Literature in Early Education

The Place of Literature in Early Education

• Verbal and non-verbal experiences build a baby's brain and emotional life which is rooted in connections with loved ones
• This type of nurturing is as crucial as physical nourishment and offers emotional security helping understanding, feelings, and origins
• Bruner (1986) stated the baby's ability to interpret and build meanings is activated by parents or guardians through mutual play
• This illustrates the mother's increased ability to understand the baby's cries and the baby's ability to anticipate agreements
• Human beings are nurtured by words and symbols leading to the story they create in constant conversation with others
• Language plays a key part in shaping a person
• Language, in its broadest sense as communication, and language itself, are essential for education
• The main challenge during childhood is finding a place in a cultures and to be recognized as a builder and bearer of meaning
• Foundational building blocks such as communicating, expressing uniqueness, understanding, feeling empathy, and working with symbols are developed in the first years of life
• Cultural work, is understood as access to all arts, play, reading, and family/ community practices relating children to their symbolic inheritance which is a priority in early education

Art and literature

• Literature is a part of the arts
• Art uses words to explore meanings that transcend conventional language and human emotions through symbols
• Authors use words like composers use sound or dancers use movement
• The essence of art is to explore symbolic forms that depart from the utilitarian demands of life and create metaphors that resonate and allows people to construct their own interpretations
• The boundaries between art forms are increasingly seen as fluid
• Importance in maintaining open art boundaries and the natural flow between them, drawing from the oral traditions of many regions that combine music, dance, and words
• Artistic expression of installations, albums, or cinema shows creative dialogue between images, ideas, and words
• Creating specific spaces for the exploration, appreciation, and experience of the arts is vital for the discovery of the essence of each artistic language in childhood education
• Verbal language is important in child development and providing literary experiences is important as alternatives forms of linguistic nourishment
• Early childhood literature includes published books and creations in which the art of playing and representing experience throughout language is vital
• Language is both written and involves constructions of oral, written, and pictorial language
• The oral traditions are rich with lullabies, rounds, songs, rhymes, corporate accounts, word games, stories, and legends which blend the cultural heritage
• Traditional and modern children's literature helps constitute a varied and polyphonic collection
• These traditions allow people to discover other ways of structuring language and invite participation in communication and dialogue to build unique identities

Factual and Literary Language

• People use language to express using verbal and non-verbal cues (gestures, intonation, images, etc.)
• Language is a key part of identity, providing a voice
• Language enables various activities like travel, shopping, expressing feelings, making agreements, singing, playing, writing, reading, thinking, imagining, discuss, and protesting
• Babies learn to interpret verbal and non-verbal messages early in life like smiles, gestures, tones and playful words
• Language is used in diverse contexts that are deciphered to manage everyday situations versus encounters with stories, rhymes, or poems with a "different" language
• Factual and literary ways of uses language and even in oral traditions there a type of organizational structure
• The language of narratives allows one to familiarize themselves in early years with the language of imagination, research, and knowledge in writing
• The language of storytelling helps becoming familiar with language, research, and knowledge
• Share the richness of oral communication it is important to explore written language

Language barriers

• It is important to open source tools that written language provides to organize and communicate experiences, work with symbols, and think for themselves
• Children may grow up limited to utilitarian or violent language that is passed down vs language that helps them organize experiences
• Opportunity gaps affect learning, development, and expression because of growing up with a limited language
• One of major educational issues is the equality in language foundations affecting managing symbols essential for learning
• Providing a basic education and intervention in early childhood involves reading aloud, sharing books, singing, and including art, play, oral traditions, and all types of literature is beneficial

Language Development

• Language development occurs when adults surrounding the child model how to play with words like decomposing, singing, pronouncing, exploring, doodling, murmuring and overall encourage language through sounds and emotions
• Early years set up someone for development by having adults model all possible ways to play, explore and enjoy art and literature
• Accessing language in early childhood, more than teaching words, means building understanding of culture
• Building culture through poetics becomes a political act by bringing books, oral traditions, and culture to all aspects of education