LOUISVILLE, KY – It’s called the ‘word gap.’ Kids that come from low-income families often enter kindergarten knowing fewer words than their classmates, and over the years of education, the disparity can grow wider and wider.
It’s estimated that nearly half of the kids at Jefferson County Public Schools start kindergarten behind where they should be, according to the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL), which is why it’s teaming up with the Louisville Metro mayor’s office along with local businesses and groups for the “Say and Play with Words” program.
The concept is simple enough. Businesses and community centers throughout Louisville will be getting cards and supplies for simple word activities that will be free for parents to take. Each card will have a game, activity, or prompt to encourage different types of verbal communication. While the program will be free to download for all parents on the program website when it launches, the organization said it will be prioritizing its campaign in nine zip codes identified with the most need: 40202, 40203, 40208, 40210, 40211, 40212, 40219.
The activities will be available in both English and Spanish.
Louisville mother Susan Richardson said this kind of program would have been very influential in her childhood, which is why she plans to do the activities with her four-year-old daughter Bekah now.
“For me, as a kid, I didn’t have a lot,” Richardson said. “My parents divorced when it wasn’t popular to divorce, so I had a single mom and we didn’t have the resources… If someone had sat down and done school work with me, I would have been further along than I was.”
NCFL Vice President of Education Joshua Cramer said that the activities within “Say and Play with Words” are designed to be simple, and are built upon the natural communication that already exists between parents and children.
“We know that 90% of a child’s brain is developed by the time they’re five years old,” Cramer said. “The more vocabulary that we can push in the home and in the community, [the more] we can encourage that brain development to happen in the most effective way.
“This really comes down to one of the things we do most simply when we’re around a child,” he added. “This is about talking to children.”
Louisville is the second city that NCFL has selected to launch “Say and Play with Words.” The program was launched in Detroit three years ago, and since then the organization said it has reached more than 75,000 people.
►Contact reporter Rob Harris at rjharris@whas11.com. Follow him on Twitter (@robharristv) and Facebook.