The Home Builders

This month's book is The Home Builders by Varsha Bajaj, illustrated by Simona Mulazzani. Among the beautiful illustrations lies an entire collection of new vocabulary for your little one(s)! It's full of words for a home, showing how different animals come together and form new homes for their sweet babies.

This month, I'm encouraging you to look up words and phrases, and just any question your child has that you may not know the answer to. This book inspires that by giving words for groups of animals and their babies. Has your child heard each word the book uses before? Hatchling, den, timid, slumber, or rummage? I know we're supposed to be the grown ups, but let's be honest, we, as parents or guardians, don't know everything. It can be so easy to just brush past ideas when you don't know-we're all guilty of this, including me. However, the more information you can give your child, the better! And don't we want to model to our kids that looking things up that we don't know is a good thing?

Just the other day, Eleanor asked me what a volcano is. Her grandparents were traveling to one, and she had no idea what they were talking about. Now, I know what a volcano is, but I wasn't quite sure how to explain it to her. The only words that were coming to mind were volcano, lava, magma, and pressure. So, to the internet we went! We looked up pictures and definitions and maps and even found a kids video about volcanoes. It would've been so easy to move past the topic to another; however, Eleanor got to learn something new because we took some time to look it up.

Sometimes we don't really have time to look up all the amazing answers to our children's questions. That's okay! Make a note in your phone and look at it at the end of the day. Snuggle in close and look up the answers. You'll be amazed at what you can find and the questions your kid will have while looking.

Happy reading and happy learning!