Thursday, January 9, 2014

Enhance Language Development – Looking at Books & Turning Pages


Get those families READING! Support learning experiences at home:Loan a familiar book to an infant’s family. Copy and paste the following information into a document and send it home as well to encourage and facilitate reading at home.


Language Development
Young infants are born with many communication skills, abilities and responses.
They cry to communicate pain or distress. Soon they smile and coo, respond to voices and watch facial expressions. Within a few months they use all types of sounds, listen to conversations and begin to recognize the names of familiar people and things.
By knowing these special things about young infants, families and caregivers can better understand how to promote their language development.
When families and other caregivers help young infants learn to communicate the young infants use their inborn abilities to begin to express needs and wants without using words. Young infants respond to verbal and nonverbal social interactions with others. Young infants begin to imitate the sounds they hear when they are talked to and sung to.

Activity
Before you begin:
Turn off distractions such as the TV or CD player.
Hold your baby on your lap, holding the book so she can see it.
Remember to notice what your baby is looking at, listen to any sounds the baby makes and use clear descriptive words to describe what is on the pages. “Look, Listen, and Say!”
Try this nurturing ritual!
Observe the infant’s interest in the book. Offer to read the book by asking, for example,
“Laurie, would you like to read the book?” “We can read together.”
Read the book if she shows interest. If she doesn’t show interest, just watch and wait a little while.
Show her the pictures. Name and point to each object on the page.
Make comments about the pictures and make the animal sounds. Listen for a response. Respond to any babbling sounds or gestures. For example say, “Laurie, that’s a cat. A cat says ‘meow’.” Pause. “It’s a big yellow cat.”
Watch what your child does with the book. Let her handle and explore it. It’s okay for young infants to mouth books just as they do other toys and objects.
Encourage the infant to continue repeating the behavior. You might say, for example, “Laurie, you touched the cat. Daddy will touch the cat too.”
Continue the activity as long as both you and your child are interested. Even if the baby is not yet responding with sounds or gestures, if he is calm and relaxed and occasionally looking toward you or the book he is learning from the experience.



From the Arkansas Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education



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