Stop buying your kids expensive toys that does nothing to improve their vocabulary. Start investing on good children’s books. I have and believe me when I say this, its money well spent. Toys do help entertain your kids, and maybe educate them a little. But books are a great source of entertainment as well. It also stimulates your child’s imagination and creativity.

My son and I have been buying a number of children’s books; which I’m not ashamed to admit, I have read and enjoyed as well. He loves listening to me read out loud, and he has learned to correct his pronunciation of certain words. He now thinks nerds, geeks and bookworms are great. I don’t know where he got the idea that being smart is a bad thing (I have a feeling about the person’s identity, but I’m not going to tell). Once he said, “I’m like you now, mommy, I’m also a bookworm”. There’s some truth to it because I really am a bookworm; but hearing it from my child’s mouth made me double up with laughter.

Like I said, it has improved his vocabulary. Even if English is his first language, I would like to focus on his English oral and writing skills more than Tagalog. Not because I think learning our local language is a waste of time; it’s just that with everyone else speaking Tagalog, he’ll learn easily.

If you would like information on what books are great for your kids, let me know and I would gladly help you out. But please give me something to work on; like your child’s favorite cartoon characters, movies and toys. My son collects Mega Blocks Dragons and loves dinosaurs (when he was 4 or 5, he told me he wanted to be a dinosaur when he grows up), so I got him books by Cressida Cowell (How To Cheat a Dragon’s Curse, How To Train Your Dragon, How To Be a Pirate and How To Speak Dragonese) and Laurence Yep (Tiger’s Apprentice and Dragon Cauldron). There are also books by Roald Dahl which he had a blast reading (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me, and The Enormous Crocodile are his favorites).

According to the creator of Brain Age, reading out loud stimulates your brain. So not only are you bonding with your child, you’re also exercising your brain.