Early Literacy for infants and young children.

1. BUBBLES TO BOOKS
Family Literacy With Infants and Toddlers

2. Parents
want their
children to
succeed in
school.
They want
their
children to
develop
strong
literacy
skills. Let’s
help them
understand
how this
develops in
infants and
toddlers.

3. ACTIVITY/ DISCUSSION 1
 Bring out the apples you purchased at the grocery
store.
 Have available a paring knife and paper towel.
 Pretend that you have never seen an apple before.
 Explore the apple in all the ways that occur to you to do.
 In Discussion 1 on Moodle,
 List all of the characteristics of the apple that you were
able to learn.
 Post additional characteristics on at least 2 other
discussion posts.

4. ACTIVITY/DISCUSSION 2
 Explore the toy apples
 Post on your discussion entry the characteristics
you could no longer identify if you were only using
pretend apples.

5. ACTIVITY/DISCUSSION 3
 Looking at this
photo, what
characteristics of an
apple must you cross
out if this is your only
source of information.

6.  Children learn first through real life experiences
 If this were your first exposure to an apple, what would
you know about an apple?
 Infant and Toddler Literacy activities must be based on
real life experiences.
 Symbolic reasoning is developed as we learn that symbols
(pictures or letters that mean words) stand for real things –
nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc)
 Children’s first literacy experiences are important.
 Children’s literacy has a strong link to their family’s literacy
experiences.

7. WHAT IS THE
”FAMILY LITERACY INITIATIVE ?”
 Work with at-risk families
 Have broad goals
 Offer multifaceted services that meet
educational and other-than educational need of
both parents and children
 Provide intensive, long term program services
 www.familylit.org

8. WHY IS MOTHER’S LITERACY
IMPORTANT TO INFANTS AND
TODDLERS?
 66% of children under age six whose
parents did not complete high school live in
poverty
 23% of the 191 million adults in this country
demonstrated skills in the lowest level of
prose, document, and quantitative
proficiencies
 Early deprivation stacks the deck against
poor children and families. They more
often suffer poor health and later
academic failure

9. The most powerful
predictors of
children’s academic
success are the
educational
achievement and
socio-economic level
of their parents.
The mother’s
education is
particularly
important.

10. WHAT CAN INFANT CARE TEACHERS DO TO
ENCOURAGE MOTHERS AND OTHER ADULTS’
LITERACY RELATIONSHIPS TO INFANTS
AND TODDLERS?
 In your assigned groups, in the assigned wiki,
create a list of ideas that you can do in your family
child care home or you center.

11. WHAT ABOUT
FAMILIES FOR WHOM
ENGLISH IS NOT
THEIR FIRST
LANGUAGE?
THERE ARE MANY BOOKS
FOR CHILDREN AVAILABLE
IN SPANISH. WHAT IF THE
CHILDREN YOU SERVE SPEAK
OTHER LANGUAGES IN THE
HOME?

12. WHAT ABOUT ADULTS WHO ARE NOT
COMFORTABLE WITH THEIR OWN LITERACY
LEVEL?
Simple books, with stories that can be made up, with content
that is interesting to the adults

13. WHAT ARE “PRELITERACY”ACTIVITIES?
 Support the development of
the Concept of Symbolism
 Introduce real objects
 Introduce books
 What is to the left of this
text?
 If you answered “a Dog” you
were not correct. It is a
photograph!
 As an adult, you have made the
automatic transition from the
real thing (dog) to the picture of
the dog. This is what literacy is
all about.

14. EMERGENT LITERACY SKILLS
 Book Handling Behaviors
 Touching, chewing, turning pages, front to back turning of
pages
 Looking and Recognition
 Looking at pages
 Showing signs of recognition – pointing, making a
sound, early word efforts
 Picture and Story Comprehension
 Growing awareness of the symbols of pictures and words
to create meaning
 Story Reading Behaviors
 Sitting and turning pages of a book, with or without
meaning.
How will you foster these behaviors in your family child care
home, center classroom, or during your home visit?

15. LITERACY DEVELOPMENT OVERVIEW
Developing Oral Modeling Literacy
Language Skills
Developing a Sense of
Using Decontextualized
Story
Language
Constructing & Testing Using Literacy
Hypotheses Tools
Reading & Writing
Are all of these elements present in your home or classroom?

17. Books
 Opportunities to handle books
 Opportunities to cuddle with
an adult and look at special
books
Songs and Fingerplays
 Repetitive rhyming and songs
 Active fingerplays

18. RESOURCES FOR SONGS AND FINGERPLAY
 http://www.sqedunk.com/FingerPlays/Nursery-
Rhymes.htm
 http://www.educationoasis.com/curriculum/Music_M
ovement/fingerplays_actionverses.htm
 http://www.preschoolrainbow.org/preschool-
rhymes.htm

19. Hands-on activities
 Mommy is at work
 What does that mean?
 What does it look like?
 Does she still think of
me?
 What is at the zoo?
Park? Store?

20. Crawling
 Oppositional
movement
activities, support
later literacy skills,
http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=212

21. INFANTS ENJOY
 Nursery rhymes and finger plays
 Use rhythm and rhyme to captivate & charm
infants
 Made up stories about objects
 Made up tales can be very simple
 Songs that tell stories
 Stories with sounds, gestures, and facial
expressions
 Have fun with your voice & enjoy the telling –
infants will responds to your changing voice and
enthusiasm

22. Left to right
concepts
 When putting
things in a row,
place left to right
 Trace the words on
the page when
reading
**If the home language writes in a
left to right, front to back format

23. Front to back
concepts
 Talk about starting
at the title pages in
the front, and
finishing at the
end, at the back

24. Be awarene of child’s
home language,
potential
differences in
literacy in family
members

25.  Nursery rhymes
 Bring out the story line – tell a nursery rhyme
like a story
 Stories about themselves
 Invite them to join you in telling – include
actions or repeated lines that they can say with
you
 Familiar Tales
 (like the Three Bears)
 Storiesthey can join in or act out (like the
Itsy Bitsy Spider
 Keep it short

26. •Books that reflect the
child’s own experiences
•Books that honor and
observe the diversity
the child will
experience
•Books that can be
touched and chewed
•Books that are
beautiful

27. What do these book pages represent? If you were a child, what would
interest you about them?

28. LIST/ACTIVITY
 Think of your favorite books as a child
 Think of the books you like to read to children now
 What are the characteristics of the books?
 Why do you like them?
 On Discussion 2
 Make a recommendation of 3 of your favorite children’s
books, and why

29. STORYTELLING: ENHANCING RESILIENCY
 Fosters a sense of inner strength
 Creates a positive connection with others
 Identifies with traditions
 Exercises the imagination
 Provides a means to plan for the future
 Encourages laughter, ability to laugh at self
 Enhances good problem solving skills

30. NATIONAL CENTER FOR FAMILY LITERACY
WEBSITE – RESOURCE

31. REFLECTION FOR YOUR JOURNAL ENTRY
 Was there an “aha” moment during this
presentation/activities/discussion?
 Something that was new and will make a difference in
how you think about books an literacy
 Something that reinforced a belief or value?
 What actions will you take as a result of this
information?