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.

Fingerplays also help children develop muscle strength and coordination in their fingers, which helps them learn to write and draw later.

Children’s concrete sources of first print are symbols, object names and words on cereal boxes, clothing labels and toy packages. From this, children learn about symbols, letters and words that they can then transfer to the abstract. Adults teach children important concepts about print, including left to right and top to bottom directionality,

that spaces appear between words and that a single letter can be a word.

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4. Lawhon T. (2000). Creating language and print awareness environments for young children. Contemporary Education.;71(3):5.