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Goddard School parents, as their child approaches their move on to kindergarten, about tips to help the child develop a love of reading.  Here are some ideas:

PRE KINDERGARTEN (4 years +)

• Read with your child. Take turns reading pages, modeling intonation and punctuation cues.

• Make up silly rhymes and alliterations.

• Help your child cut large letters from old magazines. Talk about words that begin with each of these letters.

• While driving ask your child to help you find a particular street sign.

As with everything else in your child’s development, reading skills take time and patience to develop, and be assured that reading will happen when your child is ready. Also remember that children learn by example. Let your child see you read often, they’ll want to do exactly what mom and dad are doing.

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• SMART Board to engage all of a child’s learning styles and promote technology education
• Zoo Phonics to facilitate literacy development
• Computerized academic assessments (CPAA) to individualize each child’s lesson plan and provide valuable feedback to parents and teachers

The Goddard School FLEX Learning Program, based on the latest research in how children learn, provides the optimal environment for a young child’s development. The program’s foundation is the learning continuum that encompasses developmental guidelines with formative assessments, child-focused lesson plans, a creative and fun environment and a personalized child-centered approach that meets each child’s needs.

FLEX Learning is delivered by professional, trained teachers who use assessment results to select the materials and activities that create a fun, challenging and safe learning experience. The result is a confident learner who is ready for school!

The key elements of FLEX Learning are:
1. Developmental guidelines, state standards and formative assessments;
2. Child-focused lesson plans from the Goddard Curriculum Guide;
3. Creative and fun learning environment; and
4. Child-centered learning and teachable moments for a personalized approach

FLEX Learning incorporates seven core, academically accepted learning domains. These are the standard learning domains that are included in most state guidelines for quality early childhood education and are part of the curriculum requirements for most accreditations. The domains are:
1. personal and social development;
2. language and literacy;
3. mathematical thinking;
4. scientific thinking (including technology);
5. social studies;
6. creative expression; and
7. physical development.

Find out what we’re doing that’s educational and fun each month with the Goddard School monthly events newsletter SUBSCRIBE HERE

The American Academy of Pediatrics urges parents to avoid television and other electronic media for children two years of age and under; yet two thirds of infants and toddlers watch a ‘screen’ for an average of two hours per day.

Older children have a similar average; however children ages eight to eighteen have an average of four hours per day. This amount of time spent in front of a computer, television, video game or the like can interfere with school work, physical activity, curious exploration, social interaction and playing. Many children also get in the (bad) habit of eating snacks while watching TV or playing computer games which can turn into a habit of eating when not hungry and contribute to childhood obesity.

Extended exposure to television poses serious risks.

• Children who watch violent shows or play violent (video) games may become desensitized to violence at a higher rate.
• These violent (video) games re-enforce stereotypical gender roles which are often demeaning to women.
• Children who view what is considered “risky behavior” such as smoking, drinking, doing drugs, selling drugs or having sex are at a greater risk.
• It has been suggested that the more television a child watches, the higher their risk of developing an attention deficit disorder. For every hour a day a child watches a screen, their chances go up 10%. (If a child watches four hours of television every day, they are 40% more likely to develop an attention deficit disorder.)
• Children are bombarded with commercials. They are conditioned to think they need the advertised products to make them happier.

1. If your three-year-old watches television every day and regularly sees a happy child playing with a toy, she will begin to believe that she will only be happy when she has that toy.
2. Commercials may encourage unhealthy eating habits which can lead to an unhealthy eating habit called “snacking habit.” This snacking is generally a component of a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle.

Watching TV, however, may provide benefits – Sesame Street has long been credited with helping youngsters learn the alphabet and its’ shows also depict racial and social diversity.  Subscribe to The Goddard School newsletter HERE

Are you surprised that the American Academy of Pediatrics says no television before age two?  This standard alerts parents of infants, toddlers and preschoolers that their children are strongly affected by the talking tube and that they need to consider the way their children are exposed to its powerful influences.

• If you chose to allow your children to view television, consider limiting the amount of “watching time” in their first three years to 30-90 minutes per day. This is more than enough for their young brains and eyes.  Children prefer, and benefit from, interacting with people far more.
• The programming you chose should be specifically directed at the age of your child. Most good parenting magazines regularly publish guidelines that tend to be more objective and reliable than an advertiser’s suggestions.
• Commercial-free is far better for eyes, ears, and minds.  Fewer interruptions and a generally higher level of intellectual and emotional content are the benefits.
• A child’s room does not need a television. Television may inhibit a child’s desire to read and play imaginatively for years.
• When your children watch television, watch with them.  They may need your help to decipher the barrage of messages, and only you know when they have had enough.  Occasional babysitting by means of television so you can get something done is understandable, but may be a waste of your child’s time and mind.

These guidelines should be discussed regularly by all adults in your household. The evening news may matter to the grown-ups, but it is frequently incomprehensible and somewhat frightening to your little ones. Media-literate parents are great blessings to their children.

Suggested resource: Coalition for Quality Children’s Media www.cqcm.org

Kyle D. Pruett, M.D. is an advisor for The Goddard School®.  Dr. Pruett is an authority on child development who has been practicing child and family psychiatry for over twenty-five years.  He is a clinical professor of child psychiatry at Yale University’s Child Study Center.  Subscribe to The Goddard School monthly newsletter by CLICKING HERE

http://blogs.goddardschool.com/Cedar-Park-TX/category/general/reading-literacy/

Subscribe to The Goddard School monthly newsletter by CLICKING HERE.

Parent Tips:

• During early infancy, reading helps babies build neural pathways that will eventually provide language development and acquisition.
• Reading aloud to children encourages association with happiness, love and enjoyment. All of this can lead to children’s greater interest in reading and can result in larger vocabularies and better literary skills.
• Choose a childcare environment that encourages storytime as an important aspect of the school’s routine.
• Reading aloud to children also helps them with pronunciation and phonetics. Some children are able to recognize letters and numbers before they can speak, but if they are left to this without guidance their weaknesses can lie in pronunciation and sounding out words.
• When children speak incorrectly they should be gently corrected so that they are encouraged to use proper grammar and pronunciation. Reading books can help children learn the proper format of sentences which they often mistake in late toddlerhood.
• Children who are read to regularly, are more likely to continue reading throughout their lives.
• Children who read are more likely to have better writing skills and be placed in higher level classes.

How does this happen?  One reason is the lack of books in the child’s home during preschool years.  The average middle income family will have 13 child appropriate books per child.  A lower income family has none – there will be 1 book per 300 children in these communities!

Besides the cost of crime, illiteracy has other social implications.  How about this sad statistic?  Illiteracy will cost the country $225 billion per year when you consider job training, health and other problems it creates.  This equates to a third the cost of the current financial bailout!

For the next several weeks, I’ll be exploring in more depth the impact illiteracy has to our community.  I’ll also have some suggestions and ideas on what we can do to address it.  As Joseph Addison once said, “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.”  I hope that together we’ll get more of our children “fit” for reading!

Butch Aggen is owner of The Goddard School of Cedar Park and volunteers for Leander Educational Excellence Foundation’s efforts to promote early childhood literacy.   Questions or comments are welcome.

To participate in this national event, please visit our Goddard Facebook Page. As part of our participation in this activity, I’ll be blogging the next several articles on child reading and literacy.  Let me know your questions on this topic and your comments are always appreciated!

I think one of my favorite things to do with my boys is to read and sign books. As babies my boys started out enjoying turning pages, pointing out pictures and lifting flaps. Then it was reading a story and them memorizing the words as a read the book for the hundredth time. Now that my oldest is 3 year old, he wants me to use his finger to follow the words as I read to him. It is so amazing to see their love of language at such a young age.
I have also seen huge jumps in language development with my 3-year-old and my 17-month-old because I taught them sign language as babies. Communicating with ASL has allowed us to understand each other more quickly, and has given them confidence in their surroundings. The boys love to learn and are excited when you are able to understand what their needs are.

Now, put reading books and signing together, and you have a double dose of language development! Not only can we empower our children by giving them the opportunities to share what’s on their minds, but also we can help develop their imagination, verbal and language skills.

In a study conducted by Marilyn Daniels, she showed that signing with books increases reading readiness, develops literacy skills, and enhances comprehension. When we sign while reading, we teach children to read and scan the most important words in a sentence.

When I teach parents how to sign a book to their child, I tell them to pick the important words on the page. The words that the child will best understand, such as the noun or action word. For example if you read “ The truck stopped at the house where the big dog sat.” You would sign truck, house and dog because these are the words the brain is focusing on.

The more the child can understand, the more he will be excited about reading with you and learn to love reading on his own!

SIGNING WITH BOOKS
Start with simple board books or touch-and-feel books that have simple, bright, and “touchable” pictures. I always like ones that have one picture and word per page.
When reading a story, remember you do not have to sign every word. Just pick out key objects or pictures that are important to you and your baby. You will be amazed at how meaningful and enriching reading combined with signing can be.  This is a great way to practice signing using repetition because babies love to hear the same book over and over.

The other benefits of signing with books include:

• Increased imagination of the child.

• Adds rich meaning to reading, making it a fun and inviting experience.
• Associates reading with positive experiences and opportunities for a shared experience for mom, dad and siblings.
• Encourages the child to be an ACTIVE participant: the child is involved in the PROCESS of reading while you point out words and they SIGN along with the book.

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FLEX Learning is delivered by professional, trained teachers who use assessment results to select the materials and activities that create a fun, challenging and safe learning experience. The result is a confident learner who is ready for school!

The key elements of FLEX Learning are:
1. Developmental guidelines, state standards and formative assessments;
2. Child-focused lesson plans from the Goddard Curriculum Guide;
3. Creative and fun learning environment; and
4. Child-centered learning and teachable moments for a personalized approach

FLEX Learning incorporates seven core, academically accepted learning domains. These are the standard learning domains that are included in most state guidelines for quality early childhood education and are part of the curriculum requirements for most accreditations. The domains are:
1. personal and social development;
2. language and literacy;
3. mathematical thinking;
4. scientific thinking (including technology);
5. social studies;
6. creative expression; and
7. physical development.