The most important thing you can do to make your child a reader is to read aloud stories and poems - the more the better!
Reading to Baby in a pleasant environment helps her learn that reading is pleasurable. It also helps her begin to decode language. Infants younger than six months can distinguish a wide range of speech contrasts. By 8 months many can distinguish familiar words from unfamiliar words.
Books are predictable. Babies look for cause and effect in an unpredictable world. Books let them feel successful because they can predict what will happen.
Reading to Baby from his very first days may instill in him a love of reading which can last a lifetime. The benefits are numerous. Reading can open up new worlds and expand the mind. It can extend vocabulary and the understanding of things beyond our everyday experience. Allowing Baby to become familiar and comfortable with books, in his own way and time, are important in fostering this love of reading.
Baby's visual ability develops rapidly over the first months of life.
Stimulation with distant, up-close, and perception games can help this development as well as provide fun moments for Adult and Baby. Ocular motility, the ability to move the eyes from place to place, can be encouraged by hanging an art banner on the wall so that Baby in the crib can look at it, moving her eyes from one image to the next. Up-close vision can also be stimulated.
Young toddlers enjoy the hinge action of sturdy board books. You might see a toddler turning a page back and forth over and over again. She is creating her own 'peek-a-boo' experience, watching a picture appear and disappear over and over again Sturdy cardboard pages also help the child learn to use the thumb and forefinger to turn the pages, the skill for mastering paper pages later.