Reading Stories and Singing Songs

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Reading Stories and Singing Songs

Create a world full of stories and songs

  • Continue to search for quality books with lovely illustrations and stories of real life.
  • Keep looking for books to support your child's language explosion. If your child has a strong interest in tools, in addition to showing him the real tools—hammer, screwdriver, drill, etc.—you can look for books that support his interest, such as ones with colourful illustrations of tools or one about a carpenter.
  • Pop-up and lift-the-flap books have great appeal at this age and are idea for encouraging interaction around the words in a book.
  • Toddlers will continue to enjoy books of familiar routines and situations, but they also will begin to take an interest in pictures filled with information, action, and detail.
  • Find songs that have more complex language and structure now. Your child can grasp a lot of words at this stage so keep feeding this hunger by offering them.
  • Songbooks with refrains, sound effects or actions to imitate are particularly good choices for this age.
  • Books with rhythm, rhyme, and repetition help build literacy skills.

Connect your child to stories and songs

  • When your child is familiar with a book you can have a conversation about the people and events in the story and compare your child's experiences to those in the book.
  • When reading predictable books with repeated text and with pictures that correspond to the text pause when you read aloud to let your child fill in a word or phrase.
  • Make up actions to some of your child's favourite songs so that you can do them together. The actions will help your child to understand and interpret meaning.

Make time to read and sing with your child

  • Continue to have a place and time to read and sing songs as part of your child's regular daily routine and as an important part of his bed-time routine. A quiet story at night laying on your child's bed with him can be wonderful at inducing sleepiness and signalling the end of the day.

Examples of action songs for this age

Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
Eyes and ears and mouth and nose.
Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

[You and you child can just touch the parts of the body that are mentioned as you sing the song. Once you are both confident you can get faster. Later you can keep silent for head or shoulder or toes and your child has to practise not using a word but thinking it in his head.]

Can you be a Sunbeam?

Adult
Can you be a sunbeam,
A sunbeam, a sunbeam?
Can you be a sunbeam?
Then show me what you'd do.

Child
I can be a sunbeam,
A sunbeam, a sunbeam,
I can be a sunbeam,
And I'll shine down on you!
[Hands clasped together, arms high, make a large circle like the sun]

Adult
Can you be a raindrop,
A raindrop, a raindrop?
Can you be a raindrop?
Then show me what you'd do.

Child
I can be a raindrop,
A raindrop, a raindrop.
I can be a raindrop,
So here's some rain for you!
[Arms in the air, fingers floating down like rain]

Adult
Can you be a flower,
A flower, a flower?
Can you be a flower?
Then show me what you'd do.

Child
I can be a flower,
A flower, a flower.
I can be a flower,
Growing just for you!
[Child in kneeling position, slowly 'growing' to stand big and tall]

Adult
Can you be a buzzing bee,
A buzzing bee, a buzzing bee?
Can you be a buzzing bee?
Then show me what you'd do.

Child
I can be a buzzing bee,
A buzzing bee, a buzzing bee.
I can be a buzzing bee,
With honey sweet for you!
['Buzz' around like a bee]

[While this song centres around nature, you could try a 'farm animals' or 'zoo' theme, too.]