You may wonder about the benefits of reading to your baby. An infant won't understand everything you're doing or why. But you wouldn't wait until your child could understand what you were saying before you started speaking to him or her, right? 

Reading aloud to your baby is a great activity you and your baby and do and continue to do for year.  It's important for your baby.  

Reading aloud:

By the time a baby turns 1, they will have learned all the sounds needed to speak their language. The more stories you read aloud, the more words your child will be exposed to and the better he or she will be able to talk. Hearing words helps to build a nice vocabulary of words in a baby's brain. Kids whose parents frequently talk/read to them know more words by age 2 than children who have not been read to. And kids who are read to during their early years are more likely to learn to read at the right time.

When reading, your child hears you using many different emotions and expressive sounds, which fosters social and emotional development. Reading also invites your baby to look, point, touch, and ask and answer questions and all of these things promote social development and thinking skills. 

But perhaps the most important reason to read aloud is that it makes a connection between the things your baby loves the most — your voice and closeness to you — and books. Spending time reading to your baby shows that reading is a skill worth learning.

Reading aloud to your child doesn't take any special things, just you and your baby and a couple of books.  The library is a great place to get some books if you don't want to buy them, just make sure baby doesn't rip them before you return them.  Read aloud for a few minutes at a time, but do it often. 

• Cuddling while you read helps your baby feel safe, warm, and connected to you.
• Read with expression, pitching your voice higher or lower where it's appropriate or using different voices for different characters.
• Don't worry about following the text exactly. Stop once in a while and ask questions or make comments on the pictures or text. 
• Sing nursery rhymes, make funny animal sounds, or bounce your baby on your knee, how them that reading is fun. 
• As your baby gets older, encourage him or her to touch the book or hold sturdier vinyl, cloth, or board books. You don't want to encourage chewing on books, but by putting them in his or her mouth, your baby is learning about them, finding out how books feel and taste.