This post contains Amazon affiliate links for my favorite STEM books for babies.
My grandsons, like my children, love books. Earlier this summer I was putting together a package for Abel’s birthday and found these amazing STEM books for babies and just couldn’t resist buying a few.
Why Bother with STEM Books for Babies?
I bought My First 100 Mathematics Words for Abel (his dad is an accountant, after all). Why bother reading STEM books to your babies? Because babies and toddlers are little sponges and will absorb whatever they are exposed to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I think it is necessary to introduce babies to non-euclidean geometry nor do I think it is going to make them a genius.
So why introduce them? Because why not? We teach our toddlers their shapes and colors…so why not introduce these STEM concepts as well? If nothing else, it gets the child comfortable with those words and concepts and might just stave off the fear of math later on. Plus, I love the illustrations in these books. Simple enough to not be overwhelming to babies but still engaging.
{And lets just be honest…most of use will learn something from these as well. Even better, have your older child read these to your younger child. It will reenforce the concepts without making the older child feel “dumb”. }
I bought My First 100 Science Words for Percy and Monty and it will soon be heading to New Zealand along with some other surprises. This book series by Chris Ferrie has a total of eight books including ones on Engineering and Technology. According to Amazon, “Chris Ferrie is a physicist, mathematician, and father of four budding young scientists”. So, basically, he knows his stuff.
Ferrie’s website has a ton of cool resources.
Ferrie is also the author of many more great STEM books for babies so you should to check out his Amazon page. It’s probably a good thing my youngest is beyond board these or we’d likely own them all.
Move Over Goodnight Moon…Make Room for Goodnight Lab
I am going to state my unpopular opinion here…I have never liked the book, Goodnight Moon. Of course, we owned it for a while. What parent doesn’t own a copy of Goodnight Moon? Thankfully, Chris Ferrie has filled in the gap for those of us who aren’t fans and written Goodnight Lab instead.
The book, Goodnight Lab, starts out brilliantly,
In the great green lab
There was a laser
And a notebook,
And a picture of –
Einstein with a stern look
And there were three sticky notes stuck to lab coats…
And a copper wire
and a pair of pliers
And a spectrometer
And a thermometer
I mean really, how can you not love a book for babies that includes words like spectrometer? Have you found any cool baby and toddler books lately? Be sure and share in the comments!
Knitting Patterns Pictured Above:
Have you seen the book Mr Archimedes Bath?I am sorry if I have spelt the word incorrectly. It was written by a New Zealand author who moved to Australia and basically she was told to write her own book. She came up with this gem. Australian animals and Archimedes share a tub and discover displacement.
Ooh; I haven’t seen the “words” ones. I don’t know how, because we have the space set. Those look really cool!
And I agree — the exposure is one of the biggest benefits of books like these. I don’t expect a 2yo is going to “learn” algebra or physics, but these subjects are usually intimidating when we get to them because they’re so mysterious and “other.” Familiarity produces comfort.