美姬社区has developed a series of modules to support parents and carers with activities that can be
shared with children. The activities have been designed with an emphasis on learning through collaborative play and shared discovery.
Click on each module below to access and download the module content.
Please contact the office to order complimentary postcards of this image for promotional purposes. There is no cost to Australian organisations, but international orders will incur a postage cost.
The pdf version, however, is free to everyone. Click the image to download a PDF version of the flyer.
Anita lives in Brisbane. She holds a Diploma in Early Childhood Education and a Bachelor of Education degree and has 30 years of experience in teaching children in primary schools from three/four years of age, through the early childhood years, to the middle years of primary education. She has been a facilitator of change in teaching practice in a state-wide literacy and numeracy project, working in city and country schools to improve experiences for children in classrooms. For many years, she was a co-operating teacher, guiding student-teachers undertaking professional experience in schools during their university undergraduate and postgraduate years. As well, she has been a member of literacy educators' and early childhood associations and has been a marker of government assessments in literacy for children in primary and high schools for many years. Anita has worked as an after-school tutor for a government project to improve the skills of children who experience difficulties learning.
Trevor Cairney taught in primary schools for 10 years and served as a literacy curriculum consultant for the Department of Education in the Hunter Region before completing his PhD in text comprehension. He has written widely on pedagogy, early literacy and learning, comprehension and family literacy. His publications include ten books and over 250 articles and book chapters. He has been a professor of Education for 25 years, conducting research in the areas of comprehension, early literacy, family literacy and children’s literature. He writes the popular blog ‘Literacy, Families & Learning’ for teachers, parents and students. He is a past President of the Australian Literacy Association and is on the editorial boards of international journals ‘Reading Research Quarterly’ and the ‘Journal of Literacy Research’. He is a Life Professorial Fellow at UNSW and an Honorary Professor at The University of Sydney.
This publication started its life as a book created at the time of the imminent birth of my first grandchild, Max, to guide his parents in engaging him in talk and text. Part of the reason for doing this was that Max’s parents were living in Sydney and I was living and working as a teacher in Perth. I could only manage to go to Sydney twice a year, so these modules were created to give them ideas to engage Max as a talker and user of text. They were very busy parents, as Max’s mother began a business while she was pregnant with him and his father was working full-time. I wrote the first drafts of these modules specifically for my family at that time.
After I gave them the modules, they urged me to publish it, saying that it was needed by parents and carers like themselves. I really think they thought I was silly, telling them to read to Max as soon as he was born, but they did so, twice a day, until he could read himself. Max is now a teenager and has been an avid reader, and participating in online activities and using apps more and more.
My two nieces with babies and toddlers have been using some of the activities in the modules. They have said that they need this advice and believe that other parents and carers might also. One niece said she would never have thought of using pegs for learning activities - so there: one little tip has been beneficial.