Many months ago, we looked at bear family counters as a basic manipulative for an early childhood program. Today, I wanted to look at animal family counters as a manipulative that supports children as they explore attributes. Sorting items using one attribute as the key to groupings can be quite challenging for young children, but […]
A dear friend of mine recently recommended a book, Daring Greatly by Dr. Brene Brown. I ran out and bought a copy as I am always looking for new ideas about parenting and living life to the fullest. I don’t always agree with everything I read, but I take bits and pieces and small pearls […]
Thanks to reader Verinda, this week’s Focus on Families is on creating a “Book Club”. She posted this, I love books and my childcare children love them too. I Have a book club where every month it is mandatory for my clients to buy the book of the month from the scholastic book list I […]
We always read books for language and literacy- that is pretty obvious. Yesterday, when I was with a group of moms, most of whom have young children, we were discussing the appropriateness, or fairness of standardized testing. One mom reported that she had heard that children were supposed to identify a pair of “trousers” in […]
This is a nice game for sorting by attributes. Sid the Science Guy is putting rocks in a box and he needs them sorted by color. As children get better and better at putting the colored rocks in the correct columns, the game becomes more complex. Sid gives kids positive reinforcement when they sort the […]
On January 13th, the Illinois State Board of Education published a revision of the former Early Learning Standards- now called the Illinois Early Learning and Development Standards. (Finally, they are including the word “development” in something referring to young children.) These have been presented in draft form, and are available for open comment as the […]
These attribute maps are pretty great- but you certainly don’t have to buy them. With a white piece of paper, a ruler and a marker, you can make them on your own. These store-bought maps have the words “Science Sort”at the top which I find interesting. Shouldn’t it just say “Sort” so children can sort […]
It is not unusual for programs to design a handful of backpacks that are meant to be borrowed by families so that books can be shared in a systematic way. If you wanted to try and get something like this together, it can be done fairly easily. First, you need some backpacks. They don’t have […]
Did you know that when children play “make-believe” and assume the roles of different characters in the play, they are using “attributes” to define themselves as their characters? So, if two children go over to the housekeeping area and one becomes the “daddy” and one becomes the “baby” you can ask questions that will help […]
It was months and months ago when I originally wrote about “Teachable Moments” and how to find them throughout the day. I’ve been thinking a lot about how so much of the learning that happens in the early childhood world occurs in a happenstance way, rather than intentionally. That does not mean that teachers of […]