Category — Preschool

Did you know that reading good quality children’s literature with your newborn or your infant child every single day builds their emergent literacy skills? Many parents fail to realize the impact that book sharing has on the brain development of their precious baby. But research shows time and again that reading for short bits of time every day with your baby gives them a tremendous developmental advantage!

Of course, this leads us to a very good question. What makes for a good baby book? Well, babies need bright pictures, thick sturdy covers that they can hold or chew, simple geometric shapes, few words and lots of rhymes. When looking at a potential purchase or library checkout for your baby, try to find a book that has many or all of these qualities. A great example that I use with my own baby, Allison, and toddler, Ella, is board book version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Penguin Books publishes a very sturdy and small version of this book just for babies and young toddlers. They’ll delight when you read to them about the dining adventures of the little caterpillar as he grows and grows. Point to the pictures and talk about the shapes and colors and things you see there, even though you may feel silly doing so with your newborn or older baby. This helps them to develop both their receptive and expressive language and stimulates their love for learning. You are your child’s first and greatest teacher!

Just a few weeks ago we began a new Lunch and Learn training series from the American Library Association called “Every Child Ready To Read.” It equips teachers from the Infants, Toddlers, Twos and multi-age preschool program with resources and ideas for equipping even our youngest infants with the Six Skills to Get Ready To Read.

There are many things you can do as a parent to help equip your child. You are their greatest teacher! Today, I would like to talk about the first of those Six Skills to Get Ready to Read. It’s called Print Motivation. Print Motivation is a child’s interest in and enjoyment of books. This is a gateway skill. Enjoying and valuing reading books opens children up to a more successful acquisition of the other five reading skills.

I believe that no one left to his own nature, is born disliking books and book sharing. They are “taught” to dislike reading and sharing books by poor modeling and negative experiences with books as children. That’s why it is so important to avoid expecting or asking children to “sit still and listen” when sharing a book with them. It’s crucial to make book sharing fun for both parent and child so that your child is more responsive and attentive and develops a lifelong love of reading.

What else can you do to help develop Print Motivation in your child? Read often and make it fun. Make sure that you and your child are in good moods, so the experience is enjoyable. Stop reading when your child becomes tired or loses interest so that reading does not become tedious or punitive for your child. Choose a book you like and read it in an enthusiastic manner!

Our next book will be about the Second Skill to Get Ready to Read: Vocabulary! We’ll have some more good tips for building this with your child.

For more information please visit www.ala.org/everychild

Why is it difficult for us to understand the value of play?

• Parents perspectives on play vary and are largely based on their own educational experience
• Skeptical of educational innovations that appear trendy or lacking in substance.
  • School is for work; and if you work hard, it can help you get ahead
  • School, in this value system is not for playing around it isn’t viewed as part of the learning process
• In an increasing hostile nations, parents are suspicious of anything that may reduce their child’s competitiveness in the job market.
• Parents have difficulty trusting a teacher from a different background (that they may not have their child’s best interest at heart.

Play contributes to advances in:

• Verbalization
• Vocabulary
• Language comprehension
• Attention span
• Imagination
• Concentration
• Impulse control
• Curiosity
• Problem-solving strategies, cooperation, empathy
• Group participation
• Recent research provides additional evidence of the strong connections between quality of play in preschool years and children’s readiness for school instruction (bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2000; Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, 2002; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000).
• Research directly links play to children’s ability to master such academic content as literacy and numeracy. Fore example children’s engagement in pretend pay was found to be positively and significantly correlated with such competencies as text comprehension an understanding of the purpose of reading and writing (Roskos & Christie, 2000)

How Play Evolves

1. initially, children are more focused on the actual objects
2. then they focus on the people who use the objects
3. then they develop more complex play with multiple roles and symbolic use of props

Characteristics of mature play

• Imaginary situations
• Multiple role plays
• Clearly defined rules
• Flexible themes
• Language development
• Length of play

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.

If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.

If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy.

If children live with shame, they learn to be guilty.

If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.

If children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient.

If children live with praise, they learn to appreciate.

If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.

If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.

If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.

If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and others.

If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

By Dorothy Law Nolte - Author of Children Learn What They Live

Over the past decade there has been a raging debate in the early childhood field between those who favor accelerated academic instruction and those who favor free play for three, four, and five year olds.  The New York Times Magazine (September 27, 2009) joined in on this debate with an article, “The Make-Believe Solution,” which described a curriculum of organized make-believe play called “Tools of the Mind.”  This curriculum is said to be based on these concepts proposed by Lev Vigotsky in the first quarter of the 20th century:

• At 4 or 5, a child’s ability to play creatively with other children is a better indicator of her future academic success than any other indicator, including her vocabulary, her counting skills, or her knowledge of the alphabet.
• Dramatic play is the training ground where children learn to regulate themselves, to conquer their own unruly minds.
• In dramatic play children are guided by the basic principles of play. Make-believe isn’t as stimulating and satisfying if players don’t stick to their roles. When children follow the rules of make-believe and push one another to follow those rules, they develop important habits of self control.

Time for play in most public kindergartens has dwindled to the vanishing point, replaced by lengthy lessons and standardized testing, according to three new studies released today by the Alliance for Childhood. Classic play materials like blocks, sand and water tables, and props for dramatic play have largely disappeared from the 268 full-day kindergarten classrooms studied. The studies were conducted by researchers from U.C.L.A., Long Island University, and Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Their findings are documented in Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School. The researchers found that:

• On a typical day, kindergartners in Los Angeles and New York City spend four to six times as long being instructed and tested in literacy and math (two to three hours per day) as in free play or “choice time” (30 minutes or less).
• Standardized testing and preparation for tests are now a daily activity in most of the kindergartens studied, despite the fact that the use of most such tests with children under age eight is scientifically invalid and leads to harmful labeling.
• In many kindergarten classrooms there is no playtime at all. Teachers say the curriculum does not incorporate play, there isn’t time for it, and many school administrators do not value it.

Child development experts have been raising alarms about the increasingly didactic, test-driven, and joyless course of early childhood education. “These practices, which are not well grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching,” states the Alliance’s report. “It is increasingly clear that they are compromi sing both children’s health and their long-term prospects for success in school.”

The week of March 1 is the annual Read Across America celebration. Many families feel a vast amount of pressure to prepare their young children for school. The market reflects our fear that our children will not be able to compete at- or above-level, with products like Your Baby Can Read and Baby Einstein grossing big dollars from concerned and well-intentioned parents.

But what about the tremendous value inherent in sharing good quality children’s books every day? Our hectic schedules and extra-curricular overload of activities and organizations often prevent us from stopping in our tracks, grabbing a good book and reading with our child sitting in our lap or by our side.

Reading with your child enables measurable leaps in their cognitive and language development. It develops a love for reading, an enthusiasm for learning and it hones the pre-reading skills they will need in their scholastic and personal life. The neurological connections young children develop during shared reading do much to prepare them for later academic performance and skill mastery. And the social-emotional foundation you’re already building with your child is vastly strengthened and supported by shared time with you enjoying a good book together.

I know that sounds too simple. In our fear, we expect to find out that we need DVD trainings, special worksheets and community experts to “hardwire” our children. We hope, in a bit of desperation, that sitting the toddler in front of a video or providing our preschooler with a “point and click” computer game will offer us a quick fix and deliver us (on time and under budget) a child who is reading fluently, doing long division and on the fast track to the Nobel prize.

Unfortunately, it is a longer track to the Nobel and the way is paved with good books and shared experiences. No DVD video can do what you accomplish when you visit your local public library and select some fun and varied books with your child to share over the coming week. You convey to them how truly important, and fun, reading is when you share a commitment to read to them for about 15-20 minutes every single day.

Once you’ve made the decision to read to your child every day, you may be wondering what books to choose and what kinds of purposeful things you can do to teach pre-reading skills as you go. For a start, there are literally hundreds of good books for each developmental age and stage. The most helpful advice is to visit your local library and speak with the children’s librarian about your child, their age and interests. Let the librarian guide you to great selections that are age appropriate.

As for good tips on sharing the books, most importantly, always share books you have enjoy. If you’re not enthused, they may not be, either. Try to read with voice inflections, emphasis on important words and passion. Point left to right at the words across the page as you read the story to help children learn reading orientation. Spend a lot of time with your child, just looking at the pictures. Ask them, when age appropriate, what they think is happening in the story, what they think might happen next and how the characters might feel. Also, talk about the setting of the story and the action of the plot. This helps introduce them to story elements.

Above all else, enjoy this time with your child. Soccer, boy- and girl-scouts and all other extracurricular activities are fun and important to social and emotional development. But nothing is more important than the relationship you build with and education you provide to your child by sharing books and reading together.

In this first installment of age appropriate reading lists by age, we will share 10 books for ages 2, 3, and 4.  Check back often for more recommendations!

Quick! Quack! Quick - Arnold, Marsha
Country Crossing - Aylesworth, Jim
Animals Should Definitely Not wear Clothing - Barrett, Judi
The Berenstain’s B Book - Berenstain, Stan & Jan
Old Hat New Hat - Berenstain, Stan & Jan
The Velveteen Rabbit - Bianco, Margery Williams
Gingerbread Baby - Brett, Jan
The Mitten - Brett, Jan
Wings on Things - Brown, Marc
Goodnight Moon - Brown, Margaret Wise

1. You don’t have to wait for your baby to get to a certain age to begin reading to him.  Start now!
2. Continue reading aloud to your child until he is at least 10 years old.  Children continue to benefit from listening to others read long after they themselves have learned to read.
3. For young children, books with rhythm, and repetition are excellent.
4. Be consistent about reading aloud to your child.  Do it daily and, if possible, about the same time.  Reading right before bedtime often works well.
5. If you have several small children, you can read to them together.  Picture books work well for this situation.
6. Don’t be surprised if your children want to hear a favorite book again and again.  That’s fine.  As they get to really know the story well, have them fill in words for you.
7. Make sure you select books that are at the child’s interest level.
8. Some children love reading about the same characters.  If that’s what your child likes, choose several books in a series.
9. Vary the subject matter of what you read as well as the type.  In addition to fiction, you might also read poetry, magazine articles, and non-fiction.
10. As your child gets older and gains in reading ability, occasionally pick a book right at his reading level and take turns reading to one another.

Tips:

When reading a chapter of a book each night, always review what happened in the previous night’s chapter before starting a new chapter.

When you begin reading aloud to a baby, you will only be able to keep your baby’s attention to a few minutes.  This is to be expected.

As children mature, so do their attention spans.