Brain Bag UPDATE
N
ot even a pandemic can stop babies. While the COVID-19 pandemic changed countless things about our world in 2020, one thing that didn’t stop was baby births. And thanks to the support of the community, the Studer Community Institute’s cornerstone project — the Brain Bag — kept getting to parents. Since the spring of 2017, the Brain Bag has been a learning tool shared with parents to help them use and harness the power within themselves to build their child’s brain. More than 18,000 of the kits have been shared since the program began, with some 4,494 going home with parents in the pandemic year of 2020. Laurel Woodfin Farrell of Pensacola was among some of those grateful 2020 parents. She said the Brain Bag helped
26 2021
her learn so many helpful ways she can help her son grow. “My 5-month-old loves his water mat for tummy time. We also started doing a little tummy time each day from Day 1,” she said. “I didn’t know babies should start that early until I read about it in our Brain Bag at the hospital. Now he loves it and spends a lot of time on his tummy playing throughout the day.” Kathleen Whibbs’s twins were among the first Brain Bag bags in the program. As grateful as she is for the advice and support the program has brought her family, her work as a nurse at Sacred Heart Hospital allowed her to see the impact on other families, too. “When you just have a baby, especially if it’s your first, you are confused, excited and emotional. (The Brain Bag) gave you something tactical to do with your child,”
BUILDING BLOCKS, A PARENT MAGAZINE
BY Shannon Nickinson STUDER COMMUNITY INSTITUTE
Whibbs said. “In the (neonatal intensive care unit) and labor and delivery, as a nurse, I would see the parents at bedside reading, and it was their first connection with their child as a parent.”
HOW IT STARTED SCI’s Early Learning City effort works to improve kindergarten readiness in the community by giving parents the understanding of the power of language and interaction in the first three years of life to build a child’s brain. That early brain development is key to the foundation of a child’s readiness for school and ultimately for putting that child on a path for success in school and life. That is crucial in Escambia County, which state education data indicates has a kindergarten readiness rate of 48 percent (as of 2019, the most recently available data).
