Four Great Books to Read with your One-and-a-Half-Year-Old

Reading with your children is so important – it teaches them early literacy skills, gives them a love for reading and learning, and it allows you to spend time with them talking and learning together.  My toddler is loving these books right now!

1.   Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown

This book has been around for 60 years!  So many people can remember reading this book as a kid and want to read it to their own children.  Margaret Wise Brown used every phoneme in the English language in this book, so it is great for kid’s speech and reading development.

A young bunny says good night to all the things he sees from his bed before drifting off to sleep.

Buy Goodnight Moon here. 

2.   Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle

Another beloved classic.  And there are so many things you can do with this book! At my son’s young age, we are working on recognizing the animals in the pictures, and as he gets a little bit older he can “help” read the repetitive phrases.  Kids who are older preschool/ kindergarten will be able to recognize that the colors are describing the animals – an introduction to adjectives and nouns!

A brown bear sees a yellow duck who sees a blue horse, and so on!

Buy Brown Bear, Brown Bear here. 

3.   Hand, Hand, Fingers Thumb by Al Perkins

My son loves the rhythm of this book!  We pretend to drum our fingers, thumbs and hands on the book as we read.  It has also made him obsessed with drumming on everything else. 

Monkeys drum and hum and create a rhythmic read that will get stuck in your head.

Buy Hand, Hand, Fingers Thumb here.

4.   Corduroy  by Don Freeman

Honestly, my son always wants to read this book before his nap, and it’s just a bit long for that.  So, I skip lots of sentences and sometimes even pages.  But when you read the whole book as it is written you are struck with the precise language the author uses.  It’s poetic, a heart-warming story, and what young kid doesn’t relate to having a teddy bear?

A bear, Corduroy, wants to be taken home by a shopper, but he is missing a button.  After going on an adventure to find it, he is finally taken home by a new friend.

Buy Corduroy here. 

Check out one or all of these books and read them with your toddler this weekend!

 *Note: I've linked to all of these to board books on Amazon.  Almost all the books we read together right now are board books so that my kids can touch and feel them without messing them up.  I think it is so important for them to have ownership of the book and to be able to physically interact with it.  But, if you'd rather have it in paperback I totally get it!

Hannah