A picture (book) is worth a thousand well-pruned synapses

A couple of times I've mentioned a book that I've been reading called, Raise a Smarter Child by Kindergarten. It was written by a neurologist and has taught me a lot about brain development and the importance of early experiences.

Because we will have missed roughly the first year of Nora's life, I want to be sure that in addition to our boundless love we also give her the right kind of stimulation while she's still very young. It really matters; developing the right neural pathways early on affects your ability to learn and process information throughout your life.

One of the first sections I read was about books (you know how much I love books) and it said that there are two kinds of children's books - picture books and storybooks - and every child's library should have both. Now, Nora's got a nice, growing book collection (you can see the current list by clicking on the "Nora's Library" link under the site navigation section on the right), but I realized that she mostly has storybooks and very few picture books. Since that's obviously going to have to change, I bought a nice picture book when I was at Target.

I think that, in addition to teaching some words, it will also help her to learn colors. Hopefully she will also develop a love of books and reading.

Sometime I'll show you her puzzles...