Today, Veronika and I had a very different sort of story time. Rather than simply reading text to her, I wanted to actively engage her with the pictures and words. In fact, because we were focusing on what she saw rather than the story line, magazines were better for this game than books. You can use adult magazines, kid ones, or even catalogs!

We snuggled up and talked about the images. “Look, the girl is in a red dress. Look, the boy is at the beach.”

This will help your baby process the images on the page, without having to follow rhyming words or plots.

You can also encourage your child to point to what they’re seeing. So if I said, “Let’s touch the maraca,” I would then place her hand on it.

She doesn’t understand yet of course, but over time this will help her associate a word with the proper image.

You can also have your baby practice turning pages. Magazines aren’t as good for this, with their thin paper, but her latest issue of Hello magazine was perfect.

“Let’s turn the page!” I said, and then guided her hand until we turned it together.

Overall, this was an engaging activity, and a nice quiet pause just the two of us.