FM.G Book Skills

The skills in this sequence, together with the associated language skills, open the way to one of the most rewarding activities you will share with your child – and, in the future, one of your child’s most important sources of learning and recreation.

This sequence looks at the basic Fine Motor skills used in handling books – skills such as looking, turning pages and pointing to pictures. In the Receptive Language Sequences you will find activities for helping your child to learn the meanings of words, using books and pictures. And of course, books can be included in the materials you use for teaching your child to communicate with others. Looking at books together with others is an important social activity, too, and is an excellent way to teach a child to attend jointly to something of common interest.

With the increasing recognition of the importance of books in the lives of young children, there have been tremendous advances in the quality and variety of children’s books available. This has been particularly striking in the area of cardboard books, which once confined themselves largely to repetitive pictures of animals and toys. Board books are now available at many levels of complexity, covering all kinds of topics. Paper books suitable for very young children, and early storybooks, have shown a similar improvement.

If your bookseller is not adventurous in his or her choice of children’s books, explain your needs and ask for some suitable books to be ordered in. Or ask your local librarian for help. Look too for magazines and books designed to help parents in their choice of children’s books – recent titles are The Good Book Guide to Children’s Books (Australian edition), edited by Bing Taylor and Peter Braithwaite, and The Read Aloud Handbook (Australian edition) by Jim Trelease. Both are published by Penguin.

You can also make your own books, by drawing or pasting pictures on cardboard, covering them with self-adhesive plastic film, punching holes and tying loosely with string or wool. Your child will love turning the page to find a photo of someone he loves or something he knows well.

Below we list all the skills in this sequence.