More Activity Ideas

  • Read or tell a calming story as you feed or rock a baby. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t understand the words or whether or not he can see the pictures. He will tune into the rhythms and cadences of language and associate the sound of your voice with comfort.
  • Encourage an older child to “read” to a baby.
  • Give a baby a board book to hold as you change her diaper. Talk about how she is “reading”––just like a big girl. Imitate her sounds as she coos at the pictures.
  • Prop board books where crawling babies and new walkers can see their pages or covers. Let the babies travel to get the books that they want to play with or that they want you to read.
  • Follow a baby’s lead as you read a book together. You don’t have to read all the words or even any of them! You can read or talk about a page, and then let baby close the book or turn to another page. You can make up your own story or add your own sound effects—go along with whatever holds her interest.
  • Copy pictures from babies’ favorite books. Put the pictures where babies can see them as they are carried around or as they explore on their own. As you look at and talk about a picture together, help baby connect it with its book.
  • Look at a book about babies together, for example, Baby Faces by Margaret Miller or Global Babies by The Global Fund for Children. Talk about what each baby is wearing or doing. Continue the conversation as you show the baby himself in a mirror. Most likely he won’t recognize himself yet, but you two can talk about the baby in the mirror, just as you talked about the babies in the book.
  • Start reading routines with babies, one-to-one and in small groups. You might read before naptime, after coming in from outdoors, early in the morning, or late in the afternoon. Make this a special time for cuddling, looking at pictures, and talking together.
  • Substitute babies’ names for the names of characters in a book or nursery rhyme.
  • Make a book for babies with pictures of all the children in the group. Name and talk about the children as you “read” it together. 
  • Read books with lots of action words and sound effects that toddlers can imitate. If they are not in the story, add them yourself! Songbooks, animal books, and books about musical instruments or vehicles offer lots of sound and action possibilities.
  • Play a hide-and-seek game with the pictures in a book. Can a toddler find where a favorite character is hiding on a new page? Can he show you what is under the chair or up in the sky?
  • Find real objects, toys, or puppets that are similar to those in toddlers’ favorite books. Help toddlers use the real objects to act out parts of the story as you read or to play out their own versions of the story.
  • Read or make up stories about a day in the life of a toddler. Ask parents to supply pictures (print or digital) and make your own versions of classic books such as Good Night, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown.
  • Toddlers love specific, interesting words that name things and actions they can see. Read nonfiction picture books together, including ABC books and concept books about a particular topic of interest. Encourage toddlers to point to and name the pictures that intrigue them, to act out actions, and to repeat interesting words.
  • Read a rhyme or poem with a toddler. Exaggerate the rhythm and emphasize the rhyming words to help her tune into the sounds. When reading a book that you have read many times together, pause before a key rhymed word and see if she will say it along with you.
  • Read a book with a strong pattern, such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle, or a book that describes opposites. When toddlers have learned the pattern and can show or tell you what is coming next, try making up new examples together.
  • Read books about places that toddlers can visit, such as a playground, park, library, fire station, grocery store, or preschool classroom. Visit one of the locations and together make a book about it. (You may want to bring a cellphone with a camera to take pictures for your book.)
  • Read multiple versions of a folk tale or a group of books on the same topic but in different genres (fiction, nonfiction, ABC, rhymed, wordless books). Engage toddlers in reenacting a story as a simple group performance.
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