Reading helps your baby develop her vocabulary as soon as she/he is born. Your baby’s brain is making associations with the words you read and the pictures you describe every time you read to her. To help her brain grow stronger, find books she really likes and read them over and over to give her a sense of continuity and connectivity between books and the meaning of words.

Children need to hear spoken words to make neurons connect.

As we shelter at home during COVID, let’s use the opportunity to help every child.

We need to get books into every home as soon as possible. We need to use a combination of appropriate childhood care and education and health services to help children prepare for kindergarten, increase school attendance, graduate high school, obtain a four-year degree, and enter the workforce with the skills they need to succeed to make us stronger as a country because we have so many successful people.

Let’s help our children, now.

Here are a few resources to obtain free books during COVID and after.

  1. Read Across America
  2. US Department of Education
  3. Read Conmigo
  4. Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

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