Caregivers and parents are being encouraged to incorporate language and literacy development in their child’s daily routine.
Learn and Lead Educational Centre has partnered with TCI Hospital to launch the ‘Literacy Begins at Birth’ project.
Every baby delivered at the Cheshire Hall Medical Centre and later Cockburn Town Medical Centre on Grand Turk, will receive literacy and language tips along with an early childhood board book, which parents are encouraged to read to their little ones.
A press conference was held at the Providenciales healthcare facility on Wednesday (June 14) to explain the initiative.
Yolande Robinson, founder of Learn and Lead Educational Centre, said that parents and caregivers should be more intentional and targeted in their literacy and language intervention during this critical period.
She said: “Children acquire the tools for language and literacy before learning how to speak, read and write.
“There is a higher likelihood of language improvement if a child is exposed to more vocabulary and utterances, which will improve both their receptive and expressive language over time.”
Commenting on the partnership, TCI Hospital chief of medical services, Dr Denise Braithwaite-Tennant said that a literate country is an empowered country.
“Even math problems start with a problem statement and one must clearly understand and comprehend the statement prior to attempting the numeric calculation.
“The majority of births delivered at our health care facility are recorded at Cheshire Hall Medical Centre.
“We have an immense opportunity to engage mothers in our care and provide these basic tools for literacy and language development.”
Braithwaite added that today’s world is so heavily dependent on electronics and the missing component is the human touch and the bi-directional conversation.
She said that mothers of all nationalities will be empowered by this book provided by Learn and Lead Educational Centre, which encourages children from birth to have an interest in reading, which today seems to be a lost art.
Staff at Learn and Lead Educational Centre believe that it is important for people to take a more proactive approach to language and literacy development in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Research worldwide outlines the need for quality early childhood home learning environments in order to help build stronger literacy foundations for children between birth and five years of age.
Children in the Turks and Caicos Islands typically begin formal education at the age of three.
The greatest amount of brain growth occurs between birth and age five.
In fact, by age three, roughly 85 percent of the brain’s core structure is formed.
Problems associated with literacy later in life are traced back to the earlier years of life in many cases.
