Hellobee Boards

Don't limit yourself to books. If you can't get reading in during the day, what about making word cards of common objects and sticking them onto the object? You could even put them on wooden skewers and stick them out in the yard.

Hmm... make it a scheduled activity to go to the library every weekend and return / get 10 (or however many) books? I find that it is much more interesting to read new things that we don't own. I love the library!

Before you go to the library you can also think about a topic your LOs want to learn about, and then go borrow books on topics about that. We learned about the different layers of rocks in the middle of the earth, how people make ice-cream in the past, and the anatomy of grizzly bears....etc. I just learned so much just reading books together with DS!

When you read, point at each and every word that you are reading too so your LO can follow.

I am so blessed that I never had to stress about reading and DS started reading when he was 3.5 if not earlier! Now at 4.5 he can really read simple books out aloud all by himself. For him he reads every single thing on the street, the caution signs on the product warning labels, names of buildings we drove by....

My kid just turned 3, and her attention span is tiny, even though she loves books. What helps us is having it be built in before bedtime - it's part of our routine and she's less distracted then. And also the big one is picking books based on their current interests because they're more likely to focus on the book/time. Right now anything to do with gardening, space and Daniel Tiger is in heavy rotation at our house.

I time us (me) to make sure I'm reading aloud enough each day. Then I write down how much and what we read.

I like audio books too. We don't drive a lot so the car doesn't work very well for us, but I'll turn one on during indoor play time.

I wouldn't worry too much about a child not (solely) focusing on the books. I discovered with the audio books that LO paid a lot more attention to them than I'd realized. It can be super frustrating to have a child who seems to not want to listen, but I think it's usually more that they don't want to sit down than that they don't want to listen. At least in my experience, they are happy to listen if they're also allowed to move around/do other stuff. In your case, I'd just take a book outside with you and read to them while they're on their tricycles in the driveway or blowing bubbles or drawing with chalk or whatever. I've done all that, too.