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) 



=======================

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

List of toys to be reviewed soon

Toys for toddlers:


Here is a list of toys which I will be reviewing soon. This is the list of toys which we already own, so all the reviews will be based on our first hands experience. If you want any toy to be reviewed which is not in this list, add it in the comments section, i will try to procure that and post review.  I will keep adding more entries in this page as and when we buy more toys.  As and when I am done reviewing a toy, i will remove it from this list. So this is just a list of to be reviewed soon items and doesn't include the ones i have reviewed.
Also, i will always try to post a link to where you can get these online
Once i update the list below with all the toys i have, i will update the recommended age, and also a buy or don't buy from my side

If anyone wishes some item to be reviewed earlier, please post your request in the comments section. or else i pick any random product from this list to be reviewed.

Toys(non-battery):

Skillofun capital alphabet tray with pictures
Skillofun Picture on Alphabet Tray with Knobs, Multi Color
Skillofun Alphabet Picture Puzzle
Skillofun Multi Activity Box, Multi Color
Skillofun Beads Pattern Box, Multi Color
Little Genius Beads - Shape and Pattern
Little Genius Tiger Seriation Big with Knob, Multi Color
Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Baby's First Blocks
Mattel Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Stack and Roll Cups
Funskool Kiddy Star Links
Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack : This is a flipkart link as product was not available on amazon
Fisher Price Stack & Roll Cups
Fisher-Price Toddlerz Tappy the Turtle 
Ambi Toys Max Pull Along -5 dog
Funskool Wibbly Wobbly Train
Funskool play faces
Kinetic sand waba  or any equivalent: We got this as Christmas gift for A. :) Lets see how she reacts and plays with it.
Mee Mee Knowledge Box
Quercetti Georello Farm Activity Toy
Lego duplo
Sassy Dunk n' Clunk Shape Sorter

Bead shuttle/maze
wooden blocks cart
picture match puzzle (all 4 sides) 
Count from 1 - 100 wooden toy
Melissa and doug picture match puzzle
Little genius ABC
Little genius 123
Little genius abc
Little Genius Birds with Sun
Mother care ELC my first bowling set
Hape shape sorter
Hand puppets & soft toys
Color maze
Fisherprice doodle, scribbler, slate
Barbie - Disney
Toykraft finger painting kit
Piggy bank
Esoft dog
tricycle

Toys(battery):
Fisher-Price Kick and Play Piano Gym, Discover 'N Grow
Vtech apple (town one)
Vtech learning bus
Vtech globe
leapfrog musical activity table
leapfrog discovery ball
leapfrog leappad
little tikes trumpet
vtech baby mobile
vtech toto laptop
vtech phone
Mitashi Sky Kidz SK 42 Fun Tunes
Moshi monster
hexbug

List of books to be reviewed soon

Here is a list of books which I will be reviewing soon. This is the list of books which we already own, so all the reviews will be based on our first hands experience. If you want any book to be reviewed which is not in this list, add it in the comments section, i will try to procure that and post review.  I will keep adding more entries in this page as and when we buy more books. As and when I am done reviewing a book, i will remove it from this list. So this is just a list of to be reviewed soon items and doesn't include the ones i have reviewed.
Also, i will always try to post a link to where you can get these online
Once i update the list below with all the books i have, i will update the recommended age, and also a buy or don't buy from my side

If anyone wishes some item to be reviewed earlier, please post your request in the comments section. or else i pick any random product from this list to be reviewed.

Barney's Treasure Hunt
Thomas the Tank Engine Counts to Ten
ABC Zoo
Dogs by Emily Gravett
Smelly Nelly (Finger Puppet Books)
Guess How Much I Love You
The Gruffalo
My Charming Board Books: ABC
My Charming Board Books: Fruits 

From Head to Toe Board Book - Eric Carle
Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes... (Baby Board Books)
Phonics (My First Board Book)
Room on the Broom: Activity Book
100 Shapes and Colours (First Picture Word Book)
Little Mermaid (Fancy Story Board-Books)
Step By Step ABC.123.Colours
Peter Pan (Pop-Up Fairy Tale Books)
Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?: Dr. Seuss's Book of Wonderful Noises (Bright & Early Board Books(TM) 

365 Animal Stories and Rhymes (365 Stories)
Barbie: Learn Your Numbers 1 to 20
Baby Touch and Feel Puppy Love

Dr. Seuss's ABC (Big Bright & Early Board Book)
The Shape of Me and Other Stuff : A very nice book to introduce shadow play

Remember the Magic Word  : A nice book to get your kid to say please
Remember your Manners
Mary had a little lambWinnie the Pooh: Weather
Duck got stuck
Peter pan pop up book
Spot the difference book
Let's Read!: What the Ladybird Heard
Dora the Explorer Alphabet Adventure (Nickelodeon Learning)

Sleep Tight! (Sesame Street)
Double Magic Animals

Aim the bucket

Good for age: 14 months +

Skills developed: hand and eye coordination, motor skills,

What you'll need: Bucket and balls

Detail:
Keep the bucket at some distance from you. Sit with your kid. Take one ball at a time and aim the bucket. When the ball enters the bucket, show that you are happy.. Clap.. Then give the next ball to the kid. She may just throw it.  Don't lose patience it will take some time for her to get the idea that ball has to be put in the bucket. Take few more balls one at a time and aim the bucket. If the kid is not able to put the ball in the bucket, reduce the distance to the bucket and try. She will eventually get the idea and will learn.

Note:
Ensure the balls are soft and easy to handle.

If you already have the balls, use them. Else you can consider buying thses:

Intex Fun Balls, Multi Color
12 Pcs SET OF SMILEY FACE SQUEEZE BALL

Hand actions

Good for age: 14 months (but older and younger kids might enjoy it, too!)

Skills developed: hand and eye coordination,  imagination, vocabulary increases

What you'll need: just yourselves.

Detail: Make your kid sit facing you. Show her your tongue and say "aaa" . See is she copies. If she does, cheer her up.

Then try clapping and say clap. If she also does the same, give her a kiss.

Then try more complex actions like
"flap your wings like pigeon"
"turn your head"
"bend your neck"
"Raise your shoulder"
"Wave your arms like a monkey"
 "Clap like a seal"
"thump your chest like gorilla"
"wiggle your toes"
"Feeling shy? Cover your face"

If she is not copying you, don't get disappointed. Try it some other time. She may just laugh. That is actually a good sign as this shows she is interested. Keep repeating. Eventually she will copy. By this activity you can teach action, birds name, animals names, body parts and most importantly relation between each of those.

After sometime you copy her.

We used this book too while doing this activity.

From Head to Toe Board Book - Eric Carle

It has picture of animals doing various actions. You can do it with or without the book. 
The book does add extra fun to the activity. We have the paperback version of the book.
Adding few pics for your reference: