Begin Smart: Developmentally And Age Appropriate Board Books

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**Keep reading – book giveaway ahead! Open to all international readers!**

Ever since I was a little girl, I have had a passion for reading. In fact, all 9 kids in my family love to read and at any given moment you can usually find at least one of us devouring a book. My parents, too, always seem to have a book or magazine in hand.

From a very young age, shelves and shelves of books were constantly available for us to explore. We had a huge variety of books to choose from – easy readers, board books, classics, historical fiction chapter books, encyclopedias (I absolutely loved perusing our World Book set), science textbooks, poetry, anthologies, scriptures, and the list goes on. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of me lounging on the couch or on a blanket on the grass in the backyard soaking up the sun and enjoying the breeze while reading.

Now that I am raising my own family, I definitely want to pass on my love affair with books. So far both of my kids seem to be keeping this tradition alive and well. Of course, my husband and I are also doing what we can as parents to help them develop their own passion for reading. We have read to them regularly since birth, we are constantly visiting the library and very often our kids see both of us enjoying a book in the spare moments we get to ourselves.

Not too along ago I received an email from a relatively new company, Begin Smart, asking me if I would like to review their developmentally and age appropriate board books. I immediately jumped at this opportunity, especially since they were touting that these books are very age specific for infants and toddlers. Their books are “carefully leveled by age and ability in six-month increments.”

Begin Smart books were developed by children’s author and publisher Harriet Ziefert, who envisioned books truly geared to the emerging skills of infants and toddlers. Most of the existing titles she found in the marketplace had age ranges spanning several years – for example, newborn to three – and she concluded, after many years of observing babies, that such leveling made no sense in relation to what she saw in reality.

“I decided to begin smart,” says Ziefert. “I chose to learn everything I could about infant development and use the ‘observed baby’ as my starting off point. I did not begin with a list of skills, or a group of stories, or a particular character or concepts to be learned. I began with the conviction that everything is new to a baby and the best books for babies are the ones that help them make sense of the complicated world around them.”

Begin Smart titles are grouped by age: newborn to 6 months; 6 months to 12 months; 12 to 18 months; and 18 to 24 months. A variety of sturdy and engaging formats give babies many opportunities to touch, explore, learn and react with feeling.

After being able to view and read a variety of these books first hand, I must admit they are excellent! The colors are bright, the content is definitely age appropriate and engaging, and the material the books are made out of is extremely sturdy. They definitely seem resilient to infant and toddler slobber and rough handling. (However, this same durable material also makes them a bit bulkier to store.)

And even though my two children are technically too old for these books, they still enjoyed them. Their favorite by far was the “Look At Me!” mask and peek-a-boo book. I am excited to see how our new little one will like them when he joins our family next month.

If you would like a chance to win a complete set of books for a certain age category, then please leave a comment on this post before Monday June 16th. All you need to do is click over to the Begin Smart website and choose which age range of books you would like to receive. Then come back to this post and let me know what you decide.

And remember, even if you don’t have children that fit these age ranges, these books will still make great baby shower gifts or you can keep them on hand for when grandkids, nieces, nephews and other little ones come to visit you.

**This contest is now closed and a winner has been selected.**

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• The Begin Smart Book Winner
• Favorite Christmas Books For Children
• Queen of the Castle
• What’s New in Books (January 1-7, 2008)

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Filed under Children, Family Life, Giveaway, Parenting, Product Reviews, Reading