Talk To Your Baby
Talk To Your Baby, the early language campaign of the National Literacy Trust, has a wide range of free downloadable resources on its website.
The materials are designed to help professionals encourage parents and carers to talk more to children from birth to 3 years. Talking and listening to young children helps them develop good language, communication and social skills.
The resources can be defined under three broad headings – activity packs, discussion documents and information sheets.
Activity packs
These are flexible resources based on themes, which can be used in part or whole by professionals working with families and carers to encourage interaction and communication. They include:
- Baby’s First Word – a toolkit for collecting babies’ first words
- Communicate through music – an activity pack to promote the communication benefits of musical activities
- School resource kit – activities for key stage 4 teachers to convey the importance of early communication
- Share books and talk together – a kit to encourage communication through book sharing
- Talk To Your Baby quiz - a fact sheet and quiz to increase understanding of the benefits of early years communication.
Discussion documents
These provide a base from which to encourage further discussion on early years language issues, as well as facts and figures that may be useful to practitioners hoping to gain support or funding. They include:
- Discussion Paper – key findings and topics to stimulate discussion
- Early Language Advocacy Kit – evidence and arguments for campaigning
- Long-term impact of early speech, language and communication difficulties – a research review.
Information sheets
There are several information sheets available, all of which are designed to encourage communication and interaction with babies and young children. They include:
- Quick tips – easy-to-use tips for parents covering eight topics and available in ten languages
- Communicate with your grandchild – advice and tips for grandparents
- Parent’s guide to television – how to make television beneficial for young children
- Strengthening the bond – advice for parents or carers who want to enhance a bond with their child
- Talk To Me – an information sheet written with young parents in mind
- Talk To Your Baby leaflet – a two-page leaflet on the benefits of talking to pre-schoolers, with advice on how to help toddlers become talkers
- Talk To Your Baby poster – an A4 colour poster/flyer promoting the benefits of communicating with young children.