Making a Decision: Who is Teaching My Child? A Five Part Series on Choosing a Preschool

Research indicates preschool education has many benefits for children.  In addition to exposure to curriculum including literacy experiences, mathematical concepts, and science activities, a high quality preschool gives children the opportunity to learn how to socialize, to share and to contribute to society.  Making a sound decision about early childhood education is a crucial for a successful start on your child’s lifelong educational journey and there are many aspects to evaluate:  teachers, curriculum, philosophies, safety, family partnerships, and environment.  So, how do you make the right choice?

In this part we will discuss what should be the deciding factor:  Teachers!  The adults who interact with your child on a daily basis are key to a positive experience for your child!  A warm hug to ease separation anxiety or, conversely, a stern raised eyebrow inappropriately can affect how children perceive themselves and also affect their trust in others.   Whether you are considering family care, a nanny, or a center-based program, the people who care for and educate your child are of the utmost importance.  Visit the prospective school and observe the teachers’ interactions with children.   You should see:

q  Teachers in engaged two-way conversations with children

q  Teachers interacting at the children’s eye level

q  Teachers who are warm, patient and friendly

q  Teachers using gentle voices and an encouraging manner

q  Teachers and children with lots of smiles and happy faces

q  A classroom filled with happy sounds

q  Teachers who are organized and prepared

q  Teachers giving children the opportunity to choose activities.

q  Low Turnover

Watch to see if the teacher is actively listening, rather than pre-occupied or distracted with other events in the room, or being dismissive to a child.  During active listening you should see the teacher smile, nod, or acknowledge with her body posture she is interested in what the child has to say.  Active listening builds a child’s confidence and self worth.  Compare the spoken and unspoken interactions you see to those you would see in conversation between two adults who respect each other, and you should see similarities in body language, interest and intensity. 

Did you know the national average of turnover in child care staff is 30%!!!  At Kangaroo Kids we are so fortunate to have an outstanding staff who year after year have demonstrated their commitment to children and families!  We proudly boast that every lead teacher has been with Kangaroo Kids 7 or more years!  Therefore our turnover rate among our lead teachers is Zero.

According to Child Research.net a key to providing quality programs is retention of child care staff, the average annual turnover rate for child care is 30% in the United States.  Consequently, there have been a large number of studies conducted to wrestle with the issues of turnover. 

“Among the research examining the quality of early childhood programs, rate of job turnover for child care staff seems to be a strong indicator of program quality (Cassidy, Lower, Kintner-Duffy, Hegde, & Shim, 2011; Mims, Scott-little, Lower, Cassidy, & Hestenes, 2008). Raikes (1993), for example, explained that frequent turnover among early childhood teachers prevented children from developing a secure attachment with teachers. In addition, teachers' high turnover negatively affected children's social, emotional, and language development (Korjenevitch & Dunifon, 2010). Not only the relationship between teachers and children, but the relationship between teachers and parents also suffered from high turnover (Cassidy et al., 2011).

  

Teachers should be organized and well prepared.  Children should have an opportunity to choose activities.  A well-prepared and organized teacher provides a role model of organizational skills for children.  Choosing their own activities enhances children’s decision-making skills and sends the message that they and their choices are worthy!  Making good decisions is a lifelong skill you want children to develop as early as possible so it carries them through their teenage years where their decision-making skills will constantly be tested.  

Good teachers are energetic.  They enjoy the process of teaching and engaging with children.   They look for teachable moments, whether it is a butterfly going by, a leaf falling, or a chance to teach positive social interactions. 

Watch for upcoming articles on safety, environment, curriculum, and parent involvement.

Help Your Child Fall In Love With Reading

Schools all over the world will celebrate Dr. Seuss’s Birthday on March 2^nd.   It is also the start of “Read Across America”, the National Education Association’s annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss.

Reading is one of the key components for academic success! 

Help your child fall in love with reading by making it a special time with you!  Here are a few tips to help your child become a reader: 

·      Talk with your child — even infants — this increases language development.

·       Make reading time fun by being animated and dynamic when you read!

·       Role model reading.

·       Ask open-ended questions that encourage a sense of wonder, imagination and creative thinking.  Typical open-ended questions are “How” and “Why” questions and questions that don’t have one specific answer.  They teach children to think and be creative!!  

What you can do to help your child be successful at reading:

1. Babble back to your infants
2. Use “parentese” with your infant (high pitched voice)
3. Encourage conversation
4. Teach site words. e.g., McDonalds, Lucky Charms, Barney
5. Dramatic play and using props such as puppets can be great opportunities for conversation
6. Speak another language you are wiring the brain for a lifetime of multiple languages
7. Encourage drawing and inventive spelling
8. Script – write their story and make it into a book
9. In addition to reading stories, include rhymes, songs and other languages (Frere Jacques)
10. Place labels on furniture and objects in  your child’s environment to create a print rich environment
11. Make shopping lists with your child
12. Read and cook recipes together
13. Look for letters on the Menu when you go out to eat
14. Look in magazines for pictures that begin with the letter you are studying and cut them out.
15. Make an alphabet book
16. Read a book and then ask children a few questions to test their comprehension
17. Glue letters from an alphabet cereal on a piece of paper.
18. Put alphabet cereal on a plate and help children make their names out of the cereal
19. Keep magnetic letters on the refrigerator.
20. Make up silly songs starting with the letter you are studying.
21. Talk to your child
22. Sing with your child
23. Read to your child everyday
24. Make up silly rhyming songs with your child
25. Provide writing materials
26. Limit television watching and when you do watch, be sure to guide your children to appropriate shows
27. Role model reading
28. Visit libraries and bookstores
29. Select a quality child care program
30. Read to children and ask them to predict what will happen next.

Here are some tips from the National Association for the Education of Young Children to promote reading at home. Tips to help your child fall in love with reading!

Beat Brain Drain

Beat Brain Drain

Help your kid's reading skills soar during summer break with these words of advice from literacy experts. By Michelle Crouch from Parents Magazine

When Kelley Dolling's first-grade students go on summer vacation, they forget a lot of the reading skills they've learned. "I talk to their second-grade teachers, and find out that many children who were doing great in June are struggling in September," says Dolling, who teaches in Cottonwood, California. "We call it the summer slide."

Indeed, studies show that students who read little, if at all, when school's out can lose valuable ground. And since many 7- and 8-year-olds are just becoming competent readers, it's especially important for them to spend time practicing. Read up on how to make books a fun part of your family's summer routine.

Say Yes More Often

Chances are, your child will receive a recommended summer reading list from his school, but don't limit him to those books, suggests Richard Allington, Ph.D., past president of the International Reading Association. A review of 28 studies found that students read more and learn best when they're allowed to select their own material. "It isn't that hard to get kids to read during the summer -- it's hard to get them to read the books you want them to read," Dr. Allington says. His advice? Take your child to the library or bookstore once a week and let him decide what he wants to read. That means not objecting if he chooses a Justin Bieber biography, the latest issue of Sports Illustrated Kids, or Captain Underpants, a graphic novel. After all, what you really want is for your child to develop a love of reading, and that's unlikely to happen if you're forcing him to read about things he's not interested in. If he's having trouble choosing, suggest these teacher favorites: The World According to Humphrey, by Betty G. Birney, the A to Z Mysteries series, by Ron Roy, and Gooney Bird Greene, by Lois Lowry.

Make It Special

You want your child to be as enthusiastic about reading as she is about splashing around in the neighborhood pool or playing on her Minecraft app. So you've got to sell it a little -- at least until she gets so hooked that you have to pry her away to do something else. You can entice reluctant readers with "drop everything and read" time. You simply shout "DEAR time!" once a day and everyone in the family (including you) grabs a book and reads for at least 15 minutes. (Snag ideas for yourself from our Mom Must Read blog at parents.com/blogs.) Make cozy nooks around the house with colorful beanbags, pillows, and a few books or set up a reading tent in the backyard.

Think Beyond Books

Don't forget about all the other text in your child's world. When you're at the playground, grocery store, or amusement park, encourage him to look carefully at the signs. "New, reluctant readers may get overwhelmed by a book, but if they're just reading about their favorite animal at the zoo, they're more motivated because they really want to understand what the words say," explains Denise Boehm, a second-grade teacher in Weston, Florida.

Offer a Reward

Many bookstores, public libraries, and elementary schools have summer reading initiatives with prizes. They work! A study at Dominican University, in River Forest, Illinois, found that incoming fourth-graders who took part in a library program significantly improved their reading skills during the summer break. The Barnes & Noble summer reading program (barnesandnoble.com) will give your child a free book for participating, or you can try to tempt her with the 10 tokens given for filling out the Chuck E. Cheese's (chuckecheese.com) reading rewards calendar.

Go Digital

If your kid loves screens, consider getting him a tablet or download a few e-books at his level and let him read on yours for a change. Websites can also boost reading skills. Ask your child's teacher if his school has a subscription to an online reading program such as Reading A-Z or Lexia that you can log on to over the summer. Or try Abcya.com, a free site that offers sight-word games, storybooks, and other activities organized by grade level. Just remember: One of the best strategies for motivating your child to read over the break is to limit overall screen time. "If your child has easy access to electronics that provide fun with little effort, reading is naturally going to be a tougher sell," says Daniel Willingham, Ph.D., a cognitive scientist at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. So stash books in the car, and the next time your child says he's bored, leave your smartphone in your purse and ask him to read a story to you instead.

Originally published in the June 2013 issue of Parents magazine.

Handwriting Tips

From worksheets to short essays, there are a lot of assignments for your kid to crank out -- and his teacher has to be able to read them. "Despite the increasing amount of technology in classrooms, a child's schoolwork still is mostly handwritten," says pediatric occupational therapist Jan Z. Olsen, founder of the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum program. "Teachers think good penmanship is crucial for communicating effectively." In fact, less than half of first- to third-grade teachers said that their students' handwriting was fast enough to keep up with classroom demands, found a Vanderbilt University poll.

If your child is struggling to put his words down on paper, he'll have less energy to focus on what he wants to say. Switching to a computer isn't the solution. Second-graders generated more ideas when writing by hand than by using a keyboard, University of Wisconsin researchers report. A sliver of kids who write illegibly, have a hard time forming letters, or find it difficult to complete written assignments may lack graphomotor skills and may benefit from occupational therapy.

Still, many kids with penmanship problems simply aren't getting enough practice. Bridge the gap at home with these clever ways to start off right.

Invisible Ink

Trace letters and simple words on your child's back and see if she can guess what you're writing. Then, swap and have her "write" a letter or word on you. Focus on the letters that are hardest for kids this age. Another Vanderbilt University study found that j, k, n, q, u, and z account for 48 percent of the mistakes when kids attempted to write the lowercase letters of the alphabet. How-to videos at parents.com/handwriting can help you teach your child these tricky letters.

Get a Grip

Kids who don't hold a pencil correctly may get tired of writing. Slide-on rubber grips, sold at school-supply stores, might help. But try a fun alternative: a small pencil, like the ones used in mini golf. Save them for games of pretend. Tell your child to imagine he's a waiter and have him write down your order. Or encourage him to dress up like a rock star; then ask for his autograph.

Picture This

Take out the markers or crayons and draw a single capital letter on a piece of unlined paper. Ask your child to make the chosen letter part of a bigger picture. She might turn a capital I into a butterfly or transform an O into an octopus. As she decorates the letter, she'll also be focusing on its shape.

Outsider Art

Using sidewalk chalk, have your child write a giant note that could be seen from outer space, then a tiny one for ants to read. (Or if your lawn looks like a winter wonderland, ask your glove-clad kid to write letters in the snow.)

Mail Tale

Buy a notebook and ask your child to keep a journal for a week. Send it to a relative to add comments on your child's week, record a week in her life, and mail it on to another loved one. The last person should mail it back to your child. She'll get reading practice too!

Pick a Winner

Designate one night a week as activity night. Help your child write down stuff he'd like to do on slips of paper and place them in a jar: Suggest games (board, card, or sports), movies, or whatever interests him (building with Legos or baking muffins). When it's time, have your kid choose one and ask him to add a fresh idea to keep the jar fun-filled.

Love Notes

Leave surprise messages for your child -- on her pillow, the bathroom mirror, or in her backpack. End each one with a question, and ask her to write an answer on the back and leave it for you in a surprise location as well.

Minute Man

Get into the habit of asking your kid to write things for you. Dictate shopping lists, have him address envelopes, and jot down reminders on the family calendar. The more practice, the better.

Tools of the Trade

Stock up on office supplies. Collect awesome writing tools (gel pens, scented markers, funny-shaped pencils) and all sorts of paper (lined sticky notes, doodle pads). Stow them in strategic spots around the house. She'll also be more psyched to scrawl if her pencil has a cute eraser.

Originally published in the January 2013 issue of Parents magazine.

Choosing A Good Book For Your Child

How to Choose Good Books For Your Child

“One approach is to look for award-winning books. There are two famous awards for children's literature made each year by the American Library Association that are good indicators of quality work: the Caldecott Medal for illustration and the Newbery Medal for writing. But these are given to only two of the approximately 2,500 new children's books published each year,” according to Kathryn Perkinson from the United States Department of Education. Your local librarian can give your recommendations of books best suited to your child’s age and interests.

You can also go to http://www.parents.com/fun/book-gallery/ to find some of the best books for your child, organized by age. Scholastic also has many suggestions for books to read with your infant and toddler at http://www.scholastic.com/resources/article/choose-books-for-your-baby-and-toddler/.

Reading a variety of books to children including alphabet, number, narrative, predictable, rhyming, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry books give children a vast experience with books.

Reading books with a plot also teaches children that stories have a beginning, middle, and end which helps with their recall and their ability to comprehend sequences of events.

For young children you want to make sure the books are durable, so choosing a cloth book for babies and a cardboard book for toddlers is a helpful so they can explore the books on their own.

Happy Reading!