Personally, beyond providing the basics like food to eat, shelter, clean clothes, and being emotionally responsive, I think the best think you can do with little kids is read to them. And you can read them literally anything.<p>When my first baby was little and I was doing my first degree, sometimes I didn’t have the energy to read children’s books on top of my study stuff, so sometimes I read my baby textbooks and journal articles so I could kill two birds with one stone (bedtime stories & study). With the first son, I did this from about 8month - 3 years, and second son just joined in on that action at birth until about 1year. When the older one started wanting actual children’s stories, I had to buy some children’s books. We went mostly for Dr Seuss, partly they were also the cheapest books I could get.<p>Ultimately, I don’t think it matters what I read a child that small, I think it was the act of reading with them, and them hearing the language as well.
People always used to comment that both my children had amazing vocabularies for their ages when they were little. I like to think it’s because they got stories like “Human anatomy and Physiology” “Human development through the lifespan” and journal articles, and other really dry, but informative texts.