Why a Need for Lapsits for Early Literacy?
Cuddly family times with stories, rhymes, or songs from childhood nurture a child’s desire to read. These repeated family interactions introduce a little one to the joy of what books can impart in knowledge and in fun. Simultaneously, frequent dialogues with parents about books begin to build the pre-reading skills a very young child needs to grow into reading.
What the Research Indicates
Language pathways started in one month olds lead to readers at age five, but
literacy is a family legacy. Sadly, at-risk parents can repeat intergenerational
cycles of under-education.
- Brain research shows the first three years of life are the critical ones for language development.
- Too many disadvantaged 4 year olds suffer from “word poverty.”
- They don’t hear very many words daily (600 words compared to 2,150 in professional families) and much of the feedback they hear is negative. Hart and Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American Children,(1995)
- Only 36% of low-income parents read daily to their preschoolers, National Institute for Literacy, (2003)
- Low in-come children may enter first grade with as few as 25 hours of one-on-one book sharing with an adult. Neuman and Celano, Reading Research Quarterly, (2001)
- Vocabulary size at age 48 months
is strongly predictive of reading and language performance on tests of
1st and 11th graders. Juel and Deffes Educational Leadership (2004)