It’s no question that reading books with our children supports their cognitive and language development. It’s great for building our children’s receptive and expressive language skills, and helps them learn early literacy skills as well. Here are some of my favorite books that I love to use in therapy! You can ask your speech therapist for more ideas on how to utilize these books, and what your child may be ready for!
1. Brown Bear, Brown Bear
The pictures and words are simple, so this book works well especially if your child is easily distracted. You can even sing the words to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (kids love this!). This is a great way to introduce animals, animal sounds, and colors. You target imitation of sounds and words, or even try to have your child imitate two word phrases like “brown-bear!”
2. Good Night, Gorilla
I like this book because, like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, the pictures are simple, and the words are repetitive (and repetition is a key speech therapy technique!). This book is great to target identification of animals (e.g. Do you see the elephant?), and to also introduce some verbs! Since there are so few words on the pages, it’s a great way to also practice simply engaging with the book by describing it, or having your child describe what they see. Remember, you don’t always have to go by the words on the page.
3. Little Blue Truck
This book follows the journey of a little blue truck, and it creates plenty of opportunities for you to get loud and silly with your child! I love utilizing this book to encourage children to simply make sounds and get noisy! There are a bit more words on the pages, but you can focus on the sounds if it's difficult to have your child attend for longer periods of time.