READING to a Child can help to eliminate the need by helping to prepare and foster children’s readiness to enter school. The fact is if children are not strong readers by 4th grade, they are more likely to drop out of school, be unemployed or underemployed, to end up on welfare or in prison.
Reading to a child from birth helps to stimulate their mind and creativity centers and begin language formation. The brain develops most rapidly during the first three years of life and 85% of the brain is developed by age 5. Research tells us that hours spent learning in infancy is more powerful than months learning in middle age.
The other startling fact is that children born into poverty without access to active learning pre-school opportunities tend to have significantly lower vocabulary and language development by the time they enter kindergarten – the difference is exponential – lower income children know approximately 4,000 words (unless engaged in a preschool learning environment) upon entering kindergarten versus 20,000 words for children who have been read to and where reading is a priority in the family.
My husband, Jeff teaches 3rd grade and can immediately predict how well a student will do in his classroom based on their ability and fluency with reading.
Our United Way has offered the Imagination Library program (a free book monthly from birth to age 5) for our community’s children since April 2005. Last month, we conducted an annual evaluation with kindergarten teachers and early childhood family education representatives. Indicators of early literacy readiness include things like: holding a pencil correctly, holding a book correctly, recognizing letters, differentiating lower and upper case letters, writing letters and even their name, making sense of a story, the size of their vocabulary, counting skills and showing respect for books and other property.
To quote one kindergarten teacher, “For story chooser, a lot of my students bring in Imagination Library books, and other kids shout out “I have that book too”. It allows them to have something in common, they love that”.
So on our journey to eliminate some of the needs in our community, our early childhood effort can make a difference in the current lives and aspirations of our youngest citizens.
