Literacy skills provide a child with the building blocks necessary for reading and writing and learning more generally. Through exposure to books and stories, babies and toddlers acquire the vital preliminary tools for learning to read and write.
Firstly, they equip themselves with a sizable spoken vocabulary which helps them to listen, understand and remember what they hear.
Secondly, children at a very young age start to become aware of the existence of books. Toddlers and even small babies will turn the pages of storybooks, and look at the pictures in them.
Thirdly, children become aware of what a book is and how to handle it, i.e. that print looks different to pictures, that we read from top to bottom of a page and from left to right, and spoken vocabulary is linked to print.
Finally, children develop specific skills for learning to read: what alphabet letters look like and sound like, and that when put together in a certain way, they make up words.
