Education

Awareness, Education, Personal Development, Self acceptance,, Work

When One Door Closes, Another Door Opens

I’ve been thinking a lot about my career path, my purpose in life and what I’m really passionate about. I’ve been taking an honest look at what I truly want and what would be a good fit for me. I’m reminded of the paths I could’ve chosen and the doors that were opened and closed for me.

Open door to green meadows.Several years ago, I applied to a mental health counseling graduate program at one of the local universities. It was quite a process. I did a lot of research on the program to see if it would be a good fit. Everything seemed okay except I had to take the MAT. I didn’t do great on the SATs so I dreaded this and of course it was horrible. Since I didn’t have much time and all the study guides were inaccessible to me, my mom and I poured over so many words we had never heard of and or couldn’t pronounce. If you don’t know what a word means, how can you compare it to another word? Most of the MAT is analogies. The only similarity to me was that these were groups of words that no one uses, ever! I got a score on the MAT that was good enough to get into the program, but it was only by a tiny margin.

The next step was the interview. I remember sitting across from two women. I don’t remember most of the questions, but I’m sure they asked the usual things. Why do you want to do this program? I’m sure they asked about previous work and academic experience. I remember them asking if there were clients I wouldn’t want to work with. I wasn’t sure what to say. I might have mentioned something about having difficulty working with child abusers, but the main thing I remember from the interview was explaining that I get frustrated with a cookie cutter approach. I believe that since each person is an individual, their treatment shouldn’t be based on the experiences of others. It shouldn’t be based on what stereotypes of the groups the person belongs to. The assumption that everyone should be the same and respond to the same treatment is what bothers me. Maybe it’s unrealistic or idealistic, but there should always be wiggle room for someone’s individuality, autonomy and the ability to have a say in the treatment or services being provided. I answered the questions to the best of my ability so I felt optimistic when the interview was over.

Cookie cutter people.

A few weeks later, I open my mailbox to find an envelope from the school. I started opening it on my way back up to my apartment. I wasn’t concerned. I figured I’d get in. I had done everything they asked for so when I saw that I got rejected, it stung.

I always had some doubts about whether counseling was right for me. Did I really want to hear about other people’s problems day in and day out? I wasn’t sure. Did I really want to deal with all that paper work? Could I really do this for a living? These questions swirled around in my head, but friends and family thought I’d be a good counselor. They told me I’m a good listener, I’m compassionate and want to help people. They told me that since I’ve been through a lot so I should be able to help others. The question I kept asking myself was not whether I was able to, but whether I wanted to. Was I doing this for myself or to please others? They told me I’d be successful. I’d make money. They gave me all kinds of reasons so I gave it a try even though I wasn’t entirely comfortable. I told myself maybe I’d like it. Since I was having a horrible experience where I was working at the time, I figured it would be a good way out. A major step up.

Since then, I’ve wondered what went wrong. Was it the low vision? A professor once told the class that blind people couldn’t be counselors because they couldn’t see body language. Therefore, they had no way of knowing how people were feeling. Although I can see some body language, it’s limited and that’s not the primary way I know how someone is feeling. I usually don’t get this wrong. My classmates immediately told me to call in and say something to her. It was a class over ITV. I didn’t though. I was too embarrassed plus I had to have a few courses with this professor and I wanted to continue getting good grades. She had no idea about me anyway because we never met face to face. Most of us were just faceless names to her. Maybe these interviewers felt the same way? It also could’ve been an answer to a question or the other applicants had better test scores. It could’ve been any number of reasons.

Just because my path is different, doesn’t mean I’m lost.

I shed a tear or two over that letter. They said I could reapply the following year, but I knew in that moment I never would. I took it as a sign that counseling wasn’t the right fit. Now that I think back. I am glad things turned out the way they did. My tears were more about failing or being rejected. I was disappointed that I didn’t get in, but relieved because I was unsure about counseling in the first place. That door closed, but the doors stayed open to things that are more exciting are a better fit for me. If I were to go down a counseling path, I would be interested in career counseling, but it took years of job searching and being dissatisfied with my job to figure that out. I wouldn’t have had that experience if I had went with my gut instinct and that’s really the lesson. A lesson that I’ve had to learn time and time again. Who am I really doing all this for? At the end of the day, the person I need to be happy with is myself. Sometimes failing is not really a failure, but an experience that redirects you, returning you to the path that was meant for you.

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Education, Work

A Blast From the Past

If you read my blog, you know I work in an early childhood program, but I’ve never really talked about my crazy schedule. At different points throughout the week, I work in all five classrooms. Also, I start at a different time each day which means my morning routines at home are slightly different from day to day. The changing start times is a recent thing and it’s not something I’m happy with, but that’s just the icing on the cake in all this disorganization.

On Mondays, I get to spend one hour in the infant room. It has always been my favorite room, but it’s the room I work in the least. My time with them today was the most relaxing and fun time I’ve had at work in a long time. There is one baby who is very needy. He wants to be held constantly and screams and cries loudly most of the time. It is very difficult to soothe him which frustrates his regular teachers. So, on Mondays during that one hour, they hand him over to me.

Today when I walked in, he was starting to fuss and was ready for a nap. I swaddled him and tried snuggling with him so he could fall asleep. Of course he doesn’t allow this without a fight. He squirms, cries and stiffens his body working against me instead of snuggling into me like babies do when they are relaxed. After a couple minutes of talking quietly to him and trying to find a position that was comfortable for him, he became more agitated so I stood up and we rocked and bounced until his eyes started to close. Eventually he was relaxed enough for me to sit in the chair. The bouncing motion finally did the trick. Although getting this child to sleep was a victory, that wasn’t the fun part and it certainly wasn’t relaxing.

When the baby finally quieted down and drifted off to sleep, I caught a glimpse of why I chose to become an early childhood educator. When I started out, I worked in a preschool classroom, but as time passed, I realized that wasn’t where I wanted to be. I’ve always loved babies and knew that I wanted to take care of them. When things went downhill at the preschool program I was working in, I started volunteering for the organization where I work now. Seven years ago, I started volunteering in the infant room once a week. I loved it! I watched babies learn to sit, stand, crawl and walk. I heard some of their first words and saw their amazing personalities come to life. I formed close bonds with many of those babies because my volunteering once a week lead to a job that was more permanent.

As we rocked in the chair, I remembered two babies sitting together in their squishy seats handing toys back and forth. They were best friends for two years and were able to move up all the way through preschool together. I remembered a baby coming in from outside and throwing himself on the floor because he realized that all the chairs at the lunch table were full. the poor thing thought he wasn’t going to be able to eat. Of course we quickly remedied that situation, but it seriously hurt his feelings. I remembered hugging that same baby and telling him to enjoy his first birthday party and to eat lots of cake. I remembered a baby who was in such pain from an ear infection and no one else could keep him calm. I watched those babies grow up and was able to work with many of them from infancy to the time they left for kindergarten.

Now days, I’m not so lucky. I don’t get to build strong attachments with the babies anymore. they barely know me seeing me only once a week. I never bothered to put him down in his crib. I held him instead and when he woke up twenty minutes later, he was happy and ready to play. We sat him down next to a friend who is the same age and they quickly began to play together with the same car. For them each day and experience is new, but for me, it was like old times. I was watching two friends playing and learning together. I held and comforted a baby who needed it. That’s the best thing you can ask for that your baby is comfortable and safe with a person whom they trust. that is what I want for Rosebud and that is the reason behind my work. Although I will be going down a different path in the near future, it is memories like these that I will take with me.

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Awareness, Education, Parenting

A Butterfly In the Clouds

This weekend, my heart is a little heavy because of the events and social media posts I saw yesterday. First, there was another school shooting as most people in the US already know. While I don’t live anywhere near where the shooting happened, I wonder what the future holds. What kind of world do we live in where our kids can’t even be safe going to school? When I was a kid, I never thought of anyone bringing a gun to school. School shootings weren’t heard of. Now it seems as though there’s at least one every month. A friend of mine who grew up in northern Maine where hunting is quite common told me about how people would often have guns in the back of their trucks, but she never feared for her safety. Her peers didn’t play with guns and they certainly never brought them into school to shoot people. I think far too many people have access to guns that they shouldn’t have, but I don’t think that’s the entire issue. In my opinion, we don’t pay enough attention to mental health and more specifically why there are so many mental health issues in our children. We need to get to the root cause if we ever are going to stop this.

I’m not just talking about major mental illnesses. I’m not trying to further stigmatize an entire population of people because not everyone with a mental health diagnosis is violent. What I’m talking about is the disconnect between people and valuing themselves and others. It’s like there is no consideration of life. Other people’s lives don’t matter especially if those lives are different than your own. We need to find out why our children are so depressed. Why do most of us feel so alone when this is the era of connectedness? Of course most of those connections are superficial and I think many of the problems stem from that. Out of all our connections online, how many of them do we talk to on a regular basis? How many of them do we see in person? I’ve read some articles that say that parents spend more time with their children now than ever before, but I don’t see how that could be true. Maybe they spend more time in the same physical space, but it seems the disconnect is more apparent than ever.

I saw a post yesterday on Facebook about one of the local high schools. According to this person’s experience, many of the teens are getting bullied. They get called fat, smelly and unwanted. Some students scream white power in the hallways and from her account an autistic person was pushed down the stairs and that was just bits and pieces of her post. One commenter mentioned that this was happening in high schools everywhere. High school is no picnic for most people, but this is really sad and scary.

There is so much hate out there. I know it has probably always been there, but I’ve never noticed it as much. Maybe it’s because I’m from a relatively small place. Maybe it’s because people never had this many avenues to express it. I don’t know if this is the way people have always been behind closed doors, but I am noticing that people seem to be more comfortable expressing it in public. Social media can be a great thing and I see lots of positivity being spread every day. It’s a great way to find like minded people. Unfortunately, the people that have hate in their hearts can find like minded people as well and there is strength in numbers.

One of my Facebook friends posted An experience she had during her child’s field day activities. She is a blind woman who happened to be interacting with her child and and the group of children she was hanging out with. Some of the children were making negative comments so my friend intervened and encouraged them to say positive things to each other. There’s nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t like my daughter saying hurtful things to others. Anyway, a couple of the parents had an issue with this and were talking amongst themselves about how blind people should stay at home and stop getting in the middle of everything. One of the mothers said that she couldn’t believe the government gave them money every month and they should stop strutting around. I have paraphrased some of the post, but it was really hateful. If you are interested, you should read it because she actually has a positive spin on it and isn’t letting it get her down.

Is it just me or are people more entitled than ever? Why do they feel the need to get involved in other people’s business when it doesn’t effect them? One example that comes to mind is when a friend of mine worked with people who have intellectual disabilities. Part of her job was to go grocery shopping with them. She asked one of her clients which brand of catsup he wanted. A customer next to them jumped in and asked why she’d bother to ask him because he won’t know the difference. “Why don’t you just get him whatever?” My friend explained that she always asks her clients about their preferences and yes in a lot of cases, they do know the difference.My first thought was, mind your own business! How is it really effecting his day? What does it matter to him what brand of catsup the disabled guy gets? Why does this hateful guy care whether he knows the difference or not? He doesn’t care nor does he want to be educated. He got the urge to be hateful and it made him feel better to treat others badly. He insulted the guy’s intelligence and continued to talk about him as if he wasn’t even there standing in front of him. I wonder how he would feel if he were the one who needed help shopping for groceries. Would he want to be given the choice or would he want everyone to assume he wouldn’t know the difference? This stuff makes me angry and just think, these are the people raising the next generation.

I often see people who are making positive changes in the world. In a lot of ways, things are better than they were in the past, but then you see these seeds of hatred. It moves us two steps backwards every time it springs to the surface. It’s like a stain you can’t get rid of. You wash it until it’s faint, but you always know it’s there. There’s always one tiny speck that won’t disappear. Today Rosebud said, “I’m a butterfly with wings. I jump like this. I jump right up into the clouds.” Doesn’t that sound like a better place to be? A butterfly flying through the clouds?

Butterflies, blooming flowers and clouds.

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Awareness, Education

Ironically Unappreciated

It’s ironic that it’s teacher appreciation day, but I don’t feel appreciated. In fact, I’m feeling like the worst human on the planet. My workplace is a sad place to be. There have been so many teachers coming and going over the past year and soon, there will be more leaving. Honestly, I’m worried about how things will be when the ones who are closest to me are gone. There was some of that sadness floating around today. Although, I can’t get into specifics, but some news I got set the tone for the day. It also was a rough day for the kids. They were tired, some were not feeling well and others kept having accidents.

Sad woman.

The cherry on top happened as I was about to leave. One parent was talking to my co-teacher. The parent was saying how much her little girl loves Miss J and Miss T, but she isn’t a fan of Miss D which is myself. When she realized I was overhearing the conversation, she started whispering so I didn’t hear everything else that was said, but I thought it was very rude and disrespectful to have this conversation. If you’re gonna talk about me when I’m in ear shot, say it to my face. I’m not surprised this kid doesn’t like me. Our personalities are like oil and water. She can be very bossy, demanding and inserts herself in everyone’s business. Sometimes you forget she’s only three. The thing is, I’ve never done anything wrong where she’s concerned. I get frustrated when I have to repeat myself ten times telling her to go to the bathroom or not to take toys from her friends. I don’t want to dislike her or her to dislike me. I want to show her that she can’t take toys from her friends so that she will grow up getting along with others. I want her to learn how to successfully interact with her peers. I don’t get on her about being kind to her friends to pick on her. I tell her to go to the bathroom because I don’t want her to piss herself and when she doesn’t listen to me, I tell her again. It’s not because it’s fun for me. It’s in all of our best interests for her to listen to e and get in the bathroom before it’s too late. When I tell her these things, she tells me not to yell at her and to be quiet.

The reality is that she doesn’t like anyone who puts boundaries in place because there seem to be very few for her at home. The problem is that parents legitimately get pissed off if you tell their children what to do. They leave these kids in our care, but at the same time, they treat us like inexperienced babysitters. Second class citizens in some cases. Just last week, there was a parent who told us that she wasn’t sure if she was going to come and pick up her sick child. Who does that? Eventually she did, but she argued with us about it. We had a parent complain because supposedly one of our teachers insinuated she was a bad parent which was completely untrue. That conversation had three witnesses. There was even a schedule change over that complaint.Girl with books and red apple.

When I was growing up, parents almost sided with the teacher and I know that approach is wrong. I’ve been in a couple situations where what I was saying was true, but my family believed the teacher instead. Partially because that’s the way things were done and partially because they trusted that the teacher was telling the truth. There are always bad apples though and situations where that doesn’t work. So I am glad that children have a stronger voice now, but it has done a complete shift. Now the teachers are the ones who can’t be trusted at least in the eyes of the parents. I believe there has to be a middle ground where everyone’s voice can be heard.

On more days than not, I feel like early childhood education was the wrong choice for me. I chose this field so I could teach children, be a positive role model and to make the children feel like they could be safe in any classroom I worked in. I had many negative bordering on abusive experiences when I attended a preschool. I wanted to ensure that nothing like that happened for the children in my care. It’s hurtful to get complaints especially when they are unfounded. It’s heartbreaking and makes you doubt your teaching ability and sometimes if you are a parent yourself, you start to wonder about your parenting abilities as well. You even start to wonder about your self worth and if you should be doing something different. Over the years, I’ve gotten a couple of complaints. They were mostly mild like this one, but it’s so easy to ruin someone’s reputation and career.

Girl drawing in book.I’m generally shy so talking to parents has always been difficult for me. I’m much better at making connections with the children. I can count on one hand how many genuine connections I’ve made with a family and I’ve been in this field for over a decade. I’m amazed at some of my coworkers who seem to be able to make a connection with almost any family and have the ability to put people at ease. I know part of my problem is that I’ve never been good at pretense. I’ve found that more and more, you have to pretend because if you don’t, people will complain. I miss the days when we had time to actually play with children, plan cool activities and actually follow through with them and weren’t so caught up in rules, regulations and assessments. I think we’ve lost sight of what is important. We’ve lost sight of having fun and building relationships. Now there is so much pressure and there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Parents are spending less time with their children and a lot of things that used to be taught in the home are falling on us as well.

I’m at the point where I need to fix what I see as my biggest and most costly mistake. I’ve spent so much time, money and tears on this career path and now I need a way out. I need this change for my mental and physical health and for the relationship with my daughter. I’m in preschool teacher mode all the time. I want to just be mom for a change.

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Activities, Education, Parenting

Five Benefits of Playing in the Sand

I think I can officially say spring has finally come here in the northeast and I’m so excited that we’ve been able to spend plenty of time outside. Just last week, I bought some new sand for Rosebud and refilled the sand box. I threw in some buckets, shovels and molds. It keeps her busy for a while. When I was a kid, I spent hours in the sand box so it’s no surprise that she likes it as well. There are so many reasons to encourage kids to play with sand. Here are five of them.

5 Benefits of playing in the sand pin

1. It helps with fine motor skills.

Scooping, pouring, sifting and sculpting the sand helps build strength and is practice for skills they will need later. Not to mention scooping, pouring and measuring can be connected with math concepts.

2. They can be creative.


Sand can go with almost any theme. You can use it for a beach theme with shells, toy fish and rocks. You can use it for an animal theme with logs, toy animals and other natural items. Sand goes with cars and trucks, in an outside kitchen and even in art. Yesterday, Rosebud was pretending to serve ice cream one minute, building a sand castle the next and then decided to look for rocks and other treasures.

3. It’s a sensory experience.

One of the things I hear a lot when people talk about going to the beach is their feet on the sand. It’s part of being connected with nature. I think that urge for kids is even stronger. I work with a lot of kids with special needs. I’m not a big fan of that term, but I’ll use it here to keep things simple. Many of these children find playing in the sand calming. Some children that cannot stay put for even two minutes will stay at the sand tray or sit in the sand box for 20 minutes plus. They are able to immerse themselves into the activity because it is open ended. There are no expectations for what is right or wrong. They can experiment as they wish.

4. It’s scientific.

Sand can be experimented with. It doesn’t always remain in the same state. Rosebud discovered that her sand in the sand box is dry because we keep it covered at night. The sand is fine. It slips through your hands and you can’t sculpt with it. However, we also have this wagon that is full of last years sand that was very wet. It has dried out quite a bit, but it is still wet enough to sculpt with. Rosebud and I were having fun seeing what we could make. We filled buckets and discovered that the sand could be dumped out and keep it’s shape. We could build sand castles that would stay together. We didn’t need a mold. This sand was heavier and stickier. Experimenting and investigating the results is what our little scientists do every day.

5 Benefits of Playing in the Sand pin

5. It’s fun.

Playing in the dirt is fun. Being in nature is fun. Making a huge mess is fun and the best part is most of it stays outside so I don’t have to clean it up. Watching Rosebud enjoy herself was the most fun for me. I think making a mess and seeing what she can do with the sand is the most fun for her. Why not see what happens when we fling sand outside of the sand box? Why not fill the wheelbarrow and dump it in other parts of the yard? Never mind that I just refilled it. Why not try dumping the water bottle in the sand box and see what happens? I drew the line at flinging the sand and dumping the water, but the important thing is spending quality time together. That’s the best thing about our outside time. We are not distracted by the normal things that distract us inside. Do your kids like playing in the sand? Let me know in the comments.

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Awareness, Education, Parenting

Trash on the Playground

It was a nice spring day so Rosebud and I went for a walk. She likes to walk to one of our neighborhood playgrounds. I wouldn’t exactly call it a playground because it only has one climber. The climber is pretty big and has three different slides. There is also a picnic table where we could bring food and have a little picnic one afternoon. Other than that, it’s mostly an open space. Rosebud loves the climber and lately she’s been pretending to sell ice cream from the open part underneath the slides. Today she was pretending that some sticks she found were ice cream. She has stored sticks, pinecones, acorns and leaves under the climber for this purpose. After a few minutes she got bored and decided that the sticks were for making music instead.

She proudly made her way to the top of the climber where she walks around and takes a minute to choose which slide she wants to use. Suddenly, I hear a stream of water coming down from the top of the climber. I look up and she has an adult sized coffee cup in her hand. Apparently, someone had a drink and left their trash at the top of the climber. I was surprised since I’ve never seen anyone else at this playground. Normally, it’s always exactly how we left it.

Toddler playing on slide.I made Rosebud give me the cup because I don’t know who it belongs to or where it came from. I’m a bit of a germaphobe. then I explained to her that it was trash and how we shouldn’t leave trash on our playgrounds. I also told her how we need to be careful what we pick up from the ground. She is forever stopping to pick up strange things.

Recycling bin full of plastic products.She is too young to understand how littering is bad for the environment and everything that goes with that. I brought the cup home and threw it away, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed. The playground is supposed to be a safe place for neighborhood kids to play and people are leaving their trash there. It’s the carelessness that annoys me because many of the neighborhood kids are around Rosebud’s age and they are still at the stage where everything goes in their mouth.

Although it was irritating, I turned it into an opportunity to show Rosebud how we should take care of our public spaces and the environment. Not just because trash is obviously gross, but because we need to be thinking about each other, the wildlife and what our environment will be like for our childrens children.A little consideration goes a long way and sometimes small acts can make a difference.

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Education

Too Many Rules

Yesterday there was a situation at work that made me wonder if we are putting too many rules on kids play. Is all this nitpicking necessary? Shouldn’t we be focusing on the big picture?

We were out on the playground and I was watching three children who were playing under a dome shaped climber. One of them was pretending that the bars were doors and kept going in and out of the different doors. Meanwhile the other two were playing with a bucket of sand. They were pretending the dome was a store which they go in and out of and were making things for each other. I observed the children taking turns sharing a spoon to stir with, talking to each other about their play and generally getting along and enjoying each others company. Lately I don’t see that many positive social interactions in our classrooms so I was enjoying it. They were sharing, being kind to one another and certainly not harming anyone else.

Generally we insist that they keep sand and all the sand toys in the sand box, but it was only a small bucket of sand and they were playing so nicely that I didn’t want to ruin the moment. Suddenly one of my coworkers came over and got very irritated that they had brought some sand under the climber. She told them to get back in the sand box and demanded to know who had brought the sand over. I told her that they had been playing there nicely for a long time, but didn’t know what else to say to her. She seemed irritated with me for letting them do that, but I feel that positive social interactions and their imaginative play is more important than the fact that there is a little bit of sand outside the sand box. One of the dilemmasis how much and when do you let them experiment and how much do we have to box them in?

At the same time, I understand where she is coming from. The sand box doesn’t get filled often so I understand her wanting to keep the sand in there. I also understand being consistent with rules and maybe if I had noticed when they had originally brought the sand over, I might have said something before they got started. When I found them, they had this set up already. I like my coworker. We get along and she’s a good teacher. She’s strict, but she cares about the kids.

We complain that kids don’t engage in imaginative play, but we seem to squash it without meaning to. We often have to interrupt play that could become more complex because of keeping to a daily schedule. We wish there were more healthy positive social interactions between the kids, but we have a tendency to interrupt those as well. As rules and regulations for childcare increase, that gets past down to the children. We no longer have the freedom and neither do they. Sometimes we have to curb their art because we’re afraid we will run out of paper. the paint is almost gone so we can’t do that project we had planned. Assessments are around the corner so we have to find out if the child can pick out any letters or make an AB pattern. So much of today’s childcare industry is filled with budgets, rules and regulations. Whatever happened to what we were in this field for, the kids? Sitting down and actually playing and talking with the kids. I am glad I grew up when I did because I have fond memories of playing outside, being creative and laughing with my friends. I often wonder, what will our children say they remember from their childhoods?

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Activities, Art, Education, Parenting

Bubblewrap Painting

Here’s another simple painting activity. I had Rosebud paint the bubblewrap.

Then we put the paper over it to get the prints. Rosebud didn’t understand and just wanted to paint on the paper, but here’s what we ended up with.

This bubblewrap has different shaped bubbles than what you usually see which is why I wanted to use it. I’ll be ordering some new finger paints in different colors so we will probably try this activity again later.

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Education, Parenting

Rosebud’s Top 5 Books

I've been reading to Rosebud since she was born and it has paid off. She now loves books and will often sit either with me or off by herself looking at them and pretending to read. She loves looking at the pictures and pointing out the objects she knows. It has become a game to her. I'll ask her what each picture is and she excitedly says the words. Sometimes, she'll purposely tell me the wrong word and bursts into giggles because she knows she's messing with me. I buy a lot of books with interactive features like touch and feel, scratch and sniff and lift the flap to make things more interesting.

Mother and daughter reading a book.When I was a kid, I hated reading. Since I couldn’t read many of the books other kids were reading, I wasn’t interested. Reading back then was a slow process for me and I hated every minute of it. To this day, I can’t remember most of the books I read throughout my childhood because I’d forget much of the story. I didn’t like reading until a few years ago when I started listening to Audible books and discovered the Kindle app for the iPhone. Now almost any book I want is at my fingertips. It was like a whole new world opened up for me and it was exciting. I want Rosebud to be excited about reading from the beginning and for now I have achieved that. She looks forward to our, “book time” every night before she goes to bed. She tells me, “book time before bed” and run to her bookshelf. Here are some of her favorite books right now.

Bathtime Peekaboo
This is one of her all time favorites. She loves lifting the flaps in the peekaboo books and the bath time version has been her favorite forever. She hasn’t been looking at it as much lately because she’s getting into stories more, but this was one of the first books she was really interested in. In this book, you lift the flaps to find the bathtime toys. Her favorite page is the one with the penguin because he has a squishy belly.

Bunny and Bee
She loves this simple story and has started to memorize the words. Bunny and Bee live in the forest and come across many animal friends.

C is For Coco
She has been asking me to read this one to her since before she turned a year old and it is still one of her favorites. It’s a cute book that features Coco the chick who does something for each letter of the alphabet. She has memorized the words to this and reads aloud with me.

First 100 Words
Rosebud is obsessed with this series of books. She looks at this book every night. On each page, she points out all the pictures she knows the words for. If it’s animals she’s looking at, she’ll say the name of the animal and then make the sound. If she’s looking at bedtime related objects, she’ll point out objects in the room that match the objects in the book. We use these books to talk about shapes, colors, counting etc.

Quiet Loud
Rosebud has recently become interested in this book and learning about opposites. She has been doing a lot of screaming and banging on things to test how loud it will be so it is fitting that we’ve been reading this book. Just last week, she picked it up and started reciting the words. She has memorized what is on each page since the text is so short and repetitive. Yummy Yucky is another book by this author written in the same style.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar

This classic book by Eric Carle is a must have. Rosebud loves looking at all the food the caterpillar eats and of course the end when he emerges as a butterfly. there is a Very Hungry Caterpillar video on Netflicks that she likes watching too. It’s a reenactment of the story, but Rosebud loves seeing stories from the books she loves on tv.

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