Best books for toddler speech
Books books books! They’re one of the best tools to help babies and toddlers learn to talk but there’s so many out there – where do you begin? Here’s my countdown of the best books for toddler speech…
Brown Bear, Brown Bear
This is the first book I see on most recommended book lists so when mine arrived through the door I was expecting literary gold on its pages: the toddler equivalent of Shakespeare or Wordsworth. What followed was a pretty basic repetitive structure that I couldn’t really see the big deal about. But it worked for us.
This is a great book to learn colours and animals and its repeated use of ‘I see’ helps reinforce one of the earliest sentence starters for early talkers. Many months later, my toddler still loves this book.
Dear Zoo
The zoo keeps sending pets to the narrator of this story – but none of them are suitable! Ignoring the irresponsibility of sending a lion via Royal Mail, this book has a lovely repetitive structure that teaches children the names of zoo animals and adjectives like ‘big’ and ‘scary’. The lift-the-flaps help as well of course.
The Sound We Found/ The Sound We See
These are two books written by a group of speech therapists and were another experience for me of being utterly disappointed when they first arrived to realising they were a vital tool for speech development. They encourage parents to form the sounds on their lips so their children understand how to put them together themselves. If I had my time again, I would have started using these a lot earlier (perhaps around 8-9 months old) when babies are fascinated by their parents and constantly wanting to stare (and play) with their faces.
Wow! Said The Owl
Tim Hopgood has produced several good books for early years but nothing beats this one, which helped propel my little one’s understanding of colours. In the story, the owl stays awake throughout the day and is amazed by all the colours she doesn’t normally get to see. It’s the perfect book for an early time in speech development as once you have the colours nailed you can point out all of the things you are describing e.g. blue car. I have to admit I didn’t use it much once we’d mastered these but it’s still well-worn from how important it was in those early days.
Oh Dear!
Another Rod Campbell story – he always comes up with the best books for toddler speech. This time, Buster’s gone to stay with Grandma on the farm and she’s sent him out to find some eggs. Buster looks rather young to be roaming around a farm by himself which perhaps explains why he can’t find them anywhere. What he does see however are a steady stream of farmyard animals and prompts for the grown ups to do some animal sounds when the little ones lift the flaps. It also has a great repetitive refrain to keep the toddlers engaged.
100 First Words: With BIG flaps to lift!
I’ll be honest, my children were never a great fan of flashcards, instead preferring to take them from me and put them in their mouths, so I didn’t get on with an awful lot of ‘first words’ picture books. Perhaps what sets this apart is its size or the occasional lift-the-flap – or perhaps because the images are spaced out, children have a good chance to take each idea in. Either way, it’s a luxurious book that you can keep coming back to for nouns, colours, animal sounds, routines and more.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
While I can only admire the caterpillar’s momentous appetite, this children’s classic is great to teach children the names of foods and days of the week. It’s probably best for when children are speaking 2 or 3 word phrases rather than ignite those first words. I’ve also been told it’s great for teaching older children about the life cycle of the butterfly but my little one is still in that putting-fingers-in-the-holes-where-the-caterpillar-has-eaten stage.
My First Numbers
Children use sequences to learn words so numbers are a deep area to dip into early. Plus numbers are everywhere so you can reinforce them wherever you go, whether it’s the number of dogs you see on a walk or the amount of crisps they’re getting for lunch. This book uses colourful illustrations as arrays to show a different number on each double page. It’s a tabbed board book as well to keep curious toddlers entertained.
If I Were A…
This range of books is among the first given to babies so they can feel a pony mane or a sheep’s fleece on the board book’s pages. But these are also a great tool to teach adjectives like wrinkly, scratchy and soft. Often we focus so much on nouns, before moving onto verbs, that we forget how important it is for toddlers to describe the world around them.
Bluey books
I’m not going to pretend that speech therapists have recommended these: they are simply a handful of Bluey episodes released as books. But because my toddler loves, and I mean LOVES Bluey, she loves these books. That means I can show her how big Bluey looks on one page and small on another. How Bluey is standing under a tree or Dad is driving a red car. I can go through colours and emotions as Bingo looks happy on one page and sad on the other. She points to the different characters for me because she knows them so well. So really my point is that every book can be one of the best books for toddler speech if it’s about something they love.
