Animal Sounds

My 1 year old son L has been enjoying his reading time with me, but he hasn’t wanted to finish his books recently. He would bring me a book and a few pages in, he would leave and grab another book. I’ll start the new book and he would grab the old book to restart. The kid wants to read multiple books at the same time I guess!

I have been trying to figure out how to get him to finish a book while keeping his attention. One way I figured out is to use animal sounds for each animal we encounter in the book. If we see a dog, I’ll say dog…woof woof! He will smile, try to say the same thing, and the we will move on. It’s been working here and there, but he will have his favorite pages and wants me to reread them constantly now.

One side effect of the animal sounds is that L is starting to use more words to describe what he sees. Now when he sees our huge 75 pound bernadoodle, he will say dog…woof woof! It makes me smile when I hear him talk. The problem is, he says many things are dogs and starts woofing. He will point to stickers that look like butterflies and say the same thing. I don’t think he can pronounce many other words, so maybe it’s his way of saying he knows it is some creature. Sometimes he will also have little debates and insist things are dogs. It’s pretty cute and my 6 year old daughter E used to to the same thing. Everything was a kitty to her!

Animal sounds are a fun way to get L to keep his attention and learn some new words. I try to be silly to get a smile from him and to read all the books he wants. It’s also honestly fun for me to act out all the animals because otherwise it’s hard to be silly as a grown up in day to day life. Win win.