Website Educational Tip for Language and Literacy Development

Language comprehension is one of the most important things in the lives of
young children by connecting and creating an emotional bond by means of
carrying on an ongoing dialogue with adult speech because “words are a
magnet for thinking and reasoning skills.”

Infants:
Planting a Rainbow
by Lois Ehlert is a colorful book about flowers to read to infants which
can help them understand words before they can start using
them in speech. Dr. Patricia Kuhl, a neuroscientist at the University of
Washington in Seattle stated that, “We now know that neural connections are
formed very early in life and that the infant’s brain is literally waiting
for experiences to determine how connections are made. Infants for example,
develop more rapidly with caretakers who are not only loving, but also talkative and responsive, which leads to the more verbal adults are,
the more they will increase children’s chances for success.”

Toddlers:
Eating the Alphabet: Fruits & Vegetables from A to Z
by Lois Ehlert also a colorful book about fruits and vegetables in the
garden. Talk to toddlers about what fruits and vegetables they had for
lunch or dinner, and connect them to the toddlers’ name such as Amy to
apples or apricots, Bobby to blueberries or bananas, Carol to carrots or
corn etc. Create a word wall with pictures drawn by the children of their
favorites.

Preschoolers:
Language of Flowers
bv Kate Greenaway or Odessa Begay. Theses books offer a list of well over
five hundred flowers and plants with their traditional meanings. They
express feelings and represent a specific mood or emotion. These too can be
connected to the children’s names. For example, Lily means purity or
sweetness,

Rose means happy or beauty, Jasmine means grace or elegance. The
preschoolers can create a garden with their favorite flowers connected to
their names. They can even make-up their own meanings for their names.

Susan Neuman, Carol Copple, and Sue Bredekamp in their book
Learning To Read And Write stated “In learning to read and write,
the role of children’s language skills and word knowledge cannot be
overestimated. Although children are ‘hard-wired’ to acquire language, they
require environments in which they experience language used in meaningful
contexts. The variety of language that children experience, as well as the
quantity, matters. And the ways people use language, at home and in early
childhood settings, also shape what each child brings to literacy
learning.”

FLOWERS ALWAYS MAKE PEOPLE BETTER, HAPPIER, AND MORE HELPFUL; THEY ARE SUNSHINE, FOOD, AND MEDICINE FOR THE SOUL.

(Luther Burbank)