What is the practice?
Toddlers learn to recognize favorite books by their covers, which is an important frst step in increasing their interest in reading, as well as becoming familiar with print rules. By encouraging your toddler to pay attention to covers, and by asking questions and pointing out different features of text, you can help her develop these pre-reading skills.
What does the practice look like?
A toddler selects her favorite book for a bedtime story, and, with help from her mom, remembers the title. Together they point out and label the most exciting pictures and objects on the cover, and fnd them again within the book. They point to the words in the title with their fngers while saying them, and talk about the particular features of this cover and book—how big it is, what colors they see, whether it’s shiny, etc.
How do you do the practice?
Reading the same book over and over again to a toddler can get dull for adults, but this process is actually an important one. It gives toddlers the chance to become more familiar with the words they are hearing, understand the story better, and start making connections between the pictures, the print, and the words they hear. Here are some ideas to make repeated readings more fun:
- Ask your toddler to tell you everything she can about the cover of her favorite book. What colors are there? What’s in the pictures? How do the people (or animals) look—happy, sad, scared, etc?
- Older toddlers can also start thinking about why the cover looks the way it does. For example, ask her what she sees on the cover of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Why is the caterpillar on the cover? With your help, she can begin to understand that a cover shows pictures of important parts of the book, and can be useful in helping foresee what the story will be about.
- Does your toddler look at covers before opening books?
- Does your toddler use the appearance of the book to identify which one she wants?
- Is your toddler excited about reading and talking about books with you?
- Encourage her to fnd books by looking at their covers. For example, when she wants to read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, tell her to go look at all her books and fnd it by its cover picture, color, shape, etc. Give her clues until she recognizes it on her own.
- When looking at new books, start with the cover, too. Spend a minute looking at and talking aboutthe words and pictures on the cover. Point to the words on the cover as you read them to help make the connection between the words she hears and what she sees.
- Describing covers is a great opportunity for your toddler to develop her vocabulary. You can introduce and use color, size, and shape words to describe covers.
- To begin with, this practice works best with old favorites because toddlers are better able to pay attention to de- tails in books they have seen many times. When you share an old favorite, see if you can both notice something new about it that you haven’t talked about before.
How do you know the practice worked?
Take a look at more storytelling and listening
Follow the Clues
Two-year-old Gustavo sometimes has trouble fnding his favorite Bob the Builder story on the shelf flled with his and his sisters’ books. When he tells her which book he wants to read at bedtime, his mom gives him clues at about what to look for. “Your book is yellow,” his mom tells him as Gustavo scans the shelf. “And it’s short and fat.” When he fnds it, they spend a few minutes looking at the cover together before readings. “Who’s that?” his mom asks. “Bob the Builder!” Gustavo says. “Right! And what’s he doing?” “Driving.” “Yes, he’s driving on the road,” Mom says. “I wonder where he’s going. Should we read it and fnd out?” Gustavo opens his book happily.
Cover clues
One of almost-three-year-old Odessa’s favorite things to do is tell stories and “read” books to her cousins, even if she hasn’t heard them before. Her grandmother helps her fgure out what will happen in a particular book by looking at the clues on the cover. “What do you see here?” her grandma asks, pointing to the tree on the front. “Tree,” Odessa says. “That’s right, so the book might be about a tree,” Grandma says. “And a horse,” Odessa points out. “Here’s the title,” Grandma says, reading out loud while pointing to each word with her fnger. She knows Odessa is listening closely, because when she shows the book to her cousins she tells them “this is a book about a tree and a horse that are friends.”
Gotcha Covered!
Even though twenty-month-old Zeeshan has some language processing delays and trouble staying focused, he loves the one-on-one time of cuddling and looking at books with his mom. His mom starts by showing Zeeshan the cover and gives him the words for everything Zeeshan points to. “This is a green cover, Zeeshan,” Mom says, speaking slowly and clearly. “Do you see anything else that’s this color?” Zeeshan looks around, and Mom helps by point- ing to Zeeshan’s t-shirt. “What about your shirt? Is that green too?” “Green,” Zeeshan says, pointing from the book to the shirt. “Good!” Mom says. “What other colors do we see on this cover?” Sometimes they don’t make it past the cover before Zeeshan loses interest, but talking together about what’s on the book covers and around them seems to help Zeeshan make the connection between what he hears and what he sees.
