playing story time

My husband and I have a joke about all the repetitive kids things we have ingrained in our brains and how when we are rocking in the old folks home, we will be mumbling the words to Jamberry or singing Little Bird by Elizabeth Mitchell over and over and over.

Of course it's well known how important repetition is for kids and especially toddlers, so we grin and bear it. Naia has some favorites from her book basket like Baby Bear Discovers the World, Frog and Toad All Year, anything Little Bear, and Nicole's Boat (which we change and read it to her as Naia's boat, naturally.)

She loves digging through the seasonal book basket we keep by the nature table and it seems now each season she latches on to a few favorites to read again and again, in a row, every day, adding to my rocking chair list. This last fall is was Pumpkin Moonshine and The Little Yellow Leaf. We had a little pumpkin on our table and she started right in setting up the scene of Sylvie Ann and the farm animals and with great glee knocking them all down with the pumpkin. Over and over again.

Of course she always apologized to Mr. Hemmelskamp after the pumpkin got him.

Come December her focus shifted to The Tomten and The Tomten and the Fox by Astrid Lindgren.  And once again, I would find her chatting away in that quiet little language only toddlers and tomtens know, recreating the story with her animals. Over and over again.

Here we are in the dead of winter and she is now latched on to Anne and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett. "Mama I need corn cakes." Hmmm, how about just corn? She happily spends her mornings feeding those wild animals... over and over again.

And of course Annie has to cuddle Taffy the cat too.

Not only am I thrilled with her love of stories but I am so excited to see her turn books into play so easily and happily. I hope this is just the first step to a lifelong love of reading. That way when I am in the old folks home mumbling the phrases from these books, she can sit and read them to me over and over again.