Children rarely make a conscious decision to play. For a child to play is a natural response to being alive. Children play to explore, learn and understand their place in the world.

Often play is a problem solving task- children don’t set out to conquer tasks and problem solve it occurs as they relate to others, to objects and to their environment. It starts at infancy looking, tasting, touching- experience by observation for the most part. Once an infant can move and grasp objects they begin to experience the world around them through interaction and manipulation objects, the environment and others.

I have observed babies repeated working with cause and effect- they perform the same action to a passive object repeatedly. It is almost as if they are ensuring that the same action creates the same response. Usually outside stimuli will interrupt this repetition sequence and the infant is distracted and on to the next experience. Sometimes the infant will vary the action.

Passive objects are important to learning and have enormous potential for years to come. With a passive toy a child can use and manipulate it in more sophisticated ways as she develops. Typically electronic toys give temporary pleasure- the child will beg for them and initially be very excited about this fancy gadget.

However, once the novelty of what this fancy high tech object can do wears off, the child will loose interest. Why would they stay interested in something that eventually becomes predictable? A non-electronic passive educational toy may not produce the same initial excitement but interest will be sustained indefinitely. The reason for this is that the child has the power to change what the toy can do and their experience continually evolves. The toy thus grows with the child and learning is significantly enhance.

About the Author
Candice Silsby has an extensive background in Early Childhood Education and Human Dev elopement. She have six years experience working with young children as a pre-school teacher and caregiver for children under 3. She worked with special ed children for two years. She has eight years experience as a child entertainer and currently has her own business doing puppet shows for children. She is a Discovery Toys Educational Consultant because the toys are educational and developmentally appropriate. These toys meet the high scrutiny of her Developmental Education background. Discovery Toys improve the quality of life for children and families therefore the world.

What is a baby monitor & why do I need one?
It might seem like an obvious question these days, but baby monitors are a relatively new innovation. At the most basic level they give the parent freedom from keeping a constant vigil at their baby’s bedside (cot-side or Moses basket-side!).

A baby monitor normally consists of a transmitter and a receiver unit. The transmitter is placed near the baby and the parent keeps the receiver unit. This way the parent can hear instantly if their baby needs reassurance while doing other things around the house – or maybe catching up on some well needed rest!

Baby Monitor Types
Baby monitors now fall into three main categories. There are the traditional audio baby monitors . These alert the parent if the baby starts to cry or seems restless or uncomfortable. Audio/visual baby monitors take this a step further by letting the parent see and hear their baby. These consist of a camera unit with a microphone and a receiver unit with a TV screen and speaker.

Lastly, there are sensor baby monitors (also called respiratory baby monitors). These offer peace of mind by immediately alerting the parent if their baby’s breathing becomes significantly uneven or even stops completely.

Audio Baby Monitors
Audio baby monitors fall into two further types: analogue and digital . Analogue baby monitors traditionally were subject to lots of interference from other household items that gave off a wireless signal. While this still can be true of cheaper analogue monitors, today most have more than one channel enabling you to select one that is interference free and incorporate technology that lessens outside interferences such as the Philips Cordless Babysitter.

To guarantee an interference transmission and reception you will need a digital baby monitor . Remember that a baby monitor is essentially a radio transmitter and receiver and digital radio (should you have one!) is superior to normal radio reception. The higher-end digital baby monitors use something called DECT technology . This technology came from digital walkabout phones and stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless Technology.

DECT monitors will select a channel automatically from 120 channels and often encrypt the channels to stop any eavesdropping. Because of this technology these monitors are normally more expensive, but (like the Philips Digital Baby Monitor and the BT Digital Monitors) they guarantee interference free transmission and often come with several useful extra features:

Audio baby monitors – things to look for:

• Number of channels
• Rechargeable parent unit
• Belt clip for portable convenience
• Light display on the parent that shows noise level even if the sound is turned down.
• Low battery indicator
• Night light on baby unit
• Two-way transmission – so you can talk to your baby from the parent unit.
• Temperature gauge – remember the ideal nursery temperature is around 18C (65F)

Audio/Visual Baby Monitors
A recent innovation – these monitors let you see and hear your baby. This gives obvious added benefits such as seeing if your baby has come out of their blanket, or if they are sleeping in an awkward position etc. However, these baby monitor may also be useful for older children so you can remotely check on them if they are playing by themselves in another room.

The range of audio/visual baby monitors can be limited by your house layout. If your house has normal partition (or stud) walls then the range will be around the quoted 30m. However, if you live in an old house with solid internal walls the range will be reduced – especially if the signal has to pass through several walls. This will not apply when you are directly below or above a nursery as the signal only has to pass through a wooden floor (or floors) and should therefore be perfect.

AudioVisual Baby Monitors – Things to look for:

• Night vision – sounds obvious but some come without it! This is essential for night time viewing. All our audiovisual baby monitors come with night vision.
• Number of channels – helps in finding the best channel but can also enable you to add extra cameras later.
• Standby mode – if you have a portable parent unit the screen can be draining on the battery. Some units such as the Tranwo Gigaair automatically come out of standby mode if you baby makes a noise.

Sensor Baby Monitors
Also called respiratory baby monitors these monitors consist of sensitive pads that go underneath your baby’s mattress. During the first year of life, infants can experience irregular breathing patterns or even stop breathing completely.

These monitors can alert when your baby’s breathing changes due to a cold, high fever, or other illness. The Babysense II will continually detect your baby’s motion and breathing movements, and set off a sound and visual alarm if breathing movements ceases for over 20 seconds or if the breathing rate slows to below 10 breaths per minute.

REMEMBER , a sensor baby monitor is an added precaution and safeguard which can help peace of mind but it must be combined with the important recommendations of “Safe Sleeping” (sleeping on the back, not overheating of baby’s room, not smoking around the baby).

Sensor Baby Monitors – things to look for

• Certifications – the Babysense II is currently the only Household Movement Monitor to carry complete CE registration as a Medical Device and to comply with 93/42/EEC Medical device Directive.
• Mattress type – some sensor baby monitors will not work properly with a spring mattress
• Mattress thickness – check your mattress thickness. Some are certified for thicknesses up to 12cm and some for thicknesses up to 14cm.
• Mattress base – sensor monitors work best on a flat base. This should be no problem with a cot, however, if used in a Moses basket you are advised to put the basket on a flat base.

About the Author:
Sarah Cooke. Mother of two and Director of MonitorMyBaby – Baby Monitor Specialists A site specialising in all types of baby monitor.

Chapter One covered the wide-reaching benefits of reading to your baby. In this chapter, we present a few simple suggestions to help you and your baby begin a journey together that will enrich your lives. Besides the calming and bonding benefits, you’ll develop a conversational resonance through everyday ideas and events that children’s books inspire. In the very beginning you may feel like it’s a one-way monologue, but before you know it, you’ll be in a dialogue in which your baby responds to you by locking her eyes in rapt attention on your eyes, your mouth, and the book. She’ll wiggle her legs and arms, and breathe faster. In return, you’ll read more to her, and the read-aloud dance is underway with all its lifetime benefits of increased vocabulary and language skills.

1. Newborns Need a Quiet Reading Environment
As your baby makes the transition from a uterine environment to our noisy, well-lit, open-air world, many physiological changes are taking place. A newborn’s perceptual system does not screen out everything that her eyes see, her ears hear, or her skin feels. Be sensitive to your newborn’s needs by providing quiet time when she can listen clearly to your voice as you talk or read to her. When reading to your baby, turn off any competing noises, such as the television, stereo, or radio. In early infancy, it is especially important to prevent over stimulation or stress. During read-alouds, allow your baby to hear only you rhythmic voice without the disturbance of background noises.

2. Newborns are Comforted by the Sound of Your Voice
Initially, right after your child’s birth, you have a lot of leeway in what you may select to read to your baby. One parent told us he read aloud from the stock market pages of the newspaper. Since babies are mostly focusing on your voice at the outset, you could read anything aloud. However, since babies love your melodious voice the best choice right after birth might be any kind of rhymes, such as Mother Goose.

Some parents start right out with board books, such as Goodnight Moon, and note that their babies become so accustomed to these books that they continue to request them for the first year or longer. Gradually you will become aware of your baby’s favorites and select books that you know he would like. As babies mature, they become pickier and let you know what they like through their body language. Whatever you choose to read, become aware of the effect of the sound of your voice on your baby. Notice your baby’s excited movements when you read with enthusiasm or change the pitch of your voice.

3. Hold and Cuddle Your Baby When You Read
The most important thing to remember when reading a book to your infant is that you are providing love, attention, and intimacy while giving important language input. When babies are old enough to begin to choose books and bring them to you to read, often what they really want is to cuddle and be given loving attention.

When you first hold a newborn it can feel awkward, especially before they can hold their heads up. Imagine holding a book and the newborn at the same time. After a little practice, you’ll find the most comfortable position, whether it’s in your favorite rocker with a “boppy” (a donut-shaped lap pillow often used by nursing mothers) or lying next to your baby on the bed.

4. When Choosing a Book, Allow Your Baby to Be Your Guide
There is no prescription from pediatricians, educators, or psychologists recommending a list of books for each stage of a child’s early development. This is a good thing, as we have never encountered identical lists of books from parents we interviewed. Each child is unique and has his own preferences. One size does not fit all. Parents begin early with books they think their child will like and then reread many, many times those that get a favorable reaction. In each of Chapters Three through Eight, we provide detailed reviews of several age-appropriate books with tips for how they can be used to launch rich interactions between you and your baby. You can readily adapt these tips to whatever books you and your baby prefer.

Newborns benefit most from hearing your familiar voice reading poems or books with rhythm and rhyme when they are awake or asleep. After the first two or three months, your baby will react favorably by looking back and forth with interest between your face and the book, wiggling her legs and hands with excitement, or smiling happily. Conversely, if your baby is not enthused about a book she may look away from your face and the book, push the book aside, or fall asleep. By the time your baby is a year or more, she will select the books she wants you to read from the shelf, pile, or basket.

Your choice of books is not as important as making the choice to read to your baby on a regular basis. By making that choice, you will give your baby a powerful boost of language development, the benefits of which will last a lifetime. More importantly, your baby will associate reading with cuddly love and attention.

5. Start Reading at Any Page
You don’t have to finish a book, or even start at the beginning. You can go right to the part you know your baby likes best and have fun on one or more pages by dramatizing different parts with a variety of voice inflections and tones. Your baby may even want to switch back and forth between one book and another. Often baby books do not contain stories, but illustrated rhymes or labeled pictures. Skipping around the text is easy in these types of books. If there’s a story line, it still doesn’t matter if you pick and choose pages that interest your baby.

6. You Don’t Have to Read All of the Words in the Book
Sometimes you’ll find that your baby prefers that you merely point to the illustrations and name some objects, or that you make up your own words or story as you go along rather than reading what the words on the page say. Your baby will let you know. For example, when you select a favorite book for your baby, if you know from previous readings that your child prefers a certain page, you can turn directly to that page. You can read it in the way your baby loves to hear, perhaps dramatizing certain sentences or words by speaking them more loudly or in a squeaky voice. How will you know what your baby likes best? She may wiggle her arms and legs or gaze at the page with great interest. She might also look at the page longer than other pages.

For a wordless picture book, like Tana Hoban’s White on Black, you may dream up anything you want to say about the pictures of simple objects. Your baby will show you which pictures she’s most intrigued by. In this interaction with your baby the most important element is listening, observing and following your baby’s cues. Your baby will let you know what pages she prefers and how long to remain on a page. Usually, at this stage it’s best to remain on a page for only a few seconds.

7. Repeated Readings are Good for Baby’s Language Development
As soon as your child can speak in phrases some of the first words you’ll hear are “read it again.” Hearing language from books repeatedly helps children memorize it. Eight-month-olds can remember certain words that are read to them after two weeks of hearing repeated readings. Reading the same books over and over again may seem an interminable task, but the language benefits as well as your child’s joy will keep you going.

Even at birth babies have been shown to prefer hearing books that were read to them in utero. Researchers gave newborns a choice between hearing their mothers read a new book or hearing a book read repeatedly before birth. Using a sucking device, babies responded by increased sucking when they heard the familiar book read to them before birth. Rereading of traditional nursery rhymes starting at birth helps your baby identify and learn the sounds of his language. A good knowledge of sound discrimination forms the basis of later reading and writing skills.

8. Use “Parentese” when Reading and Talking to Your Baby
If you think reading to babies is having a quiet baby on your lap soaking up every word that you read straight from the book, think again. Reading to babies looks and feels very different from reading to older children. The principal difference in reading to babies as opposed to older children is the way you interrelate using your voice and a baby book. This way of talking to newborns is called “parentese.”

When parents are in intimate, face-to-face contact with their babies, they speak in a sing-songy, higher-pitched, slower, louder voice. When reading, you’ll use the baby book primarily as a vehicle to converse and dialogue with your baby using your parentese voice. You may use none, some, or all of the words in the book to have this kind of conversation.

Studies show that beginning at around five weeks, babies prefer parentese, rather than regular adult conversation. Parentese is the best way for babies to hear and learn language. Studies show that it takes babies twice as long as adults to process information. With parentese you speak more slowly so babies can hear the individual sounds and words in the stream of speech. This helps them distinguish the unique rhythm of the language spoken in the home.

Babies learn language best when parents speak with their parentese voices using face-to-face, personal, baby- directed talk. The more parentese babies hear before the age of two, the more words they’ll learn. A large vocabulary will lead to higher intelligence and academic achievement in school. Parentese aids in the process of learning the sounds, grammar, and structure of language necessary for effective speaking, reading, and writing.

About the Authors:
Caroline Jackson Blakemore and Barbara Weston Ramirez have a combined experience of over fifty years helping thousands of elementary school children with reading difficulties. They have given workshops on read-alouds to thousands of parents of babies, preschoolers, and school age children.