Have a fun time promoting literacy at your child care program or school by having a “Storybook Character Parade“. This is a fun opportunity to allow children to come to school in costume, and can be done at any time of the year. Beforehand, talk to the children about some of their favorite books and characters. Ask them why a certain character is a
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This post will be short because I am very much interested in how our blog-followers feel about this topic. It is a subject that came up at our monthly Directors gathering and sparked strong opinions and feelings. In our state of Connecticut, we are struggling with the ability to offer quality preschool programming toALL children. For years and multiple administrations, our state and local governments
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Yesterday I attended a meeting that consisted of Early Childhood Program Directors in our area. Although it is sometimes hard to leave my center to attend these meetings I always feel a sort of jump-start when I return. I’m sure that many of you Directors out there feel as though you are being pulled in a thousand directions most days. If only you had
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We have been “down on the farm” at preschool these past few weeks, and one of the favorite activities for the children was getting to milk a cow! Ok, not a real cow – but a really cool wooden cow! This was a great way to teach the children about cows and where milk comes from. Children learn best by doing … and they
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We received another question from a reader for our Parenting Expert, Bill Corbett. This is an issue that many parents and caregivers deal with during the toddler years … BITING. What is the best way to handle this? Here is the original question: Hi Bill, A close friend of mine is having some issues with her 2 year old biting. I am writing to you
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The following post is from Colleen Brunetti … our Early Literacy Expert. She will be doing a series of posts on early literacy for preschoolers. Since this ties in so nicely with our recent Book Study Blog party of the book “Literacy Beginnings” (Fountas & Pinnell, 2011), I’ll interject a couple of quotes from the book along the way! –Laura Choosing high quality children’s literature is an important part
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Preschools and elementary schools around the country can join in to help set a book reading record by participating in Jumpstart’s Read for the Record Campaign on October 6, 2011. The purpose of this event is to spread awareness of the importance of early childhood literacy. The goal is to set a new World Record for the most people reading the same book on the same day. And, much to
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When planning a theme on apples, it is a good opportunity to teach about life cycles and plant growth. Depending on your location, a field trip to a local apple orchard is a wonderful hands-on experience for young children to see where fruit (apples) come from. However, when a field trip is not feasible, you can try to bring the apple orchard to your
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Yay – I’m excited to be nominated for a blog award from a favorite blogger of mine, Ayn from Little Illuminations! The Versatile Blogger Award is a way for bloggers to recognize each other’s work – and I am glad to be in such good company! I do share this blog with my partner and friend, Tressa – and hopefully our experience as a preschool
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During this past summer our board made the decision to expand and add a new infant room for 4 children. This came in reaction to a huge need in our area for more quality infant care. As a director, I was thrilled to be granted the opportunity to expand and was ready for the challenge of creating a new room from the ground up.
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