By Professor Clare Wood

What is ‘Tiny Happy People’?

Tiny Happy People is a five year initiative by the BBC which aims to support parents and carers of children aged 0-4 years in developing the children’s language and communication skills.  The website is full of ideas and resources to inspire and support adult engagement with very young children, and crucially, it is based on research evidence, and this evidence is summarised in accessible ways on the website.  I was fortunate to be invited to feed into the project in its later stages, where they were exploring the importance of nursery rhymes for children’s development, and I have spent the last couple of days helping with the launch of the website on the 14th July.

The Challenge

We have a problem (and have had it for a while now) with large numbers of children failing to develop the basic communication and early literacy skills that will enable them to engage with, and cope with, school.  Department for Education figures show that 1 in 4 (27%) children in England are not ready for school in this respect.  What does that mean?  It means that reception teachers are receiving children each year who are not able to communicate properly with their teacher, or understand words that might be used in the classroom. Some children may not be speaking at all.  A couple of years ago I was recruiting primary schools into an Education Endowment Foundation project on early literacy intervention (with the lovely Janet Vousden).  Nearly all the teachers I spoke with identified difficulties in understanding and producing speech to be the biggest challenge they faced in getting the children where they needed to be for their literacy.  And children do not grow out of these delays – those who start behind typically stay behind. 

Why is communication in the early years so important?

Children need interaction with adults to develop their vocabularies and spoken language skills (Gary Jones’ work continues to explore the nature of this development).  Vocabulary development has been shown time and again to contribute to children’s later reading abilities.  It underpins their understanding of the patterns of sounds that occur in speech (referred to as phonological awareness), and it is this understanding that contributes to children’s ability to respond to formal reading instruction (such as phonics).  And reading ability is the key that unlocks the rest of the curriculum for children.  Without this key, children’s educational attainment, and later life prospects including their health and employment outcomes, suffer.

Tiny Happy People: “Be silly, and make up rhymes about your child or things you do together. Do it anywhere, any time. Language isn’t just for bedtime books and lullabies. It is for always and forever.”

What can we do?

This is where the Tiny Happy People website is such an important resource, both in telling parents about these issues, but showing them the range of things that can do. But basically anything will help – talk, play games, sing songs and rhymes, and do this during pregnancy and beyond.  Songs and stories with a strong rhythm and rhyme pattern are particularly fascinating and engaging for young children.  Be silly, and make up rhymes about your child or things that you do together.  And do it anywhere, any time.  Language isn’t just for bedtime books and lullabies.  It is for always and forever. 

About Clare Wood

Clare is Professor of Psychology at NTU.  Her research interests include the factors that impact on children’s educational attainment, reading development, and wellbeing.