A newborn's mind is an amazing thing! Books can help a newborn develop in so many ways - eyesight muscles, conversation rhythm, vocabulary, and emotions. Books also have the benefit of providing the baby with the soothing voices and attention of loving caregivers, one of a newborn's most enjoyable experiences!
Bonding: Babies love hearing the soothing voice of their parents. Also, tired and overwhelmed parents may benefit from having go-to activities like reading that can create meaningful moments with very little effort.
Eye Development: A newborn's eyes develop over the first 6 months of their lives. Providing your child lots of opportunities to see shapes, high contrast lines, and colors at an arm's length distance will help give their eyes practice.
Faces: Babies love seeing faces of other babies! Books with large, clear pictures of babies are great for helping newborns begin the journey of emotional connections and socialization.
Vocabulary: Studies have shown that reading to your child starting from birth (and perhaps even pre-birth) will build key foundations for vocabulary and other language skills.
Communication Skills: Rhythm, conversation flow, emotions. These are all important parts of human communication and a newborn is fully able to start picking these up from birth. Good newborn books engage a newborn's mind by providing examples of those elements.
Here are our go-to books for newborns. They are time-tested and parent approved!
A wonderful rhyming book showcasing babies from diverse families and situations. Parents will also enjoy seeing other parents caught in the act of their own parenting!
2. Farm Faces
A cleverly designed book that encourages the reader to place the book over their face to take on the face of various farm animals. A little silly for parents, but babies love the back-and-forth interaction this book induces.
3. Hello, Bugs!
Known for its charming high contrast images, this book also introduces unique sounds to a baby that are hard to come by in other books.
A high contrast classic! A baby will love hearing about other animals get kissed, taken care of by others and simple words that they can begin to recognize.
By a well-loved author, this book is sweet and relatable. Also a fun way to introduce body parts to a newborn. This book will also last well into a child's second or third year. Many parents have reported quoting phrases in this book to calm down fussing babies, a testament to its soft cadence and warm sentiments.
Having a set of around 10-15 books for a newborn is a great start to their library. Creating a warm, loving bookshelf will go a long way towards establishing the habit of reading books for both child and parent.
Enoy!
- The Bookshelf Builder Team