Repeat favourite songs, stories, rhymes or fingerplays on a regular basis when interacting with your baby. Parlakian, R., & Lerner, C. (2010). Beyond Twinkle, Twinkle: Using Music with Infants and Toddlers. Young Children, 65(2), 14–19. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ898687&site=ehost-live Dunst, C. J., Meter, D., & Hamby, D. W. (2011). Relationship between young children’s nursery rhyme experiences and knowledge and phonological and print-related skills. CELL Review, 4(1), 1–12. Zero to Three’s Critical Competencies for Infant–Toddler Educators (2016). Retrieved from: https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/jul2019/reading-with-babies-matters
Playing music during playtime gives children easy access into practicing language and deciphering meaning. Singing songs with infants and toddlers develops their dual language learning, receptive and expressive skills and phonemic awareness.
To become strong readers, children first need a strong foundation of oral language. Phonological awareness is an important part of this foundation. They need to understand that spoken words are composed of different sounds or phonemes. Exposure to rhyming is an excellent strategy to help children develop phonological (sound) awareness.
Large crayons and paper lend support to early attempts at writing and drawing.
A Growing Up Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO) cohort study of families of 525 children in Singapore found that if parents started to read to children and expose them to literacy-related activities (for example, read to them, talked about books and took them to the library) before they were 12 months old, children were more inclined to be interested to engage in literacy-related activities after they were 12 months old.