One of our favorite storytime mom’s once said:
The first baby got Sally, the second baby got the library, the third baby got the grocery store.
And those are all steps in the journey to early literacy.
The first program with Sally gave parents the skills to begin building a portable and practical collection of rhymes and songs to carry around in their head, ready to use at a moment’s notice to play on baby’s fingers, toes, face and tummy. Because it was an “oral language” repertoire, parents weren’t limited to where and when they could play. They learned they could soothe or entertain, day or night, at home or on the go, because they had filled their heads with rhymes and songs.
Attendance over several weeks of the program, together with weekly repetition, helped the material to stick. Parents learned different ways to play this material and how to include it at every step of their day with baby, all the while making connections, enriching daily activities, and building the foundation of early literacy. And most important – playing rhymes and songs adds fun and laughter to your day.
Because baby rhymes are mainly played with close contact and face-to-face with your baby, your baby tunes into facial expressions and the sounds of the voice modulating. We nurture early literacy simply through oral language play.
Many library programs focus on books and help the parent explore and experience a wide range of material, during the program and to take home. Sharing a book with baby is a close and nurturing experience. Together you look at the book and talk about what you see. The parent with the child in their lap become immersed together in the lap of the book.
Dorothy Butler, New Zealand author and bookseller, sums it up in Babies Need Books, published in 1980 by Penguin Books:
“It is my belief that there is no ‘parents’ aid’ which can compare with the book in its capacity to establish and maintain a relationship with a child. Its effects extend far beyond the covers of the actual book, and invade every aspect of life. Parents and children who share books come to share the same frame of reference. Incidents in everyday life constantly remind one or the other – or both simultaneously – of a situation, a character, an action, from a jointly enjoyed book, with all the generation of warmth and well-being that is attendant upon such sharing.”
The grocery store can be a delightful experience with a young baby as you point out all the different images as you go up and down the aisles. It’s a perfect opportunity to play the rhymes and tickles that you learned at Sally’s program, and also make a connection with books that you have shared at the library. We call this “bringing rhymes and stories into everyday life.”
And what does all this lead to? Does it really support early literacy?
One of my favourite examples comes from my first granddaughter, at age 4. We lost sight of her in a small bookstore on Kingston Road. She didn’t respond when we called her name, because she was sitting on the floor in a corner of shelves, immersed in her book – at four years old.
Now nearly 18, she’s the poet laureate of her high school and preparing to study biology at university.
A flower grows like this.
A tree grows like this.
And I grow just like that!
One of my colleagues said, “We plant the seeds, no one else may water the ground for a long time, but when they do, the seed is ready to grow.”
This is why planting the seeds, using rhymes and songs, tickles and lullabies with the youngest babies is so vital. To paraphrase Robert Frost, We want children to fall in love with language so they will use it.
It can happen, and to you!