Infants (6 weeks-15 months)

It is never too early to consider your child’s literacy development. The first few months and years

(specifically the first three years) of a child’s life is when their very early reading skill are beginning to develop.

During the early stages of infancy infants learn to:

- Discern their individuality from others around them.

- They also learn to recognized familiar object and people around them.

- Their language skills begin to develop. Even the simple act of speaking to your infant and looking

into their eyes can help to develop their language skills.

The foundation of early literacy skills is established through life moments with your infant such as:

- reading books together

- talking

- laughing

- playing.

Infants learn language best when you simply talk to them and let them communicate back to you.

The major goal at this age is to begin to instill a love and interest in reading. The infographic on this page

specifically describes what infants enjoy in books.

Recent studies have shown that the process of learning spoke and written language begins in very early infancy. Below is

an infographic that describes what we do know about early literacy.

There are many strategies that you can implement in your reading routines with your infant. A few strategies you

could try are the following: talking or singing about the pictures inside of the book, let your child interact by turning the pages,

show children the words even though they cannot yet read them, make book reading a part of your daily

(or nightly) routine.