What's Hot For Tots Featured Review

03.19.08

Nothing beats reading to children. Day after day, night after night, a little part of us retreats to a favorite pastime as we curl up with a great book and a cute kid! But once in awhile, it is equally important to snuggle up with just a book geared for the adult in you, and simply indulge…

Interested in gardening or crafts? Want to search a catalog or explore the newest children's literature options? I found gifts for new parents at Firefly Books with ease. I actually read the books before I wrapped them up (is that awful?). If you know of a mother who is interested in practicing breast feeding, may I suggest, Better Breastfeeding?

Or how about an educational text written by Sara Bingham, The Baby Signing Book? My special education teaching background helped me to understand the connection between signing and language development for "atypical children," but reading this book reminded me that all children benefit from pairing hand movements with language to help build more meaningful constructions and to promote talking. Deaf families or delayed language developers are not the only ones who benefit from this book; I found it fulfilling refresh my memory that children are trying to communicate with you from the day they were born. Signing allows you to connect with that child in a special way, and to help improve language development, increase vocabulary, and advance higher intelligence.

Reading these books reinforced the idea that we need to keep our own adult minds stimulated along with our children's, and what better way to do so than to actively pursue our own interests by "reading up on the subject?"

So find the time to make it happen, adults! We give so much time to our children, searching for ways to educate and inspire our next generations to learn to read and to read to learn. It is okay to feed yourself the knowledge that you crave. Visit Firefly Books and shop away…for you, for your babies, your teens, your husbands, and your extended family and friends. We all will be appreciative.