Upping the Challenge sensory board books

As the parent of a 3 and 6 year old, I can tell you that sensory books can hold a strong comfort value after they may have technically ‘outgrown’ the age group for them. This is actually a great thing because all those books that you invest in, or are gifted when they are tiny aren’t always going to be passed on as soon as they hit nursery.

Tinyfae enjoys an interactive book as she is still in the pre-literate stages and these help build her phonemic awareness, her vocabulary and sight recognition of repeated words whereas Littlefae who is a confident reader still rather enjoys an interactive board book.

 I feel this is a partly a sensory thing and partially a comfort thing; she likes the ‘play’ factor and they are pure enjoyment but she favours the ones where there is a little more demand than just the ‘That’s not my’.

Little Tiger Press have been bringing out some brilliant interactive board books that we have been lucky to try out, and both my girls have enjoyed; and what links them all is the slight challenge and questioning posed by the stories.

Where’s my Unicorn? By Kate McLelland, story by Becky Davies

In this story, the reader is told that a unicorn has gone missing and prompted to seek it following the colourful footprints. 

Each page follows the idea of a different texture or finish but has further challenge to make links between features of different creatures instead of the same titular creature so for example a unicorn has a horn but so has a narwhal, and a swishy tail but so does a mermaid (and a different kind of swishy tail) before building to a lift the flap finale.

Both girls REALLY liked this one because of the unicorn factor and I heard Littlefae explaining to Tinyfae that just because they both have a tail/horn/etc doesn’t make them a unicorn. That distinction is actually really important and great to see those distinctions being explored as it builds towards EYFS subjects like the similarities and differences between mammals for example.

Who said woof? Who said Moo? By Yi-Hsuan Wu

Oh Tinyfae loves these. they are as funny as a joke book to her. She is very entertained at the silliness of mistaking each animal’s noise and revealing the true source!

Each double spread starts with a Who said? and a common animal noise and on the other page a flap, on top will be a surprise animal, usually one you would never expect to make that noise to prompt a laugh! With domestic pets and farm animals in these offerings this is a great way for toddlers to learn more about animals in a fun way whilst building phonemic awareness too.

The titles of these books may have also prompted a song in the house about these books to the theme of Blue Suede Shoes. ☺️ 

Let’s find the Mermaid  & Let’s Find the Dinosaur by Alex Willmore

This book is perfect for those who like to learn by touching with lots of tactile felt flaps and die-cuts to poke and peep through distorting the image to reveal a surprise. 

I’m a huge fan of felt flaps in board books where possible as you may have read, as I have seen so many books loved to death but never so more than lift the flap books and toddlers! 

These are really great for introducing proper terminology and naming creatures, Mermaid for underwater creatures like tortoises, and Dinosaurs for different species such as T-Rex and so forth.

Tinyfae loves the Dinosaur one in particular!

Thank you so much to Little Tiger Press for our review copies. 💜

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