ABSTRACT
Infants and toddlers possess an amazing capacity to express themselves starting from birth. Over time, this capacity develops into rich verbal languages when the cultural-linguistic backgrounds of children are welcomed in educational programs. Many early childhood teachers in the United States are inspired by the strategies that educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy, use to observe, listen, and be in the moment with these very young children and to recognize and build on how children’s sensorimotor, non-verbal communicative capacities reinforce their verbal language development. In this chapter, we start from the image of strong and competent children as we affirm the languages of infants and toddlers. We discuss theories and research supporting early language development and hypothesize that there is a natural process of children’s verbal language development growing out of their rich sensory and motor explorations. Based on our understanding of facilitating investigations with young children, we focus on examples from Reggio Emilia and the United States to illustrate how children explore interesting materials, express their questions and thoughts using their sensorimotor languages as they shift into learning and using verbal languages. As teachers of very young children implement strategies that support this progression, we also encourage and support teachers to continue to work to understand the relationship between children’s cultural and linguistic traditions and the shift to verbal expression as they work with multilingual families.
