The Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and Detroit Parent Network have teamed up together to launch a free app for families with young children, BabyFirst.
“Children whose parents read to them beginning from infancy are exposed to 30 million more vocabulary words than children whose parents do not read to them,” said Liza McFadden, president and CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation. “That equates to 1,500 more spoken words on average per hour than children from low-literate homes.”
The app is expected to be available today. It will be used as a resource that will allow families to build digital libraries for students of various ages. Each age appropriate category will include more than 40 titles to choose from.
BabyFirst is a baby-focused TV channel and digital content company dedicated to delivering educational content to young children and their parents. Snuggle Stories is an educational book-based app made specifically for children ages 0-5.
Today, 5,000 monthly digital subscriptions to Snuggle Stories from BabyFirst will be available to families during a Detroit Parent Network Family and Friends Reunion event from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Detroit Parent Network.
The event is free and open to the public.
“Equipping parents with the tools necessary to help their kids achieve academic success is an intentional strategy to eliminate the academic and literacy deficits that plague our city,” said Sharlonda Buckman, CEO of Detroit Parent Network. “The Snuggle Stories app is another example of how DPN, in partnership with the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and BabyFirst are helping to combat this issue.”
According to the National Early Literacy Panel report, the building blocks of literacy begin to develop in infancy, and day-to-day activities expose babies and toddlers to sounds, words, speech and print. Research shows that children learn reading and writing in their earliest years, even before they go to school.
The free subscriptions will be available through May 2016 through the Detroit Parent Network.
For more information, call (313) 309-8107 or email jlopiccolo@detroitparentnetwork.org.
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