Helpful Hints

Here are some suggestions for playing and learning with your children at home as well as other great teaching practices.

Suggestions for Playing and Learning Together at Home

Below are some activities to suggest to parents and caregivers that help highlight everyday play and learning opportunities.

Building Math Skills:

• As you shop at the grocery store, ask your child to help you count fruit and vegetables (How many apples do we need?)
• Count as you walk down and up stairs, or sort and count socks.
• Cook together: sort ingredients for muffins and cookies.
• Help your child slice and count pieces of pizza.

Building Science Skills:

• Use plastic cups in the bathtub to help children learn about volume. Ask questions: Is it empty or full?
• As your child plays in the sand at the beach or in the playground, encourage them to empty, pour and fill different sized buckets and bowls to explore volume and weight.

Building Fine Motor Skills:

• Have special drawing time with your child every day using crayons or markers.
• Sing simple finger songs with children such as “Open, Shut Them” and “Five Little Monkeys.”
• Make a scrapbook together: cut out pictures and words from magazines of favorite foods, places or things you have done together.

Learning Directionality:

• Give children simple tasks to help them learn to listen and follow directions such as setting the table or putting their toys away.
• Sing simple songs together that require children to listen and respond. Examples: Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes; Happy and You Know It; Old MacDonald.

Building Language:

• Read to your child every day. Create special reading times each day to share books.
• Read on the subway or bus, and read cereal boxes, the sports page, and street signs.
• Sing songs together.
• Share stories about your childhood and life.
 

Getting Ready for Kindergarten

A major challenge for an early childhood teacher is to create a classroom environment that is physically and emotionally safe and supports and extends the joy of early childhood across all the learning domains, which builds confidence, instills a joy of learning and prepares children for kindergarten and beyond. While building knowledge of letters, numbers and colors is important for kindergarten success, it is equally important for children to develop the social and emotional skills that will help them learn to get along with others and follow instructions.

Below is a check list developed by kindergarten teachers and principals that outlines important kindergarten readiness skills to support and encourage in the classroom environment:

Enthusiasm toward Learning: Does the child ask questions? Take initiative? Persist when tasks are difficult without crying or sulking? Ask for help when needed? Is the child eager to explore, discover and investigate? Is the child curious?

Solid Oral Language Skills: Can a child use vocabulary in context and in simple conversation. Tell a story or relate an experience of her own? Understand the relationship inherent in such words as up and down, top and bottom, little and big? Classify words that represent people, places and things?

Ability to Listen: Can a child listen to a story for five minutes, and talk about what they liked or what they remembered? Can the child listen to directions without interrupting?

Desire to be Independent: Can the child follow simple two-step instructions? Complete a task without being distracted? Put toys away?

Ability to Play Well with Others: Can the child work cooperatively with others? Share and take turns? Can they express their feelings in words? Understand that others have feelings?

Strong Fine-Motor Skills: Are the child’s hands strong enough to master fine-motor tasks like coloring, gluing and holding?

Basic Letter, Number and Shape Recognition: Does a child recognize letters by sight? Can they count to ten, identify numbers one to five? Does a child know some shapes and colors? Can they hear words that rhyme, and words that begin with the same or different sounds? 
 

Sharing Books with Your  2—4 Year Old Children

• Take books with you wherever you go.
• Share stories that you have with your child.
• Make reading a part of every day. Read cereal boxes, street signs—even the sides of buses!
• Create your own stories. Write or draw what you did today, who you saw, or what you thought. Share your story with other family members.
• Be creative and silly—use different voices, rhymes, and songs to make reading fun.
• Follow your children’s lead—let him explore a story in his own way and at his own pace.
• Ask questions that inspire creative and imaginative thinking.
• Relate stories to your child’s life.
• Ask questions that engage your child and extend the story. What will happen next? What would you do? What if. . .?
• Reread your child’s favorite book. 
• Give your baby hard colorful books to see, touch, and put in his mouth.
• Create reading times—before nap time, quiet time, bedtime, even bath time.
• Say the names of objects to help your baby begin to connect words with things, actions, or feelings.
• Let your baby hold the book and turn the pages as son as she is ready.
• Use music and rhymes to enhance storytelling. Have fun. Be playful, and creative when you read to your child.
• Sing to your child. Sing songs from your childhood or make up silly songs.