The Alabama Partnership for Children is partnering with the Georgia Department of Public Health to bring the expertise and resources of the Talk With Me BabyTM initiative to the state of Alabama, and the Feed Me Words campaign will spread public awareness of these resources, as well as the importance of intentional early language and literacy activities for all children.
“Language nutrition” refers to rich language interactions between caregivers and infants and is critical for a child’s socio-emotional and vocabulary development. Remarkably, vocabulary at the age of three is the single strongest predictor of a child’s future literacy and educational success, which has important implications for health and economic outcomes.
Talk With Me Baby resources provide both visual and written cues, and bright, positive, baby-friendly designs to help bring the message of language nutrition to all families. Talk With Me Baby is reaching caregivers through a variety of media sources and touch points, like print media and resources, digital media, social media, and a comprehensive website.
Click here to browse the Talk With Me Baby resources.
The Alabama Partnership for Children has also partnered with the Atlanta Speech School’s Cox Campus to bring Read Right from the Start to anyone in Alabama working with children from birth to pre-k, who wishes to enhance their skills to help children develop strong language and literacy skills. This research-based professional development program contains interactive, video-based coursework, which is focused on practical strategies teachers can use to promote young children’s language and literacy.
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Talk With Me Baby™ and Read Right from the Start are generously supported through funding from the Alabama Department of Human Resources, the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education, and the Alabama Department of Mental Health, and by private funding from the Mike and Gillian Goodrich Foundation, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama, the Protective Life Foundation and the PNC Foundation.