We've created a 8.5x14 4-fold brochure with examples, suggestions, and encouragement for parents learning why it's important to interact with babies during the first years of life. We hope that this will help you explain this to others. Please feel free to download and reproduce this to help spread the word. Please do not alter these documents in any way.
Foundation for Learning is Built Upon Reading
June 11, 2012
There is much that parents can do to provide the greatest opportunities for their son or daughter right from birth. In Memphis, many of our children are already at a disadvantage in learning before they even step through the schoolroom door. Only 42 percent of our city's children arrive at kindergarten prepared to learn. And studies show that when a child starts behind, he will probably stay behind.
Make Time for Story Time
May 4, 2012
Everyone is familiar with the "three Rs": Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. This phrase has long been used to describe the essential components of education – the three skill areas that all subsequent learning is built upon. But there is another phrase that we wish were just as familiar: Touch, Talk, Read, Play, or TTRP. These represent the most important activities that parents share with their babies and toddlers, and when it comes to learning, they are just as important as the three Rs.
Language can Break Cycle of Poverty
December 12, 2011
To break the cycle of poverty in Memphis, we must support programs that help children develop language skills in their first three years. According to the 2011 Data Book published by The Urban Child Institute, 40 percent of children in Memphis live in poverty, compared with 20 percent nationally. These children are at risk of remaining in poverty unless they receive help developing the language skills they need to succeed academically and cope with difficult emotions.
Imagination Library Designed to Build Family Literacy and School Readiness
September 21, 2010
When parents read to young children, when they themselves are readers, and when children learn the joys of reading with their parents, those children are more likely to develop rich vocabularies at an early age.
