1,000 Stories Before School

Cr Sue Abbott is excited the Council has launched the ‘1000 Books Before School’ initiative this week at local libraries and said it is surprising how quickly families can reach this major milestone with children.

Local libraries in Aberdeen, Cassilis, Merriwa, Murrurundi and Scone will have a program pack for the initiative, where children can receive certificates to celebrate milestones and enjoy weekly story time activities for bubs, toddlers, pre-schoolers and their carers.

Cr Lee Watts reading a story to children in the Scone library.

“1,000 Books Before Kindergarten is a wonderful US initiative where essentially you read 1,000 books to your newborn, toddler or pre-schooler before they start kindergarten,” explained Cr Abbott.

“Basically the whole idea is to build a fun daily habit of reading to your little one, and this programme sets out quite a do-able plan, for instance if you read three books a day to your little one, you’ll reach 1,000 in a year; or if you read two books a day, you’ll reach 1,000 in two years; or if you read one book a day, you’ll reach 1,000 in three years! You’ll get there before kindy!” she said.

There are many advantages to reading to young children in terms of their cognitive development before they begin school, but Cr Abbott also points to some lifelong impacts.

“Research from Harvard University tells us that in the first few years of life, babies and toddlers build more than 1 million new brain connections every second!” Cr Abbott said.

“And that by reading aloud with babies and toddlers, our little darlings develop background knowledge about a variety of topics, build vocabulary, become familiar with rich language patterns, develop familiarity with story structure, acquire familiarity with reading and identify reading as a pleasurable activity,” she said.

“Neil Gaiman, the well-known English author, recounts in an article for The Guardian that one time when he was in New York he listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry both in the US and here – and how on planning their future growth the prison industry needs to work out how many cells they are going to need, and how many prisoners there are going to be 15 years from now, and that the answers to these questions can be answered using a simple algorithm based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11 year olds could not read,” Cr Sue Abbott said.

Cr Abbott recommends young families take advantage of their local libraries to start their children’s love for books, where everybody is welcome and they regularly run creative activities for children.