I love the preschool stage! At this age kid’s attention spans are longer and their background knowledge more vast which really makes for some fun book selections that can be both longer and more informative/complex. It is a wonderful time to feed their curiosity with plenty of good books and enjoy bonding with them over story time. Below are some tips for how to choose books for this age group that will not only interest them, but engage them. I hope they help you build your home library for your little preschooler as well as make selections at your local library.
Choose books that cover “preschool topics”.
This one is pretty obvious, but I can’t leave it out. Some popular topics that preschools cover besides the obvious alphabet, numbers and shapes are: community jobs, weather, being kind, everyday procedures, holidays, animals and so much more. Check your child’s newsletter for preschool to see what they will be learning that month so that you can supplement what is being taught at home through books. It is bound to make a difference and your child is likely to be interested to learn more at home.
Look for simple nonfiction books with photos inside and great visual design.
My little guy fell in love with nonfiction books at this age and it had me thrilled. The ones that worked particularly well were ones that had photos inside and great visual design. I think the photos were really appealing because they showed things exactly how they are instead of an illustration and my little guy loved that. (Not that we don’t love illustrations, because obviously we do, but because it is nice to have both.) The design should be bright and simple with large text bubbles, arrows and other helpful graphics. Think clean, colorful and large.
Books that highlight social skills in a friendly way.
Preschool age is definitely a fantastic time to pull out some books that highlight social skills such as kindness, resolving arguments, anger management, making friends and so much more. Children at this age are making leaps and bounds when it comes to social behavior development and are likely to be interacting with more children their age more than ever before. Reading books on these topics is the perfect way to open discussions together and help them learn through fictional, but realistic, scenarios.
Books you can sing to.
Books that are written with lyrics to songs make the perfect opportunity to sing together during story time. It is a great way for children to engage with books and singing is said to help literacy skills. Also, it’s just plain fun!
Look for fairy tale retellings.
Fairy tale retellings are fabulous for young children because they take a story that your child is familiar with and tell them in a new way. It peaks interest for them because things don’t go the way they are used to and you can start working on reading strategies with them like predicting. A simple way to do this is to read the beginning of the story, stop part way through, then ask your child what they think will happen next or how they think the book will end. Afterwards you can even compare and contrast the new retelling with the story that they are familiar with.
Multiple books on the same topic are wonderful.
Multiple books on the same topic are fabulous because they add to your child’s knowledge base of a topic and allows books to build off of each other with information. All of this knowledge becomes background knowledge that your child can refer too when they read other books that mention the subject or are connected to it in any way.
Select books with a wide range of text length and difficulty.
Books with that are simple with short text are wonderful at this age because they are easier for your child to understand and they may even start to recognize/learn some words. (They are almost emergent readers after all!) Books that are longer and more difficult are wonderful for helping your child stretch and grow in their comprehension skills and can also teach more.
If you’re looking for story time tips for this age then check out THIS POST HERE .
If you’re looking for specific book recomendations for this age then check out THIS POST HERE.
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