Baby at the British Museum

When I began writing this blog, Culturebaby was tiny and I was constantly on the look out for high quality, brilliant books for babies and toddlers to introduce them to art and history. Even 6 years ago there was very little on the history side. I gathered rather a lovely collection about art (see here) and began to piece together an Egyptian version (here and here) but with the exception of the gorgeous One Blue Hippo: An Ancient Egyptian Counting Book and quirky Tickle Tut's Toes there was little else for toddling archaeologists. I was therefore delighted to be approached last year to review the stunning progeny of a well matched marriage between The British Museum and publisher Nosy Crow. The resulting exquisite and fascinating books, which unpacked the collections of the museum in a bright and engaging way, really filled a gaping hole in early years provision for miniature museum-goers and their families. 

The first titles I'd like to talk about form part a series called Early Learning at the Museum. These four sumptuous and well designed board books are full of high quality photographs of items from the BM's collections, showcased against colourful backdrops. Covering Colours, Opposites, 123 and ABC (with others being published since), the books aim to develop the essential areas of learning for little people. I also love that these titles draw from a wide spectrum of the museum's collections from prints and drawings and paintings to textiles, jewellery, pottery and archaeological items. These may be objects found in perhaps lesser-visited galleries which encourage us to look beyond the sarcophagi to other intriguing realms. We journey from Japan to America, Africa to Scandinavia on a single page and are encouraged to look at the objects thematically, numerically, for their colourful properties or for their similarities across the ages or geography. Pitt-Rivers-like, we explore collections by theme, or we see wildly different items juxtaposed for their contrasting qualities.

The absolute winner of the pack for the girls who are now 4 and 6 is 123, which works from 1 to 20 items. The numerical element of this book allows for a kaleidoscopic array of items on many of the pages and the girls love working through it and selecting which item they would choose if given the option. We also play 'guess the oldest item'. Pages with selections of dolls, keys, bags, hats, spoons, cups and rings hold endless fascination.

The titles also come with internet codes for parents linking to further information, and are ripe for use with follow-on activities to discover the items in real life on journeys through the galleries. These I-spy activities are so effective and need little preparation (see here for an example with Tate's Matisse exhibition). I simply cannot rave enough about these brilliant and beautiful books.

Accompanying the Early Learning Series is a fabulous playbook, that suits a range of ages. Mixed-up Masterpieces again features a set of high quality photographs of faces from the British Museum's collections. From ceremonial masks to marble busts, Halloween costumes to figurines, again we travel through the collections meeting a range of characters. As babies finish with simple black and white shapes and begin to perceive colour (see here for why), they begin to be fascinated with faces. This book would be perfect for this earliest of stages; but it is also a creative puzzle for older children. The reader is invited to either discover the correct combination of facial features amongst 2000 combinations, or create their own weird and wonderful combinations.

Finally in the early years set is a new Egyptian title to add to our collection: Mummy! by Lerryn Korda. With the simplest of concepts and aimed at the 0-2 range, I thought when it arrived that it might be a little young for almost 4 year old Culturetot, but she's really taken to it. A little Egyptian girl can't find her Mummy and embarks on a journey on the banks of the Nile to locate her. Along the way she encounters a host of different Mummies - from animal to embalmed  - and finally finds her own. The loveliest feature of this little Board book is that it includes hieroglyph translations of a number of the key words, introducing the tiniest of readers to this most intriguing of languages.

For older children (as well as adults) there is also a beautiful set of several creative colouring books. Again inspired by the collections of the museum and with an inspiration guide at the end, these have been one of the most successful activity books for the girls as they loved the idea. Containing greetings cards paired with an envelope to construct, colour and decorate, and a sticker to seal it all, the girls were able to use this resource to make their own birthday and thank you cards for friends. Given the bonkers prices of greetings cards these days, these are also both excellent value and produce a rather more unique offering from the girls to any recipient. They even have a cute little box for them to sign "coloured for you by..."

Disclaimer: Nosy Crow is working with the British Museum in an exclusive partnership to create a broad range of children’s books to sell to the UK trade and beyond. The British Museum is ‘a museum of the world, for the world’. The books draw on the British Museum’s internationally recognised brand, its unparalleled collection of objects and its world-class expertise. We were sent copies of these books for the purposes of a review. All views are very much our own and we only ever review books we love and recommend.

Montessori Moment: 5 Simple DIY letter and Number Games

From around 3 Culturebaby became really interested in letters and we began to learn to read simple words. At just four she has plunged headfirst into her sensitive period for writing (currently any time she can get hold of a pen and paper... or cloudy bus window) and numbers. She wants to count everything and, rather surprisingly, chose maths worksheets over bedtime stories last night. Over the last year, I've developed a few resources to help bring the alphabet alive, and I've recently started to add some number games. I thought I'd share five simple to produce ones here.


1.Letter Games with Movable Alphabet

We have a retro set of wooden Galt letter stencils and these serve as a versatile 'movable alphabet'. Montessori schools often use sandpaper letters for their sensory/tactile qualities, but I find the slightly rough wood does a similar job. We have lower and upper case (with the exception of a h lost somewhere in the 1980s... I've replaced...) and with many thanks to our wonderful Suzuki violin lessons where Culturebaby was encouraged to line up A - G and then play a game to work out which had been swapped whilst her back was turned, this became a game she has asked to play again and again. It has helped her to not only recognise A - G in upper and lower case and reorder in any scenario, but we've also used it to build up the rest of the alphabet. She likes to spot when letters within a case have been reordered and to spot mixed up cases. Culturebaby also enjoys trying to fill a basket with the letters she can identify. I must confess, this fascination with such simple games was a complete surprise, but we've run with it...

2. Writing in Sand

This is such a simple one. Take a tray of sand or salt, give the child a letter, and encourage them to practice drawing it into the sand. I've seen this also written about very successfully with washable markers or flat marbles on a non-breakable mirror. This photograph is the aftermath of one of these trays, when Culturebaby decided to try imprinting some of the letters to create patterns.

 3. Letter and Item Matching and Ordering Game

This basket was fun to make. I gathered a set of Melissa and Doug coloured lower case letters and matched each one to a well known item - making sure I used easily recognisable things or small models and added these all to a basket. I used a basket divided into five to make the game simpler so that each set of letters could be worked out separately if desired.

I first created this when Culturebaby was around three and it served as an enjoyable game we could do together. Now I've just got it back out and suspect she will be able to do most of it alone.

4. Number Sequence Games - Given the success of the letter sequencing and reorganisation games we have applied the same principle to numbers. During the house move I uncovered a brilliant Galt puzzle from the 1970s where numbers 0 - 9 are each created from the number of components that their numeral represents. Both girls love this jigsaw and work on it together. Culturetot gets as excited as Culturebaby at the prospect of hiding whilst the numbers are rearranged. Any set of movable numerals will do for the second part of this activity.

  

5. Festive Counting and Addition game

I'm always on the look out for interesting sets of mini identical items that can serve as counters and was pleased to see that Christmas is the great provider. I've created a counting and addition basket from a set of 24 advent pegs and a selection of 24 miniature mushrooms and a set of tiny bells. Culturebaby can either simply play a game of counting the correct numbers of items into the central box as indicated by a changing number clip. Or we will work together to add one number of mushrooms to another number of bells and find the clip together with the corresponding total. I find that working together on tactile and sorting games such as this helps her to remember what she is learning and she goes on to use the materials to sort and play as much as she likes. 

 

Food for the Soul: Our 5 a Day Literary Diet

A new year, new resolutions, and my biggest aim for Culturetot is to read more with her alone. It's trickier with a second child to find quality time to sit down peacefully together, have a snuggle, and wade through baskets of books like Culturebaby and I had the luxury of doing. Establishing a routine around storytime before bed has really helped. At 14 months Culturetot expects it, understands what I'm saying when I ask her to choose a story, and has begun to say 'there' and point at her books when a certain title she requires is out of reach. I've noticed that this has a knock-on effect on her general awareness of reading material and we've begun to retreat to her cosy little room, sit on her rug and steal a story moment or two in the quieter parts of our days together.

I no longer set myself up to fail by resolving to change the world fifteen tasks at a time every January. This year I only had a couple of resolutions, and one was to ensure that we read at least five books a day with each of the girls. As Adrienne Rich noted so sagely “You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it”. Culturebaby at three is just embarking on her reading journey; stringing together letter sounds, recognising the odd word, retiring to her bed to peruse a pile of Ladybird fairytales. I'm so excited for her. Daily she is discovering new worlds for the first time. She's already besotted with the technicolour wonder of Oz and entranced by the magic of Potter's imagination, but somewhere just out of sight wait Narnia, Middle Earth, Wonderland, Brisingamen; Aslan, Gandalf, five friends in search of mystery, friendly giants, a box of delights... For me, their literary diet is just as crucial as their physical one, with words like vitamins stimulating the brain and bringing with their consumption a fullness of life. For Culturetot this is all just beginning. As she lifts flaps in hot pursuit of Spot, presses buttons to hear lions roar and paws at pages embedded with varied textures, the path ahead seems long but laden with treasures.

I've recently been thoroughly inspired by the stunning writing of the late Kate Gross. Her blog and book Late Fragments, which chart her courageous and dignified battle with terminal cancer, are far from gloomy. Rather they speak into the heart of things: dwelling on what is ultimately important and the beauty of coming full circle to that which first inspired us as children. When all began to fall away; her glittering career, her health and her dreams of the future, Kate writes that she returned to the root of all meaning for her in her final months - her family, her friends, her children and her books. Her love of words, returning to the landscapes of her inner self and regaining her 'enduring melody' through her first love - her ten year old's clarity that literature made her tick - brought her solace and peace. And she has left her sons a treasure map to what truly defined her - her book, and also a bookcase, banded in age brackets, of the works that have been important to her throughout her life. This 'library for life', which she was encouraged by her university Dons to build sits true with me. I'm always more content and more alive when I'm surrounded with my shelves of books. For me they reach across wall-space like a painting depicting my history; a catalogue of my innermost desires and inspiration and where I can return to unlock a host of memories within each binding. Even a glance at their spines has the capacity to ground me and remind me of who I am, and importantly where I ultimately want to be. A Kindle simply won't do. As Kate notes: "Reading is an experience by which we connect ourselves to what we are, to this magnificent, awful life, in which the same grooves are being scored over and over again in different tongues. It is about how you experience humanity." It is one of the most important doors I will ever unlock for my little ladies.

I've been thinking about my tips for instilling a love of books in our little ones right from the start, and without a doubt, for both girls, but Culturetot in particular, the means by which their stories are offered and displayed is extremely significant. For Culturebaby we had a couple of bigger bookshelves, which, if left to their own devices, were either unceremoniously emptied or ignored; and then a scattering of baskets containing a smaller selection of books throughout the house. These generally get better use as they are accessible and good for browsing. For a while, however, I'd been drooling over the ingenius kids' bookcases created by Tidy Books owned by a number of my friends. The concept is simple but brilliant. Toddlers cannot read; they struggle with large bookshelves with books stacked where only the spine can be seen. Aesthetics matter. How the reading material is offered affects young children's choice, suggestion can help their selection, and they most certainly judge a book by its cover. Tidy Book cases are shallow and unlike normal book shelves display a selection of up to 90 books with their front covers facing outwards. A few months ago we were sent one to review for the nursery and I couldn't praise its concept and design more highly. Since Culturetot and I started a quiet reading routine, cuddled on a rug in front of her Tidy Books case - which is a beautiful and central fixture in her bedroom - I have seen her interest in books truly begin. Now when I ask her where her stories are, she points and says 'there'. She toddles over, and selects one after another, browsing with her eyes and chubby little toddler paws. Inevitably such interest and means of display ensures I no longer leave board books festering forgotten in the bottom of a basket. This bookcase requires that I keep an appropriate selection in steady circulation and I can respond better to my baby's interest as she displays clear preferences for certain types of book, or returns to the same cover again and again.

Some of Culturetot's bedtime selection this evening

Recently I read an interesting discussion in a librarian's magazine about the sorts of books that were borrowed most frequently. Suggested reads in forward facing display shelves, books at hand and eye height in the most accessible shelves seemed to play a large influence in patterns. I'd also say that for toddlers the front cover design is rather crucial - something the Tidy Books philosophy recognises. I took the opportunity to ask a few of our favourite children's authors and publishers what they thought about this and they offered some interesting insights. Tamsyn Murray talked about the important balance of capturing a flavour of the book in an eye catching way and doing something a little different; whilst Birgitta Sif shared that for herself as a child it was the intriguing details of front covers balanced with good graphics that drew her to a title. James Mayhew talked about the attraction for young children of specific subject matter, and noted that he prefers the newer unfussy Katie covers with their clear character and theme. Likewise others pointed out that anything with a duck or animal was guaranteed to be a winner with their little ones. The wonderful publisher Child's Play also shared a helpful insight into their front cover design process: "...we always make the covers of our baby books fun and dynamic. We have found that simple designs and contrasting elements are popular. The emotion of the cover is another important factor that mustn’t be overlooked. It’s crucial that the design on the cover accurately conveys what the book is about to the reader, before they’ve even read the title.” Or of course if they are too dinky to do so themselves...

Culturebaby's bedtime selection today

Through observation of Culturetot's preferences as she's been browsing her favourite lit, I'd also recommend that parents have available on their bookshelves for this age a selection of the following: touchy-feely books with textures; books with flaps to open; noisy titles with a range of buttons; books containing photographs of other children and images of animals; high contrasts and bold art; titles containing repetition, rhyming or musical text; books with elements to manipulate (such as parts to slide and move); word books containing photographs of items a baby needs to learn; and tiny books for little hands to handle with ease. Combined with an attractive and accessible means of display there is little more my little Culturetot needs in her nursery. Her bookcase has been the best gift we've given her to date.

Disclaimer: Our TidyBooks bookcase was sent to us by this fab eco friendly and responsible business, to test in advance of an honest review. We love it and as always all views are very much my own.
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