Unicef conceptualizes school readiness in this way, “children’s readiness for school; schools’ readiness for children; and families’ and communities’ readiness for school.” This framework highlights that families and communities play a big role in children’s school readiness. As Head Start tells us, “children with supportive home learning environments show increased literacy development, better peer interactions, fewer behavior problems, and more motivation and persistence during learning activities.” Parents need to be empowered with tools to support children’s learning at home and need to feel connected to and supported by the local educational community. When children are enrolled in early care programs, teachers can boost parent involvement by sharing meaningful information with families, sending home bilingual learning materials and books to Spanish speaking homes, and requesting and listening to parent feedback. Preschool programs can work to incorporate home visits, parent education, and community outreach in their curriculum. With these strategies, children will arrive at school with increased and vital readiness, confidence, and support.

The local education community also has to strive to be accessible to all families and has to provide high-quality early education in reading, math, and social skills. The Public Policy Institute of California shares that “the children of immigrant parents constitute a large subset of disadvantaged children, and of special concern are linguistically isolated children, that is, children who encounter little or no English in their homes.” They also inform us that children of immigrants make up around half of the preschool aged children in California, of which about 20 percent are in the linguistically isolated subset, and that only one-third of this subset participates in center based preschool care programs. Ensuring that disadvantaged children have increased access to these programs through targeted enrollment initiatives can be a powerful step forward in boosting school readiness for this population. School readiness makes the transition to school less traumatic for the child and family and gives students a strong foundation on which to build their educational future.

Lectura Books has exceptional bilingual children’s books for Infant & Toddler and Preschool ages that will encourage Spanish and English speaking parents to read to their young children. This can be a useful tool to help children to be ready for elementary school.

The post The Importance of School Readiness appeared first on The Latino Family Literacy Project.

Through their home-based research, Hart and Risley made two important discoveries. Not only was there a wide discrepancy in the number of words, there also was a wide qualitative difference in what was said. They found that higher-income families provided their children with many more words of praise compared to lower-income children. Here at Lectura Books, we refer to this as the Praise Gap.

In 2009, Dana Suskind, a pediatric surgeon in Chicago, founded the Thirty Million Words Initiative (TMW). Her goal is to close the word gap. By working with the Chicago Public Library and the local Children’s Museum, Suskind’s TMW is creating enriched learning environments to address the problem.

About two years ago, Katherine Del Monte, the publisher of Lectura Books, heard about the 30-million word gap and the praise gap. She decided to help address it—especially for Latino parents and their babies—by publishing a collection of bilingual books called Baby Talk Board Book Series. The goal of the five-book collection is to encourage parents to talk to their babies and in the process begin to close the word gap and the praise gap.

The Baby Talk Board Book Series has fun images for infants and toddlers, and engaging facts to hold the interest of the parents. These books are designed to have parents read them with their children. The positive and enjoyable aspects of the books and the eye-catching illustrations will lead to more positive interactions between parent and baby.

You can learn more about the Baby Talk Bilingual Board Books at www.Lecturabooks.com

The post A New Book Collection that Addresses the Word Gap and the Praise Gap appeared first on The Latino Family Literacy Project.