2019 AIMS Conference

Right from the moment of birth the infant is not only absorbing our words but is also taking in our tone, intonation and the structure of the way we speak. He creates his own way of speaking from the things that he hears and experiences. Communication develops unconsciously by the infant, but as he grows words will start to spill out of him and these words will be as rich and as fluently expressed as the words he has heard around him in the first years of his life. As parents, and educators, we can make a difference to the child's language development. Let's explore the seeds of germination that are involved in our facilitation of language development in the early years as we look at the Absorbent Mind, Sensitive Periods, Oral Language Development, Phonemic Awareness, and ultimately Writing and Reading. Dr. Montessori wrote: Language lies at the root of that transformation of the environment that we call civilization.