Infant Literacy Activities

Vocabulary Building

• Build your infant's vocabulary by taking your baby for walks. Point out interesting objects and animals along the route, and reinforce the descriptions by providing plenty of opportunities for baby to touch and interact with her surroundings. For example, you might say "See the leaf? The leaf is green. Feel the scratchy leaf. The tree has leaves." Describing scenery is also an effective activity for car trips, bus or train rides.

  Grocery shopping is an ideal time to label items and develop baby's vocabulary. Tell your child the name of each item you place in the grocery cart, and give her some items to hold. Show baby the list and let her watch as you cross items off. Introduce her to categories by classifying objects as "fruit," "vegetables" or "drinks," for example.

Communication

• Have pretend telephone conversations with your baby to encourage communication, while also developing imaginative play and modeling appropriate object use. It doesn't matter if he uses babble or jargon to communicate, the point is to introduce the concept of turn taking in communication and encourage sound production.

  Babies love familiar activities and enjoy social games like patty cake and peekaboo. These types of games are perfect for teaching children about social interaction and the rules of communication. Repetitive games also help children to build early prediction skills, a necessary precursor to later literacy activities such as reading comprehension. Use baby sign language in combination with rhyming games to encourage early communication. Young children can often produce signs before they are physically able to say the word.

Writing

• Provide babies with opportunities to develop the fine motor skills necessary for writing, and demonstrate cause and effect by providing items to color with. Scribbling with crayons and experimenting with finger paints is an important step in the writing process, even though it may be messy. For a mess-free activity, give young children a paintbrush and water in the yard and let them "paint" the ground or fence.

  Offer babies the chance to trace in different mediums such as sand, salt or water. The textures will be interesting to infants -- although some may not like the unfamiliar sensation initially -- and creating patterns with their fingers builds basic writing skills.

Reading

• When reading with your child, point to items as they are mentioned in the story, and encourage your baby to point to pictures herself. Provide textured books for a hands-on experience and relate the textures to the pictures: "Feel how furry the dog is. The dog's fur is so soft. His ears are so fuzzy."

  Use familiar books to encourage repetition and build your infant's memory. Ask questions about the story and talk about what is happening in the pictures. Don't force reading -- keep the activity short and end it while your child is still interested and having fun.