Baby Loves Winter: A Book to Elicit Fun Sounds, First Words and Early Word Combinations
Yippee! Zoom! and Awww! are just some of the delightful, fun-to-say sounds you’ll find in the board book Baby Loves Winter. This book also features the use of several common first words and some simple and yet grammatically appropriate short phrases that you can model and try to elicit from a young child who is trying to talk.
Popular author and illustrator, Karen Katz, captures a child’s innate curiosity by revealing the answers to straightforward “wh” questions (e.g. “What’s outside the window”) under large liftable flaps in the book. The question and answer format repeats throughout the book making it a predictable and comforting experience for young children. (Amazon Affiliate links included for your convenience.)
Additional Things I Like About Baby Loves Winter:
Her folksy artistic illustrations are clear and fairly iconic so the pictures may be easy for young children to identify and recognize from real life.
It is the perfect length for young children who have short attention spans.
It’s a board book with liftable flaps - lifting flaps are just fun. And there’s only one flap on a spread so the lifting is not overkill or distracting from the very basic concepts being taught. Warning - the flaps are NOT hard cardboard! They are thicker card stock paper. So, there is a chance that your little one MAY rip the pages
These points are worth repeating –
Great for targeting fun sounds and exclamations like: Look!, Yippee, Zoom, Awww, and Hooray!
Common first words like: See, baby, big, happy, tree, Mommy
New vocabulary associated with winter: Winter, snow (or snowflakes), snowballs, sled, popping, groundhog, snowplow, snowman, deer, hot cocoa and more!
Word Combinations – “Look! Snowflakes” “A baby deer”, “Baby’s sled” “It’s Mommy” and more.
How do I use this book in therapy:
For my toddlers who love to read books, typically we read and then re-read the book. Then, we do fun extension activities to build upon the experience. Because as they say, Repetition is the Mother of All Learning!
Since I use this book so much during my sessions, I I created a book companion for Baby Loves Winter. It has several handouts and simple but interactive, hands-on activities so you can further expose your child to the vocabulary in this book. It’s available for purchase (only $3.00) on a site called Teachers Pay Teachers.
Here’s what’s included in my book companion:
• Lists of sounds, single words, and early word combinations to target during reading, repeated readings, and doing the included activities in this packet! These handouts are loaded with helpful information about language development and strategies to encourage fun sounds, single words, and early word combinations. If you’re an SLP you’ll love giving these handouts to your clients so they know what to do at home!!
• Colorful picture cards of some of the vocabulary words included in the book
• These are perfect for hiding in a sensory bin or performing a scavenger hunt!
• Large puzzle cards that you and your child can put together while saying the words
This is my little guy putting the puzzle cards together.
• Say, Color, and Display” Coloring sheets
• These unique coloring sheets contain pictures of the target words for your child, student, or client to color. They are unique because the first sound in the pictured word features a mouth forming the first sound in the word. This visual can help your toddler see how to make the first sound in the word. Coloring these pictures is a wonderful way to intentionally target
Thank you for your consideration or for buying this book companion. I would LOVE to know what you think!
I also have book companions for Goodnight Moon and Baby Loves Spring!
If you have an older child - a preschooler or one in Kindergarten, First, Second or even Third Grade, he or she may also enjoy these books and book companions: