Brain Teaser
Do we all have “attention deficits”? Or is there something else going on? Let’s try this little experiment, conceived by Simons and Chabris for their classic study on sustained inattentional blindness (1999).
Cool Literacy and Learning Links
The Building Blocks of a Good Pre-K. What do we want our children’s first experiences in school to be? What does a good education look like for 4-year-olds? New York Times, October 21, 2014.
The Missing Piece: Discovering the Joy in Parent-Child Reading. If we hope to produce life-long readers, we need to instill a desire to read, not just because it is important for building a child's school readiness, but because it is fun and it builds parent-child relationships. Huffington Post, October 10, 2014.
BRAIN TEASER
In honor of the World Cup taking place this week here is a logic puzzle for you: How can you throw a ball as hard as you can and have it come back to
you, even if it doesn't bounce off anything? There is nothing attached
to it, and no one else catches or throws it back to you. (Answer at the end of the blog.)
COOL LINKS AND INTERESTING NEWS
Why Free Play is the Best Summer School,
The Atlantic, June 20, 2014. The more time children spend in
structured, parent-guided activities, the worse their ability to work
productively towards self-directed goals. Children who engage in more
free play have more highly developed self-directed executive function.
VPR's five-part series on early education in Vermont, Ready or Not,
is airing this week and looking at early education on many levels from
childcare to kindergarten all the way up to teaching the teacher.
This week's "How-To" focuses on vocabulary. Did you know that children from middle to high-income families have heard 30-million more words than their peers from low-income families by the time they are four? Unfortunately, this gap keeps widening as kids move through school. Below are two videos demonstrating ways to help increase vocabulary and understanding of words.
The more words a child hears, the more that child's vocabulary grows. There are numerous ways to promote language development in young children. Modeling gives you the opportunity to use multiple words with the same meaning so the child learns a word and its definition. For example, "That's a fragile statue. It's very delicate. If you knock it over, it could break." Watch how this preschool teacher models new words for her students:
How-To: Help Your Child Get Ready to Read Through Games, is a four-part series of “how-to” videos for parents, and early child care providers and educators that shows you different games you can play with your children to help them get ready to read in kindergarten. Each of the videos models a different technique that will increase your children's early literacy skills through fun and games. For more information on how to help prepare your child for reading, or to find more fun ideas and games, check out the Stern Center's Building Blocks for Literacy online program for parents and educators.
This week's How-To focuses on the sounds of letters. This is important because the ability to think about the individual sounds in a word is one of the strongest indicators of future reading success. Below are two games you can play with your child that will keep them entertained while at the same time helping them practice their letter sounds.
by Suzanne Loring
One of the best things that parents can do to ensure their children’s future success in school and life is to read aloud with them every day. Reading aloud with your child helps increase vocabulary, improve listening skills, promote language and broaden perspectives about the world around them.
This week, April 6-April 12 celebrates the Week of the Young Child, an annual celebration sponsored by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), created to focus public attention on the needs of young children and their families and to recognize the early childhood programs and services that meet those needs.
Started in 1971, the Week of the Young Child recognizes that the early childhood years (birth through age 8) lay the foundation for children’s success in school and later in life. This year’s focus is Early Years Are Learning Years®.
by Brenda Buzzell
The early years of childhood are a wonderful time to help your children develop vocabulary skills that will greatly benefit their later reading comprehension skills. Research clearly links vocabulary development to successful readers. Children love to use big words, and the words of mature language users, such as precious, enormous, delightful, and exhausting are words that children will later be reading. However, in order to understand what is read, a child needs to know the meanings of 90-95 percent of the words being read (Lyon, 2009).
It is never too early to begin introducing your child to mature words. Hart and Risley’s classic study (1995) showed that starting at 18 months there is a word exposure gap between children of professional parents versus those from families of poverty. By age four this gap has grown to a 32 million word difference.
