Librarians Talk Children's Books: Alphabet and Counting

In today's video, we talk about how reading alphabet and counting books is a great way to blend pre-literacy skills with letter and number recognition practice. These books can deviate in reading and content level from toddler to third grade and are mostly targeted towards ages 2 to 5. Though some books may use older children’s already developing knowledge to introduce sight words. Alphabet and counting books can also be a great way to get toddlers started in simple storytelling. They can make for great read-aloud as children as they gain confidence in their letters and numbers. This is shared fun as your child can read the letters and numbers they know from the print.

Letter recognition is important because it enables your child to figure out how printed text is associated with the spoken language. ABCs are the building blocks of language. Recognition of letter names can make next step of learning letter sounds easier for young readers. 

Counting is one of the best ways to help children build number sense which helps your child takes notice of the number of objects in a group. Like letter recognition knowing numbers and number sequencing is the building blocks of math skills.

Click on the titles below to place a library hold.

ABC's:

The Little Red Cat Who Ran Away and Learned His ABC's (the Hard Way) by Patrick McDonnell
ABC Kids by Simon Basher
Animalia by Graeme Base
Chicka, Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin
P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever by Chris Carpenter

Counting:
This Little Piggy by Jarvis
Pride & Prejudice by Jennifer Adams
Stack the Cats by Susie Ghahremani
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin
The Hueys in None the Number by Oliver Jeffers