Thank you for visiting the BUILDING BLOCKS website—you are in good company! More than 600 visitors a month from across the nation and beyond explore this free online resource.

Developed in 1997 and derived from recommendations of the National Research Council (1998) and National Early Literacy Panel (2009), BUILDING BLOCKS teaches early care and education providers and parents how to promote early literacy skills in young children through the use of research-based and research-proven strategies. Learn more at www.buildingblocksforliteracy.org/about.html!

Promote a child’s early reading success with these fun activities and make everyday moments teachable moments!  Click here for the Activity Guide PDF.

The Stern Center recently partnered with the Vermont Family Network to produce a webinar with BUILDING BLOCKS Coordinator, Brenda Buzzell, M.Ed. 

This webinar offers play-based strategies that can be incorporated into everyday interactions with your preschool children. These research-based research-proven activities provide foundational skills to prepare young children for reading success upon entering kindergarten.

Vermont Family Network (VFN) promotes better health, education, and well-being for all children and families, with a focus on children and young adults with special needs. VFN offers resources on disabilities, education, and mental health concerns as well as parent support groups, workshops, and conferences.

Click here to view the recorded Webinar: Fun with Building Blocks for Literacy®. The presentation is also available in pdf format, click here to download it.

Wednesday, February 13th from 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. EST

Register here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/676585302

Learn play-based strategies that can be incorporated into everyday interactions with your preschool children. These research-based research-proven activities provide foundational skills to prepare young children for reading success upon entering kindergarten.

Vermont Family Network (VFN) promotes better health, education, and well-being for all children and families, with a focus on children and young adults with special needs. VFN offers resources on disabilities, education, and mental health concerns as well as parent support groups, workshops, and conferences.

The Stern Center for Language and Learning is partnering with Jumpstart to better further prepare preschoolers for future reading success by bringing BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY® training to Jumpstart staff and volunteers.

 BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY® fosters early literacy skills in children by providing developmentally appropriate and play-based strategies to early education providers and parents. Jumpstart helps early learners by teaching volunteers how to develop language and literacy skills in children and partnering them with preschoolers in low-income neighborhoods. This collaboration will enhance Jumpstart’s curriculum with BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY® strategies, ensuring that children receive the effective, research-proven, early educational experiences they need to be ready for school.

 To begin, BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY® staff will train more than 100 Jumpstart staff and Corps members and family child care providers, preparing them to deliver the enhanced curriculum to approximately 250 children during Jumpstart’s 2012-2013 program year. If, as expected, children show greater skill gains because of the collaborative curriculum, Jumpstart and BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY® look forward to expanding the project to reach more children in need across New England.

People’s United Community Foundation, the philanthropic arm of People’s United Bank, has awarded a $6,000 grant to the Stern Center to train the early childhood development staff of Burlington, Vermont’s Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) Family Room in BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY^® strategies.  

The VNA Family Room provides free services to parents and their children from birth through five years including preschool, play groups, and parent education and support programs. The Family Room’s goal is to promote healthy social and emotional development in young children and enhance school readiness. The Stern Center’s BUILDING BLOCKS program provides early education providers and parents of high-risk children with research-proven strategies for building pre-literacy skills in preschoolers.

“The VNA Family Room is excited to partner with the Stern Center to provide literacy training to [its] staff and families…BUILDING BLOCKS will… provide not only concrete instruction, but also hands-on participation with families to help encourage home-based support for literacy development that is fun for the whole family. Through books, rhyme, and song, our children will develop new skills and confidence that will follow them into their kindergarten experience,” stated Samantha Stevens, Co-coordinator, VNA Family Room.

“The Stern Center is grateful for this grant from People’s United Community Foundation. It allows for the bringing together of two wonderful community resources, the Stern Center’s BUILDING BLOCKS program and the VNA Family Room, to further nurture the healthy development of children and families,” noted Sandy Rendall, Stern Center BUILDING BLOCKS Project Manager and Communications Director.

Click here to find out more about the services offered at the VNA Family Room.

View the presentations “Multi-tiering Instruction for Early Care and Education” and “All Children Ready to Read,” given by Stern Center professionals last week at the International Dyslexia Association’s annual Reading, Literacy, and Learning Conference in Baltimore.

Hosted by the ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children, Great Web Sites for Kids vets and categorizes websites that offer resources for kids. Parents, caregivers, and teachers might want to search through this one – we are discovering some fun stuff!

August is “Get Ready for Kindergarten” month and BUILDING BLOCKS can help you get your preschooler ready! Easy to implement into your daily activities, BUILDING BLOCKS strategies include games, songs, and videos. Try this simple yet effective one:

STOMP A SOUND: Have children stomp to identify each individual sound within a word, try: b/oy or c/u/p. This kind of activity helps children learn how to separate individual sounds within a word and gets them moving too!

Compelling research findings about the effectiveness of BUILDING BLOCKS FOR LITERACY^®were presented this month at the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading 19th Annual Conference in Montreal by Stern Center President Blanche Podhajski, Ph.D. and Lee Pesky Learning Center Executive Director, Evelyn Johnson, Ed.D.  

Results show that children whose teachers had BUILDING BLOCKS training…Click on the News and Events  section of the Stern Center website for the full story and to view the poster presentation of the research data.