The booklets focus on how to promote children's listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in developmentally appropriate ways from birth through age five. One booklet is targeted for use by families and the second booklet for use by caregivers, including AmeriCorps members, Head Start teachers, family child care providers, Foster Grandparents, and others working with very young children in early childhood settings. The booklets will be disseminated by the Corporation this spring. These booklets support program initiatives that promote children's literacy development and parents in their role as their child's first teacher. A child's early learning experiences begin at home through interactions with parents and other family members as well as in the settings in which a young child is cared for by a child-care provider.
Young children make numerous language discoveries as they play, explore, and interact with others.
The critical link between these early discoveries and a child's future reading success is supported by research in the areas of brain development, emerging literacy, and the importance of quality early learning experiences. Emerging literacy is a term that describes the gradual, ongoing process of learning to use and understand language that begins at birth and continues through the early childhood years. During this period, children first learn to use oral forms of language in listening and speaking and then begin to explore and make sense of written forms reading and writing. There are numerous ways in which parents support a child's early literacy development. Studies have found that many children who are early readers were raised in literacy-rich home environments.