Toddler Bedtime Books: 5 Top Kids Books Tested

I love reading to my kids but when I’m looking for new books it can be hard to separate the great books that you and your kids will both love from the not so good books. To add to our list of books we love,, I’m combing through some lists of the best children’s books, picking out some books and trying them out. The books below all come highly recommended either by one of the lists at the bottom of the post or by my family.

This week we’re reading through 6 bedtime books – 5 recommended by at least one top 100 list and one that my son and I loved reading again and again at bedtime. Bedtime is a very popular topic for kids books so I’ve decided to do two posts, this one includes books great for toddlers the 2nd will include books great for preschoolers. 

1. The Going-To-Bed Book

 

1982 Sandra Boynton – I was surprised to find that this book was written in 1982 – it certainly wasn’t part of my childhood. It was a bedtime staple for my son when he was a toddler though. A perfect mix of fun and a gentle introduction to sleep. I never got tired of reading it.

2. Goodnight Moon



Margaret Wise Wood 1947 – This book is undisputedly a classic and you will find it on almost every list of the best children’s books. My mom doesn’t like this book so I hadn’t read it until I was an adult. If you can get the right cadence (which is turns out my mom can’t) this book will gently rock your child right to sleep. We’ve read this book again and again at bedtime.

3. Counting Kisses: A Kiss & Read Book



Karen Katz 2001 – I’m going to be honest – I hate reading this book. I love the concept of kissing your baby to sleep, but Aside from the 10 little toes find the number arbitrary and awkward. I had bought this book when Gordie was little and ended up giving it away I disliked it so much. I got it out of the library so I could take another look at it for this post and it’s even worse reading it to a 3 year old! He giggles and wiggles and that might be fun if it wasn’t supposed to be a get ready for sleep book. Gordie on the other hand thought it was great, loved the counting and the tickly kisses. That makes one of us.

4. Time for Bed

Mem Fox 1993 – This is a cute little book with a great rhythm for bedtime. Each page has a different animal saying goodnight to their baby. I can definitely see why people like this book, and I’d be happy to have it in my collection, but I can’t say it really one of my favorites.

5. Good Night, Gorilla board book



Peggy Rathmann 1994 – This book uses few words and the pictures to tell the story of zoo animals who sneak out of the zoo and follow the zoo keeper home. I am not a fan of this book for little kids. Although the words are simple, too much needs to be explained for them to follow the story. I think it would be better for kids just learning to read.

6. Sometimes I Like to Curl Up in a Ball

Vicky Churchill 2001 – This book wasn’t on any of the lists I looked at, but it has definitely been one of our bed time favorites. It was perfect for my active boy, full of lots of action words to keep him interested but not too riled up. My mom would also like you to know that even though she cannot read Goodnight Moon properly, she did find me this book.

Our Favorite Tried and Tested Toddler Bedtime Books :

1. The Going-To-Bed Book
2. Goodnight Moon
3. Sometimes I Like to Curl Up in a Ball

I didn’t add any new books to our best books list this time around. But we did have fun trying some new books out.

Book Lists

Children’s Book Guide top 100 Children’s Books:
The Going to Bed Book, Good Night Moon, Counting Kisses, Time for Bed, Goodnight Gorilla,
Babble’s top 100 kids books:
The Going to Bed Book, Goodnight Moon
Teachers First 100 Best Books:
Goodnight Moon
Kern Country Library 100 Picture Books Every Child Should Know:
Goodnight Moon
New York Public LIbrary 100 Picture Books Every Child Should Know:
Goodnight Moon, Good Night Gorilla
Goodreads Best Children’s Books (top 300): Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Gorilla, The Going To Bed Book, Time for Bed,

Taking Pictures of Kids in the Snow–Photo Tips

Learning to Use my DSLR – Practical Photography Tutorials

Equipment Used in this Tutorial: Nikon D90, 18-105mm Lens

I had intended on doing my first tutorial on positioning yourself, your light source and your subject but instead it snowed a ton and was overcast. So instead, I decided I’ll try to figure out some tricks to improve my snow photographs. Which should come in super useful considering it is only the end of October.

After looking around, I found a three of suggestions that I thought I would try out: manipulating the exposure bias, white balance and the metering mode. The idea is that these will in turn make the snow less grey, make your photo less blue and make your camera more accurate when balancing the light by focusing on the subject rather than the whole scene.

The first thing that I had to do was set my camera to a programmable setting. On my Nikon D90 at least I can’t change the exposure bias on the auto setting.

Here’s a shot taken with the Auto setting:

Auto Setting  

One of my Nikon photography books suggests that the Aperture Priority setting (shown on the camera below) would be appropriate if the scene is well lit which is was, so that’s what I used. Here’s one taken with the Aperture Priority setting before I changed any dials.                                    

Aperture Priority Setting

I think the photo taken on the automatic setting looks a little better than the one taken with the Aperture Priority Setting but I was hoping to figure out how to improve upon that.

Exposure Bias: Making your snow look less grey

One of the difficulties with photographing snow, is that because everything is so white, your camera will try to balance this out by making the snow look grey. When you manipulate the exposure bias, you are either overexposing or underexposing your photos. For snow you want to over expose your photos a little bit by adjusting it to something like +1.

I tried this out in the photos below:

 
Exposure Bias 0                                        Exposure Bias -1

 
Exposure Bias +1                                      Exposure Bias +2

I swear these are all separate photos. Nicole was a little surly about being outside in the snow. She has not found it to be very much fun so far. The first time we were out she tried to army crawl and got a face full of snow. She was not impressed.

Anyway, you can see the snow in the +1 exposure bias setting looks a lot whiter than the 0 or –1 setting. Even the +2 setting looks pretty good. You lose a lot of the definition in the snow but it makes for a striking photograph.

Here’s a couple more examples of manipulating the exposure bias:

Exposure Bias 0

Exposure Bias +1

 
Exposure Bias 0                                       Exposure Bias +1

I thought this change made a definite improvement in my photos. I would recommend giving it a try for sure.

White Balance – Making the snow look less blue

The second suggestion I decided to try was manipulating the white balance. Snow photos tend to have a blueish tinge and so either a flash or cloud setting was recommended to even that out. (Not that you want yellowy snow, just less blue).

In the first 3 photos below you can see what happened when I manipulated the white balance setting. In the last setting I compared them to one where I manipulated the exposure bias like I did above.

 
Exposure Bias 0, White balance auto         Exposure Bias 0, White balance flash

 
Exposure Bias 0, White balance cloudy       Exposure Bias +1 White balance auto

Although I can see differences between the white balance settings, I have a hard time picking out a winner. Manipulating the exposure bias made a much bigger difference in my photos. Based on these, I would probably only try manipulating the white balance if I was finding my photos were having a blue tinge.

Here’s another examples of manipulating the white balance, this time with the Exposure Bias adjusted to +1:

White Balance Auto


White Balance Cloudy

White Balance Flash

This time I think the colors in the cloudy setting might be a bit better.

Metering Mode – to let your camera better adjust the light levels

The auto setting for my camera is a matrix metering mode, where light information from the whole scene is used to determine the exposure of your photo. This can sometimes be problematic if the scene is too bright (as snow can often be) because your camera doesn’t know what you want to be the focus of your photograph. You can tell your camera to use a specific area of your photo to determine the exposure by using spot metering.

In the following three photos I tried out the three metering setting on my camera, Matrix, Center Weight and Spot:

Matrix Metering

 
Center Weight Metering                             Spot Metering

Here I think the Matrix Metering was the best. I suspect that Because it was overcast the snow wasn’t bright enough to make this manipulation worthwhile. It’s also worth noting that on my camera spot metering was the default in Aperture Priority mode so that probably accounts for why in my initial two photographs the one taken on the auto setting was a bit better.

Showing Off My New Skills

Exposure Bias +1, Auto White Balance

Exposure Bias +1, White Balance Cloudy

How to Make the Adjustments

The instructions below are specific to the Nikon D90. Your camera may use different controls – I recommend searching for your camera and the control you want to manipulate on http://www.dummies.com or looking in your manual if you need more specific instructions on the controls for your camera.

Original Nikon D90 Photos by Nikon

1. Adjusting the Exposure Bias
Hold down the Exposure Bias button (+/-) on the top of the camera and use the scroll wheel to choose the exposure bias you want. You will see the setting in the display window on the top of your camera.

2. Adjusting the White Balance
Hold down the White Balance Button (WB) on the back of the camera and use the scroll wheel to choose the white balance you want. You will see the setting in the display window on the top of your camera. On my camera the Automatic setting is and A, the flash setting is a lightening bolt and the Cloud setting looks like a dark cloud.

3. Adjusting the Metering Mode
Hold down the Metering Mode Button on the top of the camera and use the scroll wheel to select the mode you want. will see the setting in the display window on the top of your camera. The single point mode looks like a single dot, centering weight is a dot surrounded by parentheses and matrix mode looks like a dot with a border around it.

Sources used for this article:

http://www.geofflawrence.com/snow.html

http://www.shotaddict.com/tips/article_Main+Things+To+Know+About+Winter+Shooting.html

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-all-the-nikon-d90s-controls.html

Nikon D3200 From Snapshots to Great Shots by Rob Sylvan

Learning to Use my DSLR Camera

Practical SRL Photo Tutorials

I have a digital SLR camera. Actually we have two, a Nikon D90 and a Nikon D60. I don’t think I’m out of line to say that I take beautiful pictures. I am by no means a professional but at least sometimes I doubt that you’d be able to tell.

But I know very little about using my camera and I don’t think I’m alone here. I typically use my camera on the no flash setting and it’s basically a point and shoot. It works great. Which is one of the things that I love about this camera.

My consistency suffers though. I can take great pictures, but I can’t always do them every time I want to. I’m looking to up my photography game by learning more about what my camera can do and what to do to take the pictures I want to take – every time.

I’m generally going to start with the basics and move on from there and share my journey along the way. I know I’m going to learn a lot and hopefully you will too.

   

Do I Have Mommy Brain or is This Just Boring?

I’m no longer sure I know the difference. I’ll pick up a book that people are raving about, read a few pages and put it down. Do I just not like the book? Do I disagree with all the hype? Or have my kids just taken any cleverness I used to have along with uninterrupted sleep and time to myself?
It’s hard not to second guess myself. Maybe I should like this book. Maybe I’m just not trying hard enough.
But I just don’t want to read it.
Similar things occur in other areas of my life too. Sometimes just having a conversation can seem like more than I can handle. I can be desperately trying to pay attention to what someone is saying and before I know it, my mind has wandered and I have no idea what the person I am talking to just said. It’s making me have a lot of empathy for people with attentional difficulties. It’s not that my mind wandering hasn’t been a problem before, but it’s never been so pervasive or felt so out of my control.
So do I really have mommy brain? Before my kids, I used to be able to pay attention to things even if I didn’t find them inherently interesting. I’d consider myself smart even. And I do feel like I’ve lost some of that, but I’m pretty sure my kids are only indirectly responsible.

Reasons Why My Brain is Sludge

1. Lack of good sleep
Now that Gordie (3.5 years) has stopped napping I’m finding it even harder to catch up when I lose sleep. Sleeping in is not something I even understand the meaning of any more and I find it hard to go to bed as early as I should and forego the small amount of kid free time I get in the evenings.
2. Lack of uninterrupted time
It’s hard to concentrate on anything when your kids are taking half of your attention or when they are interrupting what you’re doing every five minutes. I hardly do anything without it being frequently interrupted, including simple things like folding a basket of laundry.
3. I just don’t care anymore
This one I don’t think is going to change with time. I read because it makes me happy. I love to read. I don’t have time to read a book that I’m not enjoying. I don’t feel the need to prove that I can read complicated books. I know I can, I’ve done it. And if I’m enjoying reading Young Adult novels right now, so what. They are fast paced, and gripping and I can read them in little snippets of time I have available with ease.
I definitely hope I regain the ability to have a have a conversation without my mind drifting. But as for the books, I’m not so sure. I may not be at my best, and that book may be great, but I reserve the right to decide it’s boring anyway.