A basket of books grows the brain!

Reading with your child can start from birth. It builds connection, because it is a great time for slowing down and bonding, and fosters a love of books.

In a society where devices and apps are part of our everyday life, we have to ensure that LAPS are still on the daily ‘menu’ for our tamariki. A young child, an adult knee, and a basket of books is the perfect recipe for connection, and to experience both the magic of reading, and the magic of tuned-in relationships.

A basket of stories to share together is so simple, yet so special. At face value, we are sharing books with our children, and that’s no small thing. Books open a world of imagination and information for our tamariki;, and early, daily exposure plants (and nutures) the seeds that can lead to a lifelong love affair with reading. But it’s still more than that. Beyond the physical properties of page turning, or story structures of beginning, middle, and end, there is the storyTIME— the adult and child togetherness aspect (which, again, is no small thing).

The story basket signals a time we’ll be with our child in an unhurried way (if we allow that to be the case), and we can be really responsive. We tend to think of storytime as being about the child listening to us, but reading is a reciprocal interaction. It is more than just us reading words on a page for our tamariki to soak up. There is shared attention, ‘reading’ the images, pointing, conversation, giggling, exploring emotions, making predictions or pre-empting if the book is a familiar one. We get to notice our child’s engagement with this whole experience, and actually be the ones ‘listening’ to them. Even with our infants and young toddlers who are not fully verbal, they are communicating during this time. They (and we) get to soak up both the delight of books, and the delight of warm, tuned-in relationships.

Like anything with our children, in wanting to do right by them we can overcomplicate things. We might panic that our storehouse of books isn’t so big and we can’t provide a whole new story basket every day. But that’s GREAT news! Our tamariki love and need repetition. With just a bit of rotation, and replacing some but not all of the books in the basket at a time, we still offer a rich experience. Books they’ve enjoyed don’t get “boring” for young children— they get more exciting as they can recognise the elements, and find absolute joy in actively participating in the parts they know.

Reading together needs to be part of our daily lives— for the joy it gives in the moment, and for the benefits to our child’s development. Literacy and love both grow the brain, and set our young tamariki up as confident, capable learners. Independent access to books is important too, and if our children are enjoying books alone we don’t need to interrupt them, and insert ourselves in without invitation, but the storytime together as an intentional act is irreplaceable. This is where we foster a love of books, and, quite simply, how we foster LOVE.