Giving babies an abundance of words, right from the start!
A partnership project of:
Family Reading Partnership
Community Organizations and Businesses
Funded by Park Foundation
Programs Included in the Every Baby! Every Day! Initiative
- Waiting for Baby
- Welcome Baby
- Books to Grow On
- Read-Along Love Songs for Baby: a set of board books and a CD of the books being read and sung is given to families through area agencies
- Shop for Words Pilot Program: cards are available at select groceries that encourage talking to children while shopping
- Changing Table Chats: posters with playful rhymes are hung above diaper changing tables in public restrooms to encourage talking with babies
Resources
- Give Your Baby Words extensive list of language-rich ways to interact with babies
- Talk Sing Read Play card brief list for language-rich ways to interact with babies
- Every Baby! Every Day! Poster: Hang this poster in your home or workplace to show that you support reading to babies!
- Baby Read-Aloud Stages What to expect when you read aloud to a baby from birth to 24 months from the book “Baby Read-Aloud Basics” by Caroline Blakemore and Barbara Weston Ramirez
Project Background
This initiative, launched in January 2014, is dedicated to babies as the starting place in for a family to create a language-rich environment. We want to ensure that every single baby born in Tompkins County, NY experiences talking, singing, reading, and playing every day, beginning at birth or even before, so all babies in our community are surrounded with loving words and stories.
Why Babies?
The special time of a baby’s birth is one of great opportunity and optimism, when no achievement gap yet exists and families are motivated to create a bright future for their babies.
Language and literacy development begins at birth, in the home. Babies’ language and literacy development is completely dependent upon hearing words through social interactions with the people in their lives.
During the first two months, a baby’s brain develops at a rate unequaled at any other point in life, creating neural networks that are essential to the development of language and literacy. This is a crucial time for exposing babies to an abundance of words through talking, singing, reading aloud, and playful engagement.
In the first months of life, before baby becomes mobile, and while he or she is a most attentive audience, families will have their best success building language and literacy habits and routines into everyday life.
Our Comprehensive Approach
We give support and inspire families with babies and those who work with them, to give babies a “diet high in words,” which includes giving additional books and resources to families who need it most. We encourage all community members to join us surrounding every baby, every day, with talking, singing, reading, and playing! Every Baby Every Day Vision Statement
Share this Page