Since beginning my Writer in Residence tenure in March, I’ve made it my mission to champion early years shared reading at home and to connect with nurseries, practitioners and educators.
There are good reasons for this – the first is that every week, hundreds of thousands of early years children spend time in roughly 30,000 early years settings across England and Wales. That’s a huge number of families to potentially link with!
However, having worked in publishing for nearly 30 years, I also know that (for all sorts of practical reasons) authors and publishers rarely work with early years settings to promote books and reading. This has always frustrated me, because all the data shows that if children start sharing books at home in baby- and toddler-hood, it’s much more likely to become a regular habit for their family and to continue through primary school.
And, as BookTrust’s research also shows, if children go on to read regularly for fun at home (not because they’re doing it for homework) as they grow up, they’re much more likely to become happier, healthier, more financially secure adults.
So there seemed to me to be a real opportunity to explore how I might connect with our highly skilled, dedicated EY practitioners and educators, given that we know they care passionately about the wellbeing of their children and that they understand their families’ needs better than anyone.
I was keen to see whether they could start to play a more active role in empowering families to regularly share books at home.
What I’ve learned so far
Since then, I’ve visited nurseries and listened to setting managers, owners, practitioners, teachers, and speech therapists and I’ve connected with tech platforms, librarians, and parents.
I’ve given speeches, been interviewed on podcasts, been to two EY conferences, opened a nursery, written articles, read BookTrust’s latest research, posted a bunch of Instagram reels and two booklists… and I’ve created this cute little Book Bingo printable too!
It has all been absolutely fascinating and there’s so much more to discover, but here are three key things I’ve learned so far:
- EY settings and practitioners absolutely appreciate the power of reading and stories in helping children’s development, wellbeing and educational outcomes. They actively use books in the nursery setting but also want to encourage more shared reading at home, because they understand how important it is to a child’s self-confidence.
- But EY settings are also super busy and have a huge number of criteria to fulfil, as set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework (EYFS) – which doesn’t mention the shared-reading-at-home message, interestingly. So it is often simply not prioritised.
- Although parents are largely aware of how beneficial books are, both for their relationship with their child and their child’s development, they often lack time, as well as confidence in reading, and frequently opt for digital stories instead.
My proposal is that, with a few small changes, EY settings can start emphasising the importance of shared home reading more and prompt their families to start doing it more regularly. Suggested initiatives include:
- Create a home-reading nursery lead
- Little lending library in reception
- Shared ‘Join in with reading’ display in reception and classrooms, centred around a poster with booklists. Make this personal – photos of the kids with their age and favourite books
- Share recommendations/reviews
- Book bingo cards/stickers
- Book bags to go home
- Book show and tell – bring a favourite book in from home
- Father Christmas visit to gift books
- Parent workshops/twilight evenings
- Celebrate World Book Day, National Storytelling Week etc.
As I write this, at the end of May, I have another three months of my tenure left – and so much work still to do! One of the things I’m excited to be announcing is a competition for nurseries and practitioners… with a fantastic prize!
So keep your eyes peeled for that, and until then, happy reading!
If you work in the EY field and want to connect with me – please do drop me an email on [email protected].