My daughter is really good at identifying the similarities in the stories she reads. I remember once when she was 3 or 4, she informed my husband and myself that “Beauty and the Beast and The Hunchback of Notre Dame are really the same story because they are both about people who are ugly on the outside but pretty on the inside.” We were pretty shocked at her ability to make this connection across these two fairly different stories (or rather, Disney movies), but I guess we shouldn’t have been so surprised. Toddlers soak up so much information and they are apparently able to process that information in very sophisticated ways.
The point of my story is to introduce the “A First Concept” section of our Babybug magazines and explain why this section is so important that it appears in every issue of Babybug. First concepts such as ABCs, 123s, and shapes play an important role in preparing your child for his or her first school experience, of course, but these concepts also help young children make sense of their world. Having a way to sort things or name things, or express their feelings is essential to the child’s sense of self and to his or her ability to communicate with you. But that doesn’t mean that presenting first concepts has to be the same old boring stuff. “A is for Apple” has its place in the world, but not in Babybug. Instead you’ll find basic concepts introduced through cute rhymes and extended to include some concepts you may not have considered before. An example of this is the “Some Wear Stripes” rhyme:
“A is for Apple” has its place in the world, but not in Babybug. Instead you’ll find basic concepts introduced through cute rhymes and extended to include some concepts you may not have considered before.
Baby’s wearing stripes, I see,
Like a little bumblebee.
Kitty’s fur has black stripes, too,
Like the zebra in the zoo.
Simple, right? But it also opens up a conversation between the child and the caregiver about other things that might be striped, allowing the child to make wider inferences about the world around them. Be sure to check out the A First Concept section in every issue of Babybug. You never know what new connections your toddler might take away from a simple rhyme.
Art by Corinne Bittler
