Engaging in Early Language and Literacy Activities: Infancy
Submitted by Dr. Noëlla Piquette noella.piquette@uleth.ca noellapiquette.consulting@gmail.com
Noëlla is a Professor in Education and Registered Psychologist.
This is the beginning of your child’s literacy journey. It is important for parents, siblings, and caregivers to provide the infant with daily conversation like communication. Your baby needs to hear language, hear various intonations in the voices, and see facial expressions that accompany the language. All of these factors support the infant’s language development. Your baby will benefit from repeatedly hearing the names of the people and the labels for the objects and activities that are encountered throughout the day. Try to incorporate 5 to 6 of these types of activities everyday to support literacy and a caring connection with your infant.
Remember to SEE as you engage in activities with your baby.
S - see how your baby responds to your voice. Notice the sounds and activities your baby enjoys. Listen to the sounds your baby is making; cooing, babbling, and crying. Observe your infant and change the activity when the baby is no longer interested in the activity.
E - engage your baby in talk and play. Respond to your baby’s cooing and babbling. Provide your infant with age appropriate soft toys and rattles to grasp. While your infant is playing with the toy, engage in conversation that supports and encourages the play.
E - extend the baby’s play experience or conversation. Use the infant’s present play activity to extend to the vocabulary you use with your baby. Introduce new toy and activities that will assist in the extension of the language you use with your infant.
Activities for Infants
Oral language with your infant
· Hold your baby close and talk face to face. Your baby will learn to recognize you by seeing your face and hearing your voice. Your infant will also begin to use your facial expressions and intonation to understand your messages.
· Initially infants cannot communicate their specific message; it is the caregiver who must interpret the sounds and gestures. When responding to the infant’s cries, talk to the infant using words to describe your understanding of the message. “Daddy thinks you are hungry. Would you like some milk?”
· Imitate the sounds your baby makes. Respond to the infant’s sounds and actions by smiling and talking so your baby knows you are listening.
· Infants will begin conversation like behaviour. This is indicated when the infant stops making sounds and listens to the caregiver’s voice. Take your lead from the baby and continue the conversation.
· Repeat single words frequently. Vocabulary is learned through repeated encounters with the words. At this stage in development, the infant learns through hearing the word and by seeing the persons or objects; “Here is your rattle. Can you hold your rattle? You shook the rattle.” The infant is seeing the object and hearing the target word embedded in a meaningful statement.
· Respond to the infant’s language. If the infant says “ba”, respond with “Ball, you want the ball?” Using your infant’s approximation for the word helps your baby understand language is used for communication. When you use the word in the response, you are providing your infant with contextual information, which supports the vocabulary development.
Reading with your infant
· Create a comfortable and inviting environment for book reading. Demonstrate your enthusiasm for reading through your facial expressions, intonations, and the conversation you have regarding the reading experience.
· Read books out loud. Hold your infant so the book can be seen by both of you. Talk about the pictures; name the objects that are depicted in the illustrations, use descriptive words such as colours, actions, and emotions. For example, “The blue balloon is floating away. The boy looks sad.”
· While you are reading, respond to your baby’s sounds, gestures, and facial expressions. These are your baby’s way of communicating the child’s interest or disinterest in the activity. If your infant becomes disinterested, follow the baby’s lead and discontinue the reading activity. The goal is to have your infant find book experiences to be pleasurable.
· Encourage your infant to track with its eyes. Tracking activities will help your infant with eye movements such as those used while reading and writing. Draw the baby’s attention to an item such as a colourful toy. Slowly move the object, watching the movement of the infant’s eyes as the object is moved. While the two of you are engaged in the activity, talk to your baby; “Look at the yellow duck. Follow the duck with your eyes. “
· Encourage your baby to look at, touch, and hold a variety of books; board books, cloth books, plastic books. Provide these books within a variety of locations throughout the home, car, and in your travel “diaper” bags.
Singing with your infant
· Sing to your baby every day. Include in your repertoire lullabies, simple nursery rhymes, and songs you remember from your childhood. The musical sounds, words and rhythms help with the development of the infant’s vocabulary. Include recorded infant lullabies, nursery rhymes, and young children’s songs.
· Make up songs and chants that describe what you are doing; This is the way I sweep the floor, sweep the floor; sing chants such as “Rise and shine” as you take your infant out of the crib. The message of the lyrics, supported with the musical sound of your voice, will foster the baby’s understanding of the use of language to convey meaning.
· Dance with your infant as you sing and/or listen to music. Moving to the rhythm of the music and hearing the words will provide your infant with multisensory language experiences.
Pre-writing with your infant
· Provide the baby with a variety of objects to grasp. Some suggestions are: soft baby toys, rattles, blocks, finger foods such as Cheerios, wooden puzzle pieces. Encouraging your child to grasp objects will strengthen the infant’s control over the hand and finger muscles, as well as develop eye-hand coordination.
· Encourage the transference of an object from hand to hand. As you give your infant toys to hold, vary the hand to which you offer the toy. By doing this, the infant is developing the muscles in both hands, and will also be developing eye-hand coordination as the object is moved from one hand to another.
Including culturally specific language with your infant
· Babies will benefit from hearing the sounds of their traditional language while learning more about their ethnic or racial background. During daily routines and play, use the labels for body parts, traditional names for the members of the family (i.e. Kookum, Baba), tell folktales, and sing and move to traditional songs.
· If available, listen to recorded stories, songs and drum songs.
· Hold your baby and dance the traditional dances.
· Read books that are written in your language and talk about the pictures, story events and characters.
Summary
Long before a child ever sees a word on the page or on a road sign, there will be exposure to thousands and thousands of words, spoken words heard by an infant. Learning new words starts early through the repetition of the names of colors, animals, relatives, and things around the house. A child might pick up some words you use at work, just by hearing you talk. Your infant and young child will learn a lot of new words from being engaged in play, reading a shared book, watching programs together on television, listening to music, and going on trips to the grocery store, the zoo, a walk in the park, and so forth. Children will learn most words by hearing them when engaged with the activity and hearing the word repeated until they are able to saying the word themselves. It is important for children to know a large number of words as an extensive vocabulary is critical when a child starts to talk and then read.
Starting at infancy, parents and caregivers model the pleasure that reading and writing bring by making time to read with their child, engaging in conversations about the text and the illustrations, providing materials and opportunities to write and in celebrating the joy that each literacy encounter brings. Parents and caregivers play a vital role in providing language rich experiences which reinforce previous learning, introduce and engage the child in new learning, and provide a basis for extending the knowledge into future learning. When the experiences take place in positive and nurturing ways, not only is the child’s knowledge expanding, but literacy and learning are viewed positively by the child, creating a desire to become engaged in more language and literacy activities.
Further Resources
https://www.zerotothree.org/resources/1281-supporting-language-and-literacy-skills-from-0-12-months
http://earlyliteracycounts.blogspot.com/2010/08/50-literacy-activities-for-babies.html
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/activities-encourage-your-baby
References
American Academy of Pediatrics. (2017). Reading with children starting in infancy gives lasting literacy boost. AAP News & Journals Gateway. www.aappublications.org/news/2017/05/04/PASLiteracy050417.
Carroll, J. M., Holliman, A. J., Weir, F., and Baroody, A. E. (2019). Literacy interest, home literacy environment and emergent literacy skills in preschoolers. Journal of Research in Reading.42, 150–161. doi: 10.1111/1467-9817.12255
Zuckerman. B. (2010). Promoting early literacy in pediatric practice: Twenty years of reach out and read. Pediatrics, 124: 1660-1665.
Photo credit: Pixabay, https://www.babybonus.msf.gov.sg/parentingresources/web/Newborn/NewbornDevelopment/NewbornLanguage_Development