Sharing stories and rhymes online with my baby daughter

Mum Fran tells us about enjoying interactive activities on our website with her baby daughter

Over the past few days, my one-year-old daughter Marian and I have been enjoying the Bookstart website.

We were given our first Bookstart pack when we went to Marian's one-year check up with the health visitors, and aside from including two books, Elmer's Weather by David McKee and Peepo Baby! by Georgie Birkett, the pack came with a £1 book voucher and some leaflets about games on the Bookstart website. Score!

We've not yet had chance to go to a bookshop to spend her voucher, but we have been spending a lot of time online, singing along with the rhymes on the website and playing the various games available.

Owl Babies by Martin Waddell is just one of the interactive stories to share with your little one on the Bookstart site

'The Bookstart website and Cbeebies are magical ways to engage tiny people'

I passionately believe that, supervised, the web is an incredible teaching tool.

Sites like Bookstart and CBeebies are magical ways to engage tiny people for longer than two minutes, help them begin interacting with computers - something which will be increasingly important as they start school - and are a great tool for teaching things like counting, hand-eye-coordination and the alphabet. The CBeebies podcasts are especially good, providing interactive stories for children to join in with.

Learning by doing is much more fun – the Bookstart site is a brilliant supplement to reading to home The good thing with the computer over the television is that it encourages participation, rather than simple absorption. I'm sure other people who were taught the old-school (pun intended) way where you were forced to learn by rote will agree that learning by doing is much more fun.

I'm not suggesting that the Bookstart site is a wonderful babysitter - it only really works if you're there with your child anyway - nor is it a replacement for a bedtime story. However, it is a brilliant supplement to reading at home and can help to give mums and dads a good idea of the sort of things to highlight when reading, and the sort of questions to ask when the book is finished.

A version of this article was originally published on Fran's blog, Cry Mamma

Have you enjoyed the games on our website? Which ones have you and your child enjoyed? Let us know in the comments below.