It's Never Too Early

It's never too early to start reading books to your kids. Admittedly, I didn't do this with my own kids and I'm sorry about that. I wish I would have taken a little more time to do so, but we were both working full time, often on opposite shifts and it was hard. Sadly, both my parents died before our kids were born and my in-laws lived in another city several hours away. Otherwise I'm sure my kids would have been read to more often, and maybe been instilled with the same love for books that I have.

So I guess I'm making up for it with my granddaughter. I started out by sitting her on my lap when she was about five months old and holding the book so she could see the pictures. She always settled down and really looked at the pictures. When I let her look at the book herself she had a tendancy to try to rip the pages so I bought a few of the classic children's books in the board book form. They are practically indestructable.

I've read each one to her a million times already (I practically know them by heart). Now when I suggest to her to "go read one of your books" she heads over to her pile of books and starts "reading".

Here she is reading a couple of her books.

First there's her most favorite, Dr. Seuss's Hop On Pop.

And here she is with P. D. Eastman's Are You My Mother?

I don't know why she feels the need to taste her books.

One of these days I'll get a little video of her while she's reading because she often "reads" out loud!