A's favourite books(top 25) at 20 months

A loves reading. I have been thinking of documenting her favourite books for a long time now. When she will grow old and look at this list, I don't know what her reaction will be. But from now on I want to keep a list of her favourites every 6 months. These books are not really in order of preference.  She likes them all so much that I cant decide which one to place where.

1.     Kipper's A To Z: An Alphabet Adventure by Mick Inkpen
    A very creative alphabet book. Its fun to see how Kipper and Arnold take you from A is to Ant till Z is for Zebra. How they keep collecting each of them in a box and in the end they have a mini zoo. Ideal for age > 2 year but my lil one has been enjoying this one since she was 17 months.

2.  From Head to Toe by Eric Carle

 This is one of the first few book I bought for A. Since 12 months, this has been one of her favourites. She remembers what each of these animals does and remembers every single word in the book. This is our favourite amon all the Eric Carles book. The moment she hears the word "gorilla", she thumps her chest, Penguin turns his heads. It is great book to get her moving in different ways. Note that its not a bed time book as it makes my lil one super duper active :)

3. A to Z from Sandra Boynton

  One day A was looking at herself in the mirror and smiling. I said "You are admiring yourself in the mirror just like Aadvark" and showed her this book. Since then it has been her favourite. It has been a very good book for building vocabulary. A learnt words like grinning, frowning etc from it. She also enacts all the actions being done by the animals. I do not like the fact that U is "uglybirds being ugly" and I kind of always try to skip that one. But other than that I just love this book.


4.  Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
  This is one of the very famous books by Margaret Wise Brown. I ordered it and When it came I didn't like it. I actually regretted buying it as I really didn't see any story line. Any ways, I read it to A. and She loved it. Not really a goodnight book for us, as she jumps when the cow jumps over the moon. She sits with her hand folded on an imaginary chair. Always tries to find something new in that dark green room. And just loves the old lady whispering hush.  Now I love it because A simply loves it.


5.
 duckling llama llama wakey wake elmo says i ll teach my dog a lot of words my body (baby einstein) dogs by emily gravett : Mention doggies by Sandra boynton pigeon wants a puppy
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom





DoI mention brown bear & hungry caterpillar here

A's books collection and recommendations for toddlers

This list is actually A's books recommendations for toddlers. (best books)
A has a lot of books and time n again, people ask her mumma what all books She has. So, she inspired momma to document them here. Make a list and then share which one is her favourite.

These days different types of books are available for toddlers.
cloth books, bath books, touch n feel, squeaky book, sound book, activity books, puppet books, googly eyes/funny characters books, lift the flap books, popup books, slide n learn, pull n learn etc
Even after this big list I am sure that I haven't covered all kinds. So I am going to make a list here. Will try to categorize them. Some I feel were worth it and some I feel are just for show.

Then, these books can again be categorized based on the concept they teach like alphabets, colors etc. So I will add all the categories. Just that some books can be present in multiple categories. Also this is the list we own. So it has both the books we like and the ones we don't.
Also A few of them are the ones which we read in library.

Colors:

Colours (Usborne First Words Board Books)
Step By Step ABC.123.Colours 

Alphabets:
ABC Zoo
Dr. Seuss's ABC (Big Bright & Early Board Book)
Dora the Explorer Alphabet Adventure (Nickelodeon Learning)
My Charming Board Books: ABC
Step By Step ABC.123.Colours

Dora the Explorer Alphabet Adventure (Nickelodeon Learning)
Nick Jr. ABC Block Books: 26 Books in a Box!
Animal Alphabet
Sesame street: Elmos learning adventure: Animal alphabet


Counting book:
Thomas the Tank Engine Counts to Ten
Step By Step ABC.123.Colours 
Barbie: Learn Your Numbers 1 to 20 
Numbers,Colours,Shapes (Soft to Touch Board Books) 
4 He's a Jolly Good Fellow (Numberjacks Story Book)
Sesame Street Counting All Around (Sesame Street: Zip & Carry) : We have paperback version

Touch and Feel books:
Baby Touch and Feel Puppy Love
This Little Kitten (Ladybird Touch and Feel)
Touchy-feely Fairies (Usborne Touchy Feely Books)

Lift the flap books:
ABC Zoo
Where Is Baby's Belly Button? (Karen Katz Lift-the-Flap Books)Dear Zoo Noisy Book
I Love Sounds Book
Who's Hiding in the Garden
why is the sky blue?

Cloth books:


Bath book:

Squeaky book:
Squeaky Farmyard Animals Board Books: Deborah the Dozy Duckling; Prudence the Pretty Piglet; Laurence the Lost Lamb; Clarence the Curious Calf :I only have Deborah the Dozy duckling from this set.

Sound books:
Dear Zoo Noisy Book
Dora the Explorer Sound Book: Dora's Countdown to Bedtime

Activity books:
Play with Sticker - Colour and Shapes
1000 Animal Stickers (1000 Books)

Finger puppet books:
Smelly Nelly (Finger Puppet Books)
Little Crab: Finger Puppet Book
Very Hungry Caterpillar Finger Puppet Book

Hand puppet books:

Google eyes/funny characters book:
Who's Hiding in the Garden
Moo goes the cow

Popup books:
Peter Pan (Pop-Up Fairy Tale Books)

Slide n learn books:


Pull n learn books:

Classic board/hardcover/paperback books:

Barney's Treasure Hunt   Barney goes on a treasure hunt with his friends in this book. What I like is the colorful illustrations. And on the left of each page it has pictures of items to be searched on that page. For eg: a hat etc. I ask A to find that object and she searches and becomes very happy when she finds it. So, she learns new words in  very fun playful way.
Cookie's Guessing Game About Food (Sesame Street)
Dogs by Emily Gravett
Guess How Much I Love You
From Head to Toe Board Book - Eric Carle
Room on the Broom: Activity Book
The Gruffalo
The Shape of Me and Other Stuff : A very nice book to introduce shadow play
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?: Dr. Seuss's Book of Wonderful Noises (Bright & Early Board Books(TM) 
Sleep Tight! (Sesame Street)
Remember the Magic Word  : A nice book to get your kid to say please
Remember your Manners
Let's Read!: What the Ladybird Heard
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Little Blue Truck Board book
I'm Not Cute!
He Bear, She Bear (Bright & Early Board Books(TM))
Little Mermaid (Fancy Story Board-Books)
Richard Scarry's Bedtime Stories (Pictureback(R))
This Little Potty: Ladybird Touch and Feel (Ladybird Touch & Feel)
Where Is Baby's Belly Button? (Karen Katz Lift-the-Flap Books)
Disney WTP the Movie (Disney Winnie the Pooh Movie)
Shark in the Park (Easy Words to Read)
Usborne The Great Undersea Search (Great Searches)
Down the Dragons Tongue
Little By Little
Monkey Do!
Fergus's Scary Night
Usborne farmyard tales: six
ladybird: why is the sky blue? 
My Animal farm: horses
Good night, sleep tight
Disney winnie the pooh: Food


Animals books:
Dogs by Emily Gravett
ABC Zoo
Smelly Nelly (Finger Puppet Books)
Double Magic Animals
Dear Zoo Noisy Book
Bloomer
Moo goes the cow

Books for teaching body parts:
From Head to Toe Board Book - Eric Carle
Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes... (Baby Board Books)
Is This My Nose?

Rhymes books:
Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes... (Baby Board Books)
The Nursery Rhymes of Winnie the Pooh: A Classic Disney Treasury
Humpty Dumpty
Mary had a little lamb

First words books & other concepts like shapes, fruits,opposites etc:
My Charming Board Books: Fruits
Phonics (My First Board Book)
100 Shapes and Colours (First Picture Word Book)
Big Board First 100 Words
I Love Sounds Book
Snake Makes Shapes (Early Learning Activity)
Environment Jigsaw Puzzle


Other big books: 
365 Pancharantra Stories
365 Animal Stories and Rhymes (365 Stories) 



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Winnie the Pooh: Weather
Duck got stuck
Spot the difference book

Eggs Eggs Eggs

For some reason, A is fascinated by eggs. When she hadn't started crawling, I got boiled/unpeeled egss in a bowl and she actually dragged herself from one side of the bed to other to touch them and play with them. After seeing this, I started giving her eggs for playing a lot more. With her age and based on what I am going to make out of eggs, the activities keep changing a little bit. Few ideas are documented here:

1. Initially I used to give her boiled, unpeeled eggs for playing

2. Later if I had to make omellete etc, I would break the egg and used to ask her to put the shell in the dustbin. She learnt that shells go to dustbin and on the way she was very happy crushing the shell. Note that all this was always nuder adult supervision

3. With time that this sticky liquid comes out of the eggs if you break them. So now, I started giving her spoon to break them for omellete and she gently taps the eggs with the spoons to break them.  I help in taking  the liquid out in a bowl.

4. The bowl goes to her for mixing/beating with the spoon

5. If I boil egg, I give her for breaking the shell and peeling.

It is a great sensory activity starting from like 8 months till.. Well I don't know. My little one is 16 month old and she still enjoys it.

How to learn shape recognition?

Rather than how to learn or teach shape recognition, this post is more about how A learnt shapes. A learnt basic shapes at 15 months. and now at 16 months she knows many more shapes. We were initially using this shape board from little genius (at around 14.5 month)

Little Genius Inset Shape Board (Small) with Knob

She learnt these in a day or two but later I realized that its not shapes that she identifies but either color or position.
For eg: If I would say circle, she will pick circle. But if I drew circle and square on a notebook, she couldn't figure out which was circle. 

So here we were. I had no clue what association she had formed in her developing mind because of which she would identify shapes correctly on the shape board but not else where. I just left doing it for some days and was thinking how do I get her to have the correct association between shape and shape name. What was troubling me more is that she has made some wrong association in my mind. I feel unlearning stuff is tougher than learning it. That is why I didn't want her to learn it wrong.

Long back I had bought

Fisher-Price Tappy The Turtle Rattle  (amazon link)

Fisher-Price Toddlerz Tappy the Turtle  (flipkart link)

for her. But she wasn't interested as  the shapes were to hard for her to press and she somehow never found it interesting earlier. Now when I gave this to her, every time she would pres all the shapes, turtles neck would come out and it would make a funny sound. She used to burst into laughter. Now when she was pressing the shapes, I started telling her the shape names and slowly she correlated it with the shapes learnt from
Little Genius Inset Shape Board (Small) with Knob  .

Now when I drew the shapes on the notebook... Voila! she could tell them correctly.

I also kept them side by side and asked to press circle on turtle and pick circle from shape board. Just in a few days she learnt shapes and this time shapes are actually shapes and not some position or color :-D . Please do share how did your kids learn shapes.
 

Lets cut some shapes

Activity for learning shapes:

Good for age: 15 months +, We did it at 16 months.

Skills developed: hand and eye coordination, motor skills, One can learn shapes

What you'll need:
1. Shape cutters or you can use different shape utensils from kitchen
2. playdough or you can make a dough at home

Detail:
Roll the dough. Use the shape cutters to cut. I ask A to pick shapes. For eg: Lets cut a circle and she picks the circle from the shapes. And then she puts the circle on the playdough and presses to cut it. Ofcourse I showed her once. This way, she revised her shapes and it was a fun learning exercise. Very good for hand eye coordination.

Note:
Be careful that the kid doesn't eat the dough.

Here I have attached the pic of what A had cut. Ofcourse its not perfect, but who cares :)

The shape cutters we used were from something like the one mentioned in the link below:

Basic shape sorter

We got them for a very good price.

Where Is Baby's Belly Button? (Karen Katz Lift-the-flap Book)

Belly button!! Somehow it is A's favourite body part :). I asked for this book in our library when A was 9 month old. But somehow I could never get my hands on this one till today. Today in the library time, we saw this book. My face gleamed and teeth started shining as soon as I saw the book. Finally :)

This is how it goes:
Where are baby's eyes?
Under her hat!
Where is baby's mouth?
behind the cup!
....

And for all these there is a flap. The baby lifts the flap and sees eyes and other parts. I felt it is quite a good book to use from 8months onwards. But at 15 months A already knows most of the body parts mentioned in the book. Also she already knows almost all the objects. So there wasn't much learning for her but It was fun for her. She made me read her this book around 3-4 times, before we picked another one to read.

One more observation was flaps in the book are not very strong and can come out very easily if not handled properly.


I would say its a fun interactive book for babies age 6months+ till 1.5 years(depends on the kid).

Here is the link on amazon:

Where Is Baby's Belly Button? (Karen Katz Lift-the-Flap Books)

Big Board First 100 Words - Roger Priddy

Its been quite some time since I wrote a post on my blog. A wasn't keeping well. So I was busy taking care of her. I also haven't bought A any new toy or book also for sometime.Decided to take a step back, and use the existing stuff a little more. Her toys and books budget allocated for this month will be used next month or may be the month after that. Interestingly we did play a lot and read a lot of new books too. There were some in which she wasn't interested earlier but now loves reading them.

One of the books which she didn't like earlier is

Big Board First 100 Words

I must say this book can't be the first book. It has way too many pictures on one page. Too big size for very small babies.

For a long time,  A only liked books with just one pic per page. But now, she likes books with multiple pics on each page too.

Now about the book:

1. It can't be a babies/kids first book. Babies first book should be one with one pic per page. Its definitely for 12 month + kids.
2. Excellent quality board book
3. Sturdy pages. Very big in size. Size of each page is 11 inch * 11 inch.
4. Bold and bright colors. Will definitely catch a toddlers eye.
5. Has lot of day to day objects. It talks about colors, animals, vehicles, fruits, toys, bath time, bed time stuff etc
6. Has a lot of words with good pictures. So, really good to build their vocabulary

At 15 months, A can identify around 60 images out of this book.

Amazon has a look inside feature available for this book. So in case you want to order, you can see almost the complete book even before ordering.

I am considering buying this book:

 

My Very First 100 Animals

If you have any feedback on this one, please do let me know either by commenting on the post or by mailing me at learningfrommykid@gmail.com