<b>Welcome to Ready Steady!</b><br /><br />In this podcast series, kids from the Illawarra come together to share stories and speak to experts about how we all can get more words to little kids. <a href="https://www.firstfiveyears.org.au/early-learning/the-30-million-word-gap" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">"The 30 Million Word Gap"</a> is a study that showed that the more words we hear when we're very young, the better chance we have at a bright future! That's what this series is all about. <br /><br />To kick us off, we jump into a conversation with Donna Bartley from <a href="https://ectarc.com.au/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ECTARC(Early Childhood Training and Resource Centre)</a> about why we need more words. <br />Then we dive into a cheeky fictional story- a big sister helps her little sister discover her first word... "Words to Get a Friend".<br />We finish off the episode with <a href="https://www.maggiedent.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Maggie Dent</a>- Australia's beloved parenting author, speaker and podcaster- who gives us an insight into how young brains digest words. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Additional sound effects licensed under CC4.0: <a href="https://freesound.org/people/Mr_Alden/sounds/365676/%20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mr_Alden</a>