My little friend Olivia is 4. She used to be a happy, fun, sociable girl. But since school started, she’s been crabby, whiny, and prone to meltdowns.  At school, she can’t sit still during circle time. And today, she got sent home early for biting her friend Joshua. Is Olivia in the wrong classroom? Does [...]

Literacy is an amazing thing. It helps us read the instructions on a shampoo bottle (wet, lather, rinse, repeat) and make sense of the latest e-mail “good luck” chain (send this to 10 people, or else). As I have discussed in previous posts, oral language, reading and writing all come together in this idea of [...]

To Plug or Unplug? From our partners at Discovery Kids Puterbugs Thirty minutes? One hour? How much time should your child spend using technology each day? In a world where everything runs on technology, the answer is not just about counting minutes. The answer depends on how it’s being used. Any amount of time a [...]

When I was a kid, I couldn’t bear the thought of finishing in second place. Girls could do anything, I was taught, and we weren’t supposed to settle for anything less than a blue ribbon. That desire to be “the best” motivated me to work hard at school, but I never learned to distinguish between [...]

Create Time to Enjoy The Experience of Childhood With Your Child Many of you may have seen the movie The Bucket List. In this movie, two men realize that they have limited time left on this Earth and decide to make the most of it. They make a list of everything they have always wanted [...]

Learning Care Group When my niece was six years old, she spent a week with me. Her favorite game was to write random letters in a line, push them in front of me, and ask, “What does this say, Aunt Shelle?” I would string the sounds together into a nonsense word that would send her [...]

Learning Care Group I remember the day that I considered my son an official “reader.” He was in second grade and we were visiting Santa Claus at a local mall. There were banners detailing the history of Santa strung along the path on which we waited. I watched in utter amazement (and with a flash [...]

“Grammy, the geese came back!” my four-year-old granddaughter exclaimed in a recent phone conversation. And while I am always delighted to talk with her, I was especially pleased to hear her story about seeing the geese this autumn. The story she told made it clear that her oral language abilities have reached a level that [...]

I, like most parents, want my children to have all the tools they need to be successful in this world. And, what we know, is that literacy is so important in both academic and life pursuits. As a parent, and an early childhood educator, I know that we need to support children in becoming strong [...]