intellectual level really begins, and for me, it really IS the best time to introduce books that has the ability to shape his perspective of the world we live in.

Motherkao recommends:

1. The Berenstain Bears

The Berenstain Bears is a series of books created by Stan and Jan Berenstain and continued by their son, Mike Berenstain, which feature a family of bears who generally learn a moral or safety-related lesson in the course of each story. I particularly love the books that are published in collaboration with Christian publisher Zondervan that share Christian beliefs, featuring Bible verses, values and virtues.

The Kao kids love these books too, in part because the Bear family is very much like ours, with Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Brother Bear, Sister Bear and Honey Bear!

2. Shel Silverstein

For the record, I will tell you I love, love, love Shel Silverstein. And it is this love I have for his books that I have introduced him to Ben who is four this year. I love his unique style of writing, which is funny and sad and makes you think. He transports his readers into his world that’s filled with an extremely bold sense of humour, which is riotous, delightful and thought-provoking at the same time.

You need to read The Giving Tree and Runny Babbit, if you haven’t! Ben and I read The Giving Tree together during our special time occasionally, and it’s a book that you can explore with your child on many levels of interpretation – about God, parent-child relationship, friendship and the environment  – and it’s a deeply inspiring book for any four-year-old.

3. Lots of non-fiction according to his / her interests

This is the time to delve into non-fiction and bring on everything that he might be exploring and discovering, from math facts to going to the dentist to the solar system. Kids will definitely appreciate an adult reading and finding out things together with them, and reading non-fiction is also a great way to answer their questions.

We’ve amassed many of these non-fiction books from Scholastic and Nat Geo, and the kids are sometimes taken out of the world of fiction (by me) to pore over them so they can learn more about our world.

• 5 years and on: Roald Dahl’s short stories

Motherkao recommends: Roald Dahl’s short stories for children

I’ve started introducing chapter books by Roald Dahl to Ben (and Becks, but she loses interest after a while cos’ “there are no pictures!” says the little girl) and it’s been quite a success, except that it is tiring to read his books out loud, chapter by chapter. I’ve finished Fantastic Mr Fox and am starting on George’s Marvellous Medicine, and we’ll be meeting Mr Willy Wonka in a while!

Roald Dahl is a must for all kids, in my opinion. He’s one of the greatest writers of our time and his stories can fuel the limitless imagination of children and take them on their own wild flights of fantasy along with the BFG, the Witches, Willy Wonka (and the Oompa Loompas, my favourite people!), Danny and the Twits! I know, cos’ he’s taken me on a few of my wildest flights when I was a child!

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My goal for my children is that they read well before they turn 6 on their own and to have that love for reading kept alive always. I am looking forward to the day that we can all snuggle together on a nice rainy day with our own books and read for hours on end. Till this day comes, I will be introducing more age-appropriate titles to them and have them fall in love with reading over and over again.

Do you have any recommendations for engaging titles which your kids absolutely must read? Do share them with me in the comments below!

Next in Part 3: A Word on Readers

Previously in Part 1: Getting your kids to love reading

It’s no rocket science that in order to raise a reader, you need to do one most important thing.

Surround the child with books…

On our shelves (clockwise), we’ve got Read Aloud books, Chinese books, non-fiction books and pop-up board books

Books…

Paperbacks, Dr Seuss’ titles and hardcovers

And more books…

Our Social-Emotional Intelligence Readers, Nat Geo Readers, and our predictable favourites from Eric Carle and other well-loved authors

Simply having books everywhere around the child will make reading the default activity every time they are at home, especially when they are tempted to say, “I’m bored, what do I do now?”

Over the years, we’ve acquired many books. I wanted to recreate for my kids what I had as a child – access to books, books, and more books. I was an avid reader as a a kid, and am still one (an avid reader, not kid), in part because I had all the wonderful people in my life buying me books on every possible occasion, and I had wanted so much for my kids to fall in love with reading like I did. To me, books are a wonderful investment for their future.

Besides surrounding them with books and giving them easy access to them, here are some tips to get your kids to start reading, and hopefully enjoy reading:

1. Reading aloud to them often, preferably daily

Brain-development research shows that children aren’t ready to learn the mechanics of reading until around age 5. The best way to kick start their love for reading is to read to them even when they can’t understand everything you say. When they are infants, you can try reading aloud to them for 10 to 15 minutes a day, point to pictures and explain the illustrations. At preschooling age, you can increase the length of time by reading aloud to them for about 30 minutes a day.

According to Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, “The more models of fluent reading the children hear, the better….Reading to children also increases their knowledge of the world, their vocabulary, their familiarity with written language and their interest in reading.” So the next thing you can do besides surrounding them with books is to make reading aloud a routine so the children get to hear the stories that can fuel their imagination. This gets them excited about reading.

Reading aloud Dear Zoo to the Kao kids: this huge flip-the-flap book is a predictable classic for all ages

I read aloud to the children as often as I can, even if it means reading the same book for the nth time. I started off with simple stories that would interest them, and have now progressed to reading aloud Road Dahl’s best loved tales chapter by chapter. There’s minimal illustrations in such books and this forces the kids to listen closely and imagine the characters and setting for themselves. We’ve just finished reading Fantastic Mr Fox, and the kids were absolutely gripped by the story that was read aloud to them over a course of two weeks! As part of their bedtime routine, Fatherkao also reads one book from the Mr Men’s Collection to the kids before they get tucked in by me. You can imagine how thrilled the kids were when we started this routine to have their father tell them stories of Mr Bounce, Mr Grumpy and all the other interesting characters in Mr Men!

A very expensive collection, which we managed to snag at a greatly discounted price at the recent Popular Sale!

2. It’s not boring to them, repeat when you can!

If there’s two things preschoolers love, it has to be predictability and repetition. Predictable books use repetitive language and/or sequences, rhythms, and rhymes and allow children to predict what the sentences are going to say, thereby increasing enjoyment and helping to build vocabulary and memory skills. In addition, reading the same book again and again helps develop a child’s vocabulary and improves their reading skills.

One of the books we have in our home library – which I have read for I-dunno-how-many-times to each child (I’m thinking at least 30?) since the day they were little babies in my arms – is this simple, predictable book Ten in the Den by John Butler:

Picture from www.johnbutlerart.com

It has the most beautifully painted illustrations, and the simplest of narratives – Little Mouse asks his friends in the den to “roll over, roll over” only to find that he is the only one left in the den. He then scampers to join his friends at the bottom of the hill. Ben loved it as a baby and so did Becks. And now when I read it to Nat, the older two are still so intrigued by this little story that they pick up the book after I am done with it and read it in its entirety purely from memory. The adult might find it a chore to be reading it with dramatic tone and gestures for the nth time but I’m telling you, it’s a whole new experience every time for a child even if it’s the fourth year he’s hearing this story. Kids love a good story repeated, and they will pick up a familiar book any time to revisit those positive feelings they felt when the story was read to them.

3. Buy them if you can

I have nothing against going to the library, and I bring the kids there quite often to browse the children’s collection there. But there’s something about buying books which allows the children to read and reread that borrowing doesn’t. Books are like an investment, really. These stories are repositories in your children’s memory bank which will be recollected and revisited when they are older, even in adulthood. Besides, there’s this special feeling a child would have when he holds the book that he owns which cannot be compared with holding a library book. Especially if the story strikes a chord – that’s when that connection with reading magically happens.

There are many avenues to purchase books without having to rob a bank. Scholastic sends out quarterly book lists to childcare centres and sells paperbacks at a huge discounts to them, so you could ask around and pool your orders together with friends who have kids enrolled in childcare. There are also book sales happening ever so often at the Singapore Expo, like those organised by MPH and Popular. You can also check out The Groovy Giraffe, Singapore’s one and only remainder bookstore, as well as  Book Depository, which offers free shipping worldwide for good deals.

4. Don’t pressure; motivate instead

There was a point in time I was pressurising Ben to start reading on his own. I drilled him in sight words. I made him learn his phonics. I forced him to read Graded Readers. All because I read a blog that was written by a mother whose kid started reading on his own at three. I had thought that that was the norm, and started heaping tremendous expectations on my firstborn. After a couple of failed attempts, I decided to do a bit more research in this area, and came to realise one thing: you don’t raise a reader overnight. It takes consistency and effort, and a lot of encouragement and motivation. What I wanted was not to have Ben to read. I wanted more; I wanted him (and Becks, and Nat) to LOVE reading. It’s extremely vital for a parent to follow the child’s pace and not to force the issue. That’s the only way that a child becomes a reader for life.

5. Create a comfortable, well-lit spot to read

This seems common sense but it takes deliberate planning, really. Find a spot in the house that takes advantage of natural lighting especially during the day. At night, make sure that there’s good light for the kids to huddle around you for a good story. When it’s comfortable, they will read more, trust me on that!

The sofa in the living room next to our panel of full length windows is the best place to read in the day!

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Nurturing a love for reading is a process, a process that cannot be hurried. But it can certainly be very enjoyable if you surround your kids with imaginative stories and books that will take them to worlds unknown.

What are some things you do for your kids to nurture a love for reading? Do share them with me in the comments below!

Coming up in Part 2: Choosing Engaging Titles for Children

Since the year is coming to a close, and since I often get questions from readers who ask me how I teach my three children who are so close in age, I thought I’d start a series on the resources I use and the routines I started this year in my attempt to home-teach them.

I started off this SAHM gig with the intention to homeschool all three of them. This proved to be a huge challenge and it didn’t take me long before deciding it was impossible. Ben turned four in February this year and began to reveal himself, at four years, with an enormous appetite for information and knowledge – he was brimming with questions, questions and more questions every waking minute. Becks was still in her Terrible Twos, being only two-half when I left my job, and every day with her has been nothing but exhaustion and fatigue. She is obstinate and emotionally-driven, and it took a lot out of me to have to handle the host of emotions (and tantrums) from her every day. As for the baby, he turned one earlier in the year, and was still very much a baby – needing to be nursed and played with all the time.

We struggled to develop a routine together and I thought I was all set to homeschool them with the Hands On Homeschooling curriculum I bought from the States. Within a week, I knew I would go insane if I continued trying. It was just impossible to perform mothering duties, prepare resources and stay patient, not to mention TEACH. In all honesty, I tried to make things work. I’ll try to get Ben and Becks to do Becks’ level of activity, and then work with Ben on his own. I got the helper to watch Nat every time we were engaged, and even held him to nurse while with the older kids if he fussed.

But I couldn’t keep up. With the preparation of resources, that is. Plus, I am really not into crafting (which features a lot in the HoH curriculum) and frequently wondered if the curriculum was rigorous enough to prepare them for Primary One. The Western model is big on self discovery and exploration, and learning through your senses. Not so much practice. If you look at the tracer-printables in HoH and compared it with preschool assessment book-tracers from Popular, you’d be shocked to find that writing the letter (of the Alphabet) twice (at most thrice) is all there is in the former, while the ones we have published locally require the preschooler to trace at least 15 times! I’m not against self discovery and exploration, but I keep having the nagging feeling that what I have ain’t rigorous enough to prepare them for the real world they would be facing, that is, the Singapore Education System.

I still have every intention for the kids to be schooled in our system, and despite my gripes and bugbears about the system (having been born and bred in it and having spent some good 7 years as an educator), I believe that the kids need to go through it to know the competitiveness out there, and along the way, develop strength and resilience in character. Even with its flaws, the system has done well to produce brilliance in many aspects, albeit through examinations, KPIs and ranking.

So in other words, I am not sure if I alone, am enough, or good enough, as their teacher if I were to consider the end goal.

Thus begins the outsourcing. I figured the kids also needed opportunities for socialisation and to be nurtured (because I have the tendency to drive), and so we put them in a church kindergarten for three hours daily. It has been one of the best decisions I have made. The teachers there are so wonderfully patient, the kids are enjoying kindergarten so much for the songs they learn, the craft they do, the friends they make and the stories their teachers tell. Ben particularly adores his Chinese teacher, a middle-aged lady who has ignited his interest in the Chinese language. He remembers the games played and stories told in Chinese class, and returns home to repeat whatever his lao shi said in class that day. And I totally love the way the kindergarten is teaching their nursery kids – everything is learned through songs! They would sing familiar tunes every term but of different things – so far, Becks has learned about fruits, occupations and transport, all through singing and crafting. These are clearly things I wouldn’t be able to do with them. Also, it wouldn’t be possible for them to socialise in the most organic way – at kindy, they’ve made a couple of friends and are learning, with every opportunity to socialise, to navigate through emotions and the need to belong – all on their own.

Anyway. We quickly settled into a routine which worked for us with this arrangement. The kids went to kindy for three hours 10 weeks in a term, and I would home-teach them when they returned. Now that Ben is four-half, Becks is three and Nat is 20 months, we’ve found some things that work for us and parked aside things that didn’t. I don’t reinforce what’s taught in their kindergarten; I do my own thing – a mix of ideas gleaned from the HoH curriculum, printables from online resources and things I create on my own. I acquired what I thought are the basics for every preschooler – graded readers, story books, games, DVDs and preschool resources (aplenty from Popular) – and developed my own set for the kids, usually following a theme / an idea.

And since I get questions from readers of my blog – and friends – who often ask me how I manage with three kids and home-teaching them, I thought I’d just share some of the things I use and do, and our routines in a series of blogposts. Hopefully, I can also learn some things from you if you have any thoughts, ideas and success stories to share. Do watch this space for the weekly series!