Early Literacy Tip: Sing to Your Child

What children need to know about reading and writing before they can read or write is called early literacy.

As your child’s caregiver, you are their first teacher. The greatest amount of brain growth occurs between birth and age five, a time your child spends with you. By age three, 85% of the brain’s core structure is formed. As a child ages, the brain gets rid of weaker synaptic connections in favor of stronger ones. We can improve the strength of synaptic connections with experiences that reinforce learning that has already occurred.

In our Building Blocks to Early Literacy series, we will share early literacy tips for you to do at home to help your child get ready to learn to read.

Today’s Early Literacy Tip is to sing to your child!

Singing to your child helps encourage speech development and is a great way to build your child’s vocabulary as they are able to remember songs better and longer than what they read.

Children absolutely love being sung to and hearing the voices of people they love, so it doesn’t matter what you sound like, your child is going to enjoy it and so will you.

Singing helps develop a child’s listening skills and slows down language for them. It lets them experience the different sounds that make words and how they are alike and different.

You can sing songs from our storytimes or whatever song happens to be going through your head, and you can do it anywhere! You can sing to your child at home, in the car, when they are eating or when you are playing together. Just sing!

Some authors and singers to help you when singing to your child. Many of these can be found online with a simple Google search or using our Libby app at the library.

– Jim Gill YouTube Channel
– Rachel Isadora
– Claudia Rueda
– Raffi YouTube Channel
– James Dean (Pete the Cat series)
– Hap Palmer YouTube Channel
– Will Hillenbrand
– Caspar BabyPants YouTube Channel