Connecting the Dots Between Infant Temperament and Future Success

• August 18, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

What factors will ultimately determine a child’s ability to succeed in life? While measures like socioeconomic status might allow a child to start off on the right foot, current research is delving into the nature of temperament and how that affects a person’s ability to successfully navigate life’s many challenges.   If temperament is pre-determined, there’s not much a parent can do, but if nurture plays a role, then how can parents help their child have the best quality of life?

While temperament has long been thought of as something innate, recent research has demonstrated that only some aspects are genetic, while others are environmental.

On the genetic side, as any parent will agree, much of an individual’s personality manifests very early on in the infant’s life. Parents with more than one child often note that one of their children seems easygoing from day one, but another child is demanding. One child may be outgoing and social, while their sibling may be more shy or withdrawn.

As we consider how these seemingly innate traits develop, we cannot ignore the fact that the environment – from parental attention to nutrition – exerts a strong influence on a child’s personality development. Current research tells us that a pregnant mother’s iron levels can affect the disposition of her child. Emerging data gleaned from animal research indicates that the quality of maternal parenting styles, such as the way a mother nurses her infants or the amount of maternal grooming, affects the temperament of her offspring.

An interesting question arises: How do these early manifestations play out as the child matures? For example, will an infant who is able to self-calm herself in stressful situations by turning away from aversive stimuli or sucking her thumb, for example, continue to exhibit self-regulatory behaviors as she gets older?

Considering the interplay between innate versus cultivated aspects of temperament, what actions can a parent take to affect the development of a child’s personality to give that child the best chance at personal satisfaction, academic achievement and successful relationships later in life? As the above research – and our own parental gut instincts – suggest, we can set them up by providing:

• Excellent nutrition
• Logical, predictable rules for living with others
• Optimal environments and schedules for sleep
• Lots of interactive play with family and friends
• Less screen time
• Lots and lots of parental love and affection

 

With parents providing these positive factors for their children, every child – from shy to outgoing, from tense to easygoing – will have the best chance at developing a balanced temperament as they mature.

For further study, read: Child Temperament and Parenting, by Samuel Putnam (University of Oregon), Ann Sanson (University of Melbourne), Mary Rothbart (University of Oregon). 

References:

Feder, A; Nestler, EJ; Charney, DS.  Psychobiology and molecular genetics of resilience.  Nature Reviews  Neuroscience 10 (2009) 446 – 457

Related Reading:

Building a Foundation for School Readiness for Low Income Children

The Magical Combination of Love and Limits: Tips for Teaching Positive Behavior

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, behavior, brain development, cognitive skills, decision making, early learning, how children learn, infant brain, Innate abilities, learning environment, learning through play, play

Changing the Culture of Poverty by Doing Whatever It Takes

• July 28, 2011 by Cory Armes

Recently, while driving down the street, I saw this billboard:

While that may be a bit extreme, education has been evolving to better meet the needs of today's students, since many children have not been successful with the system employed in years past.  Oftentimes, the majority of these students ‘lost in the system’ were those born into poverty.

Research studies done over the last few decades on the impact of poverty on learning have established that the majority of children born into low income families enter school significantly behind their more affluent peers in language¹, cognitive skills (memory, attention, etc.) and noncognitive skills (patience, ability to follow directions, self confidence, etc.)^2, as well as general learning experiences. Even with special programs designed to develop and strengthen these skills, the improvements typically last only as long as the programs; there is little long-term impact on academic success without ongoing effort and support systems in place.

Geoffrey Canada was a child who began life in poverty, but his situation was unique--he had an educated mother who was determined to keep her children out of the typical downward spiral of failure. Canada determined to do something that would impact children in poverty and his efforts have been chronicled in the book Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough.

Canada's target area has been central Harlem.  From the start, he knew that significant changes had to be made in family practices from birth and beyond to give these children a chance at success. He believed that if he began with the final outcome he wanted to achieve, and then determined what was needed to realize that goal, he could create a process to change the cycle of poverty.  With the help of many people, he has created a continuous, cohesive and comprehensive system designed to change the overall culture of the area.  This neighborhood ‘safety net’ is called the Harlem Children’s Zone.

The Harlem Children’s Zone began with efforts to improve parenting skills that would help mothers and fathers work on educational skills with their infants and toddlers.  Over time, additional programs have been added to provide extensive support from birth to kindergarten so these children would be prepared for school in a way that few Harlem children had ever been in the past.  For children that have reached “school age”, the provision of extra time in the classroom to focus on individual needs has set the Harlem Children’s Zone apart from other well-meaning efforts.  And now, the Harlem Children’s Zone model has moved beyond Harlem, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announcing last week that some of his state’s cities will begin using Canada’s community-based approach.

Children who learn critical skills at an early age are better able to master more complex skills later.  The best way to escape poverty is through education, and that education must begin at birth – or before.  The Harlem Children’s Zone has shown that if you provide the key skills needed to offset the disadvantages of a child’s birthplace, you may be able to remove the seemingly insurmountable obstacles seen in the cycle of poverty of the past.  Truly, we all must be willing to do whatever it takes.

References:

Paul Tough, Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009)

1 Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: P.H. Brookes, 1995). 

2 James Heckman, “Lessons from the Bell Curve,” Journal of Political Economy 103, no. 5 (October 1995).

Related Reading:

Limiting Young Children’s Screen Time for Long-Term Health

Engaging Children in the World with Words

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Categories: Education Trends, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, achievement gap, at-risk, below grade level, cognitive skills, early learning, emotions in learning, language learning, learning environment, learning through play, oral language skills, toddler, vocabulary

The Need for Physically Active Learning

• July 7, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

The human mind is most engaged to react and perform at optimal capacity when our hearts are pumping and our blood is flowing. Any athlete will tell you that he or she feels most alive and sharp when they are in the midst of the contest, heart beating hard, mind alert and ready. Given the interconnected nature of how our brains and bodies function, how the brain gets more oxygen and works better when the heart is pumping, it’s easy to see that we are designed not only to learn, but to think best “on our feet.”

In fact, this concept extends far beyond circulation alone; physical activity has been shown to have substantive affects on brain chemistry. In 2003, Sibley and Etnier demonstrated that, for 4-18 year-olds, exercise positively impacts perception skills, IQ, achievement, verbal and math scores, development and academic readiness.^[i] Exercise can affect the release of neurotransmitters key to the learning process, such as norepinephrine (which increases blood flow to skeletal muscles as well as to the brain) and acetylcholine (which can slow the heart rate and contribute to sustained attention).

With these concepts in mind, now imagine the modern classroom. The average student sits for hours a day usually sitting still.  She shouldn’t stand up and stretch, or worse, walk around the classroom. (For goodness sake, that’s distracting to the other students and disrespectful to the teacher.) Physical education programs are getting cut due to shrinking budgets, and recess time is being cut to create more opportunities for test preparation. Obesity and diabetes are dangerously on the rise. Since the early 1970s, the number of overweight students has quadrupled from four percent to seventeen percent. (American Heart Association)

In general, the classroom becomes a place where we expect students to focus the mind and quiet the body. What we’re learning is that this is just not necessarily the best way to go. A new trend in classroom management is bringing this tradition into question. Through what is becoming known as “physically active learning,” educators are not only experimenting with integrating more physical activity into classroom lessons, but they are generating positive results.

According to Jena Mee, a physical education and school health education consultant for the Department of Education, “Research is showing us very persuasively that if students exercise for sustained periods of time before they do challenging work, they perform cognitive tasks better, they remember things better, they can apply their skills better.”^[ii]

In theory, the idea is to break up lessons with short breaks of physical activity that get students up out of their seats and moving around the room. According to eSchool News, “The approach also has been shown to improve attendance and student behavior and reduce discipline referrals.”

As educators under pressure to maximize student academic performance, we often focus on the material and forget that our real goal is to help the whole child. This research is just one more reminder that we need to attend to the body as well as the mind. If we can do both, we will help our students become all that much more successful.

While the research is still developing, you can get the story as reported this past May on eschoolnews.com.

And if you want to explore one idea to bring more physical activity into your classroom, how about using exercise balls instead of chairs?

[i] Sibley B.A. and Etnier J.L. (2003). The relationship between physical activity and cognition in children: a meta- analysis. Pediatric Exercise Science, 15:243-256.

[ii] ‘Physically active learning’ improves test scores, sharpens concentration. eSchool News. May 16, 2011.

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: attention, behavior, cognitive skills, effort, elementary school learning, emotions in learning, exercise, health and well being, how children learn, learning environment, learning through play, memory, motivating students, physical education, play, self-esteem, student growth, teacher impact

Limiting Young Children’s Screen Time for Long-Term Health

• June 1, 2011 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

Technology, in the form of videos, television, computers, tablets, and video games increasingly dominates our entertainment time.  In the United States, there are videos and other technology products available for children as young as a few months old. For many, as soon as babies have the coordination to sit up by themselves, we have them looking to screens for entertainment. The success of these videos geared towards babies and toddlers speaks to our growing parental dependence upon screens to entertain our children.

The problem is that, while this media does entertain our children and can even be educational, too much can create serious, lasting issues. According to the Mayo Clinic, too much screen time can lead to obesity, irregular sleep, behavioral problems, reduced play time (obviously), and other problems. (See Children and TV: Limiting your child's screen time, Mayo Clinic.)

So, living in this modern, media-addicted world, what are some ways to that we can mediate appropriate access to technology?

 

1. Limit time. Pediatricians recommend that toddlers continue to limit TV time and exposure to baby videos.  A little time each day (1/2 hour to an hour), especially before dinner, when your child may become cranky or your need to do chores or prepare the meal, will probably not be detrimental.
2. Choose educational content. Try to find age appropriate educational programming on PBS. Public broadcast companies work very hard with child development experts to make certain their content is appropriate and beneficial for young audiences.
3. Avoid highly commercial programming. This is a tough one, but the commercials on network television can “glorify” toys that your child really does not need, and create expectations around “buying” new toys that are neither necessary nor constructive for your child. As your child gets older and plays with other children, which you do want to encourage, he will probably be exposed to plenty of commercial television. This is your chance to keep it to a minimum, at least in these formative young years. 
4. Unplug your toddler to free their creativity. Try to avoid toddler computers and electronic books for children this age. A one to two year old needs to master walking, running and climbing as well as speech and language. Electronic books, toys and games do so much on their own that they leave little opportunity for your child to “invent” new ways to play with them or new things to do.

In the grander scheme, it comes down to a question of time. Every minute of childhood spent in front of a screen is a minute not spent doing other things. Imagine what those “other things” could be: playing outside; riding a bike; building a castle out of rocks and twigs; reading a book; creating a piece of art.

The more mindfully we can help our children manage their time when it comes to screens and how that balances with their other activities, the better off they will be in the long run.

Related Reading:

Fun Science Experiments for Classroom or Home

Fit Bodies Make Fit Brains: Physical Exercise and Brain Cells

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Attend one of our popular webinars with thought leaders in learning. Live and pre-recorded webinars are available. Register today!

Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: behavior, exercise, health and well being, learning through play, play, student growth, technology in education, toddler

Antidotes to Summer Brain Drain (Part 2): 5 Ways to Pull the Plug on Learning Loss

• May 5, 2011 by Norene Wiesen

Last month Terri Zezula doled out tips for math skills practice over the summer.  But what about keeping up in reading and “staying in shape” for learning? 

Here are 5 more ways you can help your child stay sharp over the summer:

1. Read, Read, Read…and Understand

   If your child is working on basic reading skills such as phonics and decoding, provide plenty of opportunities to read silently and aloud.  Generate excitement about reading by helping your child create a reading list at the beginning of the summer.  Ask for recommendations from your child’s teacher and friends and from the children’s librarian at your local library.  If reading is a struggle for your child, take turns reading a story to each other.  Talk about the story.  Ask your child questions—what might happen next, and why?  What does your child think about what has happened so far? 

   If your child is good at decoding, broadening her exposure to life may be the key to improving reading comprehension^[i].  Find creative ways to associate new experiences with reading—such as pairing a field trip with a book.  After a trip to an art museum during which your teenager is taken by Matisse, visit the library for a book about Paris in the 20’s.  Or visit an observatory and follow up by reading about the constellations; then, take your child out into the dark night and see if you can identify the constellations yourselves.

2. Take Up a Musical Instrument

   Decades ago, families gathered in the evening to play music together.  Revive the tradition!  However poorly you might play, you’ll have fun together and stimulate your child’s brain to develop in beneficial ways.

   Research has shown that actively playing a musical instrument has positive effects on the brain.  In one study, six months of formal musical training resulted in positive changes for participants, such as improved perception of pitch in spoken language and improved processing of speech. The study authors concluded that a relatively short period of brain training—just 6 months—can have a significant, positive impact on the organization of children’s brains.

3. Cultivate a Growth Mindset

   Regardless of your child’s ability, the right attitude is essential in fostering risk-taking behavior and perseverance in learning. Research has shown that learners with a “growth mindset” who believe that their ability is fluid and that life is filled with opportunity thrive on new and challenging experiences, while those who believe their ability is fixed and unchanging are more likely to balk at challenges.

   To help your child develop a growth mindset:

   • Explain that the brain develops new neural connections in response to challenging learning experiences.
   • Give your child a challenge, and provide support by praising effort and progress rather than intelligence.
   • Model a growth mindset for your child – take on a challenging learning opportunity of your own and be up front when you encounter difficulties.  Talk with your child about how you plan to overcome obstacles that you encounter, and then follow through.
4. Give Your Child Stronger “Learning Muscles”

   All learning takes place on a foundation of critical cognitive skills, including memory, attention, processing, and sequencing.  A child must be able to hold information in working memory in order to complete all the steps in a multi-step task, and to stay focused on the task long enough to complete it.  A child’s brain must be able to process information rapidly enough to keep up with new incoming information, and to put all the elements in the right order to comprehend and use that information.

   Fun, web-enabled learning programs like BrainPro® software with consulting (for learners who are below grade level and need some extra help) can help strengthen your child’s cognitive skills to accelerate learning.  Learners using these programs typically improve up to 2 years in reading level in just 12 weeks and often see improvements in other subjects that rely on reading as well, such as math and social studies.

5. Unstructured Play

   While it’s easy to write off summer vacation as downtime from learning, it’s important to remember the importance of unstructured play in a child’s development.  Summertime can provide your child the freedom and opportunity to grow and explore in ways not possible during the busy, and often over-scheduled, academic year.

   Your child uses play to develop a host of important characteristics such as self-confidence and creativity, as well as social skills like negotiation and working in groups.  Opportunities for active, physical play set the groundwork for lifelong healthy habits and promote physical well-being.  Physical activity is an effective way for the body to rid itself of the stress hormones^[ii] that build up during the challenges of daily life.  Make time for play.

6. [i] Strauss, Valerie. Active Summer, Active Minds: Educators Seek Ways to Prevent Learning Losses During Vacation. Monday, June 15, 2009.

   [ii] Cotman CW, Berchtold NC. Exercise: a behavioral intervention to enhance brain health and plasticity. Trends in Neurosciences.  2002; 25(6):295-301. doi:10.1016/S0166-2236(02)02143-4

   Related Reading:

   5 Reasons You Should Limit Screen Time

   Fit Bodies Make Fit Brains: Physical Exercise and Brain Cells

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: arts, auditory processing, child reading development, cognitive skills, emotions in learning, exercise, health and well being, how children learn, learning environment, learning through play, learning to read, literacy, motivating students, musical training, oral language skills, play, reading comprehension

Antidotes to Summer Brain Drain (Part 1): Tips and Tools for Fun Math Skills Practice

• April 5, 2011 by Terri Zezula

Every year, educators work hard to help their students learn as much as possible, squeezing in all the high-value knowledge they can. But come summer vacation, a solid percentage of that learning is lost as students walk away from school and get anywhere from six to twelve weeks to forget about the pressures of school and just go and be kids.

So, what can we do to minimize summer brain drain while still giving kids the break they need?

Since most kids backslide in math more than they do in reading (2.6 months of grade level equivalency, on average[i]), many parents welcome ideas for keeping math skills afloat without drowning the summer spirit.  Fortunately, with a little creativity, fun opportunities to practice math skills abound.

Look for ways to incorporate math into everyday activities.  Let your child pay with cash at the store.  Or have your child figure out the tip at a restaurant – without a calculator. Include your child in figuring out how much fabric you need to make curtains.  Bake together—and double the recipe, or halve it, letting your child figure out what the new measurements are for each ingredient.

If your child enjoys reading, add some math books to her summer reading list.  Your middle or high school student might enjoy the classic Flatland, a story that takes place entirely in two physical dimensions.  If you have an advanced math learner on your hands, she might be willing to give The Manga Guide to Calculus a try.  (There are additional Manga titles on Physics, Statistics, Molecular Biology, and other advanced subjects.)  Learners in middle school or the upper elementary grades may be interested in Math Curse. Math Fables is good for very young children (K – 1), while The Grapes of Math is more appropriate for ages 6 – 10 and Math Potatoes for grades 3-6.

For the child who loves computer games, Math Playground is a web site with free multimedia math games for elementary through middle school students.  The games on Math Playground are not indexed by grade level and the site features a lot of advertising, but the games are free & reasonably entertaining. In MathHoops, kids can solve word problems for a chance to shoot some hoops (this game does specify grades 3 - 5).  There’s a “need help” button for tips on how to translate the word problem into math steps (e.g., “key words like ‘more’ tell you to add”).

The X Detectives lets kids play secret agent, driving around a training compound in the “X-mobile” to work on skills in four different locations, such as negative numbers in the Integer Room and algebra puzzles in the Gadget Shop.  Party Designer requires kids to use algebraic reasoning to design a party floor plan. 

As Thomas Haller and Chick Moorman note in their article Summer Brain Drain: Tips to Help Your Child Avoid Summer Brain Drain, the key is balancing learning with fun.  They suggest a multitude of ways to practice academic skills while enjoying summer recreational activities.  Be sure to check out the article for ideas about how to incorporate math while playing in the pool, taking a road trip, playing card games, and collecting money for charity.  Perhaps the best advice is to model learning for your child by turning off the TV or video games and picking up a book or taking an art class.  Even if your kids don’t avoid the summer brain drain – you will!

If you enjoyed this post on avoiding the Summer Brain Drain, be sure to sign up to receive future posts in your inbox and be sure to catch Part 2 later this month!

Related Reading:

Fun Science Experiments for Classroom or Home

Fit Bodies Make Fit Brains: Physical Exercise and Brain Cells
 

[i] Strauss, Valerie. Active Summer, Active Minds: Educators Seek Ways to Prevent Learning Losses During Vacation. Monday, June 15, 2009.

 

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Categories: Education Trends, Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: brain drain, brain training, creativity, elementary school learning, high school learning, how children learn, learning through play, math, middle school learning, play, technology in education

3 Fun Brain Activities for Kids

• March 17, 2011 by Josefina Rodriguez

Have you ever stopped to think about your brain and all the amazing things that it does?  For a three-pound tangle of nerve tissue, it is a brilliant bit of biology.  It keeps you alive and well and is literally the command center of your body.

Today, we are learning how to use our brains in ways never thought possible.  Just a few short decades ago, it was believed that the brain’s capacity was ‘fixed’ early in life and not able to change.  Now that research proves differently, what will the human brain’s potential look like a hundred years from now?  Two-hundred years from now?  The possibilities are truly endless.

In celebration of this three-pound organ that does so much for us every day, I decided to share some fun activities to help you learn more about the brain and its incredible capabilities. Here are some of my favorites!

Brain Games:  Test your memory, play a round of Neuro-Jeopardy, try an On-line Response Time Experiment, and take the Hidden Brain Challenge. 

Sleep and Dreaming Experiments -  Check out some activities around keeping a dream journal and learn how to find out how long it takes for you to fall asleep!

Creative Writing Projects – Write some brain poems, songs or a “brainy” newspaper.  Learn something new about the brain and then write about it.

To learn more about Brain Awareness Week, check out The Dana Foundation, which is the official website for Brain Awareness Week, March 14-20.

Related Reading:

What Every Parent Should Know About Their Baby’s Developing Brain (Part 1)

Adolescence: What’s the Brain Got to Do with It?

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Categories: Brain Fitness

Tags: brain training, learning through play, play, science

Teaching Creativity in the Classroom

• March 1, 2011 by Sherrelle Walker, M.A.

Think about the workplace of tomorrow. What skills need to be developed in today’s students so that we can ensure their maximum success? While we might not know what their jobs will look like, we do know that tomorrow’s professionals will need to be adaptable, effective learners, and able to think critically and creatively.

To focus on one of these skills, how can we effectively teach creativity in the classroom?  More often than not, we teach students patterned thinking. We rarely focus on teaching them to break out from patterns. But we must.

Edward de Bono, author of sixty-two books, has spent his career pursuing this very subject. His books, Lateral Thinking: Creativity Step by Step (1973), Six Thinking Hats (1999) and Six Frames for Thinking About Information (2008) amongst others, have become well-known tools for teaching people how to liberate their creative brains. For us as teachers, Lateral Thinking offers wonderful, concrete methods and tools we can use in the classroom.

Many of De Bono’s exercises do what I think of as “de-emphasizing the context” to teach students to think freely outside the box. They present students with situations free of context and ask them to work with raw information to create the context from nothingness.

In one example, he describes how a teacher shows his students a photo of people dressed in street clothes wading through water at a beach (p. 81). The teacher then asks the students to come up with interpretations as to what is going on in the picture. The teacher has de-emphasized the context; the crux of the activity is to develop the context using their imaginations.

In this situation, de Bono says that students might respond by saying that the picture shows a group of people caught by the tide, or a group crossing a flooded river, or people wading out to a ferry boat which cannot come to shore, or people coming ashore from a wrecked boat.

The fact that the photo is actually of a group of people protesting at a beach is completely irrelevant. The author stresses that the right answer is not important; generating as many interpretations as possible is. The teacher has created a safe, controlled environment and activity where students are encouraged to think outside the box and exercise creative habits of mind, free from qualitative judgment. He even goes on to suggest that if a student comes up with a particularly unfeasible interpretation, the teacher should not judge, but continue to question the student until the context for the interpretation becomes clear, encouraging cultivation of the student's creative skill.

Now, imagine how developing this kind of skill might help a student succeed in other areas. What if they were in a physics class and asked to design a car that ran on the power of a rubber band? What if they were asked to write a poem in an English class? In establishing the “habit” of thinking creatively, we have a great opportunity to affect any number of areas in our students’ lives.

At Scientific Learning, we talk a lot about improving skills through brain fitness exercises that help develop pathways and establish patterns in the brain to help transform students into more effective readers and learners. In this same vein, we as educators can help our students develop patterns and strategies for thinking creatively, a skill that will surely serve them well as they move forward into their unwritten futures.

To learn more about Edward de Bono and his work visit http://www.edwarddebono.com.

Related Reading:

Building Unstructured Play Into the Structure of Each Day

Teaching and Learning with Intent through Guided Reading Activities

 

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading & Learning

Tags: academic success, arts, creativity, how children learn, learning through play, motivating students, teacher impact

The Speech and Language Connection: The Nursery Rhyme Effect (Part 2)

• December 30, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D

In my November blog post, I shared information about how speech and language develop and also spoke about the importance of nursery rhymes.  This month, we are going to continue the discussion about the teaching tools of nursery rhymes for young children.

Sounds are one of the many teaching tools of nursery rhymes. They also teach word order, grammar, and rhythm. Each of the content words– Peter, Piper pickled, peppers, picked, and peck are repeated four times each. But to build an appreciation of the flexibility of word order, each repetition puts the words in a different position.  The subject noun Peter Piper, is repeated four times in the subject noun position, but two of those times it comes early in a phrase and twice it comes later. Pickled peppers, an object noun phrase, occurs twice after the verb pick, which is what we would expect, and twice before the verb. These are all grammatical sentences, so the child is not being exposed to language that is incorrect or inappropriate. But what a joy for a child, who is trying desperately to learn how to order words into sentences, to realize that part of the joy of language is the variety and flexibility. Language is not just about meaning (how many two years olds care about what at “peck” is) but about sound, rhythm, rhyming, and variation.

                Little Miss Muffet

                Sat on a tuffet

                Eating her curds and whey

                Along came a spider

                Who sat down beside her

                And frightened Miss Muffet away

In this nursery rhyme different, but at the same time early sound patterns are emphasized. The phoneme /m/ is one of the easiest for a child to produce and in this rhyme is contrasted with the /s/ in spider and  sat as well as the /t/.which ends sat and starts and ends tuffet. Never mind that the average two or three year old will have no idea what the words tuffet, curds, or whey actually mean. Nursery rhymes are not so much about vocabulary as they are about the rules of combining sounds into words, rhyming, and alliteration (all prerequisite to phonological awareness which is going to lead to the ability to phonically decode words in a few years.) That fact that our language contains words we do not understand does not limit our ability to enjoy language. And introducing your youngster to that knowledge will enhance her curiosity about words and the magic of language.

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: early learning, emotions in learning, how children learn, language learning, learning through play, oral language skills, phonemic awareness, toddler, vocabulary

Sing the Alphabet Backwards Sometimes: Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness Activities

• November 30, 2010 by Norene Wiesen

In Kindergarten, phonemic awareness skills acquisition is a focal point in language and reading development.  Kindergarten phonemic awareness challenges  include memorizing the consonant sounds that are associated with each letter of the alphabet and learning to detect the part of a word where a specific consonant sound is heard.

Your Kindergarteners can practice honing their phonemic awareness skills with some of these activities available via the Web:

Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness Activities from PBS Kids

PBS Kids offers several fun online games that even young children can play to develop phonemic awareness skills:

Elmo Rhymes

Elmo shows the child a selection of objects on the shelves of a closet.  He names one of the objects and asks the child to select all of the items in the closet that rhyme with the named object.  As the child mouses over an object, Elmo says the name of the object.

Pounce

The child hears a short word spoken and is asked to look at three written words and click on the word that he heard.  The child gets multiple chances to get it right, and after making a correct match, sees the written word next to a picture of the named object.

Fuzzy Lion Ears

The child sees a picture and a word label for the picture.  A letter is missing from the word.  It is the child’s task to select the missing letter from three letters provided.  The game also provides a little help: the child can mouse over several letters to hear the sound each one makes before selecting an answer.  

Alphabet Chant from EFL Playhouse

While the website is geared toward teachers of English Language Learners, the Alphabet Chant is appropriate as a general classroom Kindergarten phonemic awareness activity. The chant is designed to be fun, can be incorporated into the classroom in just 5-10 minutes, and over time helps young learners associate letters with sounds.

Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness Activities from “Patti’s Classroom”

From Los Angeles County Office of Education, “Patti’s Electronic Classroom” (http://teams.lacoe.edu/documentation/classrooms/patti/k-1/activities/phonemic.html)  provides many resources for teachers of students in grades K-3—including a selection of kindergarten phonemic awareness activities:

• Word rhyming
• Syllable segmentation
• Beginning sound substitution
• Sound isolation
• Phonemic segmentation

Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness Activities from SaskEd

Books and Language Play (link updated 04/02/2012)

These phonemic awareness activities from SaskEd encourage the use of books and songs that rhyme as well as tongue twisters, alliteration, and other types of language play.  The end of the article features a list of books for young children that highlight language play.

Graphophonic Strategies and Activities (link updated 04/02/2012)

In addition to the book list and language play suggestions, SaskEd’s graphophonic strategies and activities are perfect for helping kindergarteners discover the alphabetic principle, the idea that each letter of the alphabet is associated with one or two sounds.  Activities include making and reading one-letter books and a fun challenge to sing the alphabet backwards sometimes.

Have fun with these phonemic awareness activities and help your Kindergarteners begin to develop a lifelong enjoyment of language and reading and become a successful reader.

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning

Tags: child reading development, cognitive skills, early learning, elementary school learning, how children learn, learning through play, learning to read, phonemic awareness, phonics