The UCLA Nathanson Family Resilience Center is pleased to announce that its Strategies for Enhancing Early Developmental Success (SEEDS) Program was awarded an Early Childhood Reading Grant from Target. The SEEDS Program serves families with young children (0 to 5 years old) in the Los Angeles county child welfare system. This grant will directly benefit families enrolled in the SEEDS for School Readiness (SEEDS-SR) Program. The ultimate goal of the SEEDS-SR program is to promote the behavioral, social, and pre-academic skills preschool –aged children need to succeed in elementary school and beyond.
The grant funds will be used to implement the Target “Let Me Tell You a Story” Family Literacy Project, which aims to improve children’s early literacy skills by promoting “dialogic reading” at home, engaging parental involvement in children’s early learning experiences, and activating critical home-school connections. Dialogic reading is an interactive style of storytelling, where a parent encourages a child to discuss what they are reading using questions and active listening. Participating in dialogic reading allows the child to become the teller of the story, a departure from most parents’ typical story time routine, and results in significant improvements in a child’s vocabulary and narrative skills. The funds from this grant will provide each family enrolled in the SEEDS-SR program with six family literacy activity bags that will guide them through incorporating dialogic reading into their story time routines.
- 1 Hardcover children’s book without words
- 1 bookmark with brief parent directions for dialogic reading and suggested ways to facilitate the child’s exploration of the book
- 1-2 extension activities focused on the book’s theme
- 1 at home art activity related to the book
- 1 Family Journal for parents to take notes on their experience with dialogic reading and for children to draw pictures or write words about their favorite parts of the book
This grant is part of Target’s ongoing efforts to build strong, safe and healthy communities across the country. These efforts include Target’s long history of giving 5 percent of its profit to communities, which today equals more than $4 million every week. As part of this commitment, Target is on track to give $1 billion for education by the end of 2015 to help kids learn, schools teach, and parents and caring adults engage.
For more information about the SEEDS program please visit: http://nfrc.ucla.edu/SEEDS.
