20 Books That Teach Kids How Important Names Are

Here are 20 books that teach kids about the importance of names.

1. The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi

2. Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal

3. You Stole My Name by Dennis McGregor

4. Hello, My Name is Ruby by Philip C. Stead

5. My Name is Elizabeth! by Annika Dunklee, illustrated by Matthew Forsythe

6. My Name Is Yoon by Helen Recorvits, illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska

7. My Name is Bilal by Asma Mobin-Uddin, illustrated by Barbara Kiwak

8. Andy, That’s My Name by Tomie DePaola

9. Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow, illustrated by Luisa Uribe

10. A, My Name is Alice by Jane Baye

11. How Nivi Got Her Names by Laura Deal, illustrated by Charlene Chua

12. My Name is María Isabel by Alma Flor Ada, illustrated by K. Dyble Thompson

13. My Name is Sangoel by Karen Williams and Khadra Mohammed, illustrated by Catherine Stock

14. Always Anjali by Sheetal Sheth, illustrated by Jessica Blank

15. A Porcupine Named Fluffy by Helen Lester

16. The Day of Ahmed’s Secret by Florence Parry Heide and Judith Heide Gilliland, illustrated by Ted Lewin

17. Yoko Writes Her Name by Rosemary Wells

18. Cloud and Wallfish by Anne Nesbet

19. My Name is Not Isabella by Jennifer Fosberry

20. My Name is Wakawakaloch! by Chana Stiefel

How To Get My Child Ready For Kindergarten

For a young child who hardly ever spends time away from their parents, going to kindergarten can seem like an incredibly daunting task. For this reason, it is no surprise that some kids throw a tantrum when realizing that they will be left alone at school with complete strangers. 

However, there are a few ways that you can prepare your kid for the world of kindergarten. In this article, we will be discussing three tips that you can use to get your child ready for the first level of schooling. 

Focus On Self-Help Skills

Since you will not be around to help your child with every task, you must teach them a few self-help skills. With that being said, you should not expect your child to walk into kindergarten alone or even prepare their own school bags without supervision. 

Instead, ensure that they can do very basic things without assistance, including wiping their face after eating or blowing their nose. 

Also, many shy children struggle to ask for help from adults or children they do not know, so make sure that your child feels comfortable doing this before sending them off to kindergarten

Teach Your Child Responsibility

You must start teaching your kid some form of responsibility before their first day. There are various ways that this can be done.

For example, ask your child to fill their own water bottle or help you make their lunch. Even though it may be easier for you to complete these tasks, it is good for them to have the responsibility. 

Develop Your Child’s Basic Skills

During your child’s kindergarten years, they are likely to learn a few basic skills, such as drawing, identifying different shapes and colors, etc. 

Giving your child a headstart on these things can make the idea of kindergarten less daunting for them. 

While they are bored at home, give them some paper and allow them to get creative. You could also read a few books to your child to develop their basic listening and speaking skills. Also, it could be helpful to point out various colors and shapes when you can. 

Concluding Thoughts

There are various steps that you can take to get your child ready for kindergarten. For starters, you should develop your child’s basic skills and teach them some level of responsibility. Also, focus on their self-help skills by teaching them how to do certain things on their own.

Overcoming the Hurdles Of Teaching Your Child To Tie Their Shoes

Learning to tie their shoes is a rite of passage every child has to go through. However, when it comes to teaching the process to your child, adults can get a little frustrated because the process has become second nature to them.  

However, parents are not the only ones who get frustrated when learning this crucial life skill. That means that two people are frustrated, and that makes for a tense situation.

How do you overcome the hurdles of teaching your child to tie their shoes? We have some great ideas on that, but first, let’s talk about that frustration. 

Why Is It So Frustrating?

There are several reasons your child feels frustrated when trying to learn how to tie their shoes. The biggest reason is the fact that the task requires their fine motor skills to be top-notch. This may be a problem, as most small children are still developing these skills. 

This may be why the most popular way to teach children is to use the two-loop method. It is the easiest way to tie their shoes and requires fewer fine motor skills

Do This, Do That

On top of that, the instruction of the process becomes a “do this, do that” situation, and this can confuse the youngster’s mind. You can overcome this by breaking the steps down and using very specific words in these steps. 

Instead of doing this, you can say, “Grab one lace with your right and the other with your left hand.” Be as detailed as possible, and take the steps slowly. These two things will lessen your child’s frustration and yours, too!

Tips To Teach Your Child To Tie Their Shoes

There are even more ways you can make this process less frustrating, and there are a few things that you can do to reduce the stress and difficulty so that your child has a good experience. Above all else, make sure you are prepared with multiple methods to tie their shoes. 

If the child has difficulties with one method, you can always try a different one. You can even find a method that you don’t know how to do, and then it will be like the two of you are learning at the same time. 

As for physical things you can do to make the process easier, you can make sure the shoelaces you are working with are soft and easy to hold. You can also use a marker to indicate where your child should hold the laces.

Concluding Thoughts

There are many options to help your child learn this skill. By taking your time to set everything up well and reduce limited frustrations, you will be able to overcome those hurdles when teaching your child to tie their shoes.

How Has the Nature of Kindergarten Changed Since the Era of Accountability?

Based on recent studies and reports, experts have identified that the nature of kindergarten has changed significantly since the era of accountability, but how has this change come about? 

These recent accounts have suggested that the pressures associated with accountability that we see in older grades have now essentially started to trickle down. This trickle-down effect has now started to reach early elementary grades, such as kindergarten

How Was This Change Observed?

In essence, this change was first observed after professors noticed an increased emphasis on education for very young children, to be more precise, children who were of kindergarten age. There has been a greater focus on literacy for children in that age group than in the times before the 1990s when that emphasis was much lower. 

The Paper That Signified This Change 

The paper that brought forth this change reflected on substantial and significant changes that can be seen in kindergarten classrooms over a prolonged period. The researchers took a sample of kindergarten classes and observed them from the year 1998 through the year 2006. It is important to note that all of this was done while utilizing data taken from two large, nationally representative sets. 

The Results Of the Study 

All of the measures of change in nature linked to the accountability pressures in kindergarten observed throughout this research were seen to have changed substantially within the years of research.  

Furthermore, the measures weren’t just observed to have changed, but they were also seen to change in a consistent direction with the heightened area of academic focus mentioned earlier. 

More specifically speaking, in the year that the research began (1998), the data from the two large sets showed that 31% of teachers in kindergarten classrooms were vocal about their belief that their students should begin to learn how to read in kindergarten, not after progressing to later grades. 

On the other end of the spectrum, in the ending year of the research (2006), researchers found that 65% of kindergarten teachers agreed with the statement made by the kindergarten teachers eight years earlier. 

Thus, time spent on children increasing literacy increased by over 25% over the years. Children spent around 7 hours studying compared to 5.5 hours spent by children to attain literacy in the early years of the study. 

You might have noticed a significant jump in the number of teachers who think this way. This is reflected by the fact that there has been a 25% increase in weekly exposure to literacy and subjects, such as science, physical education, social studies, and music, compared to the 1990s. 

Concluding Thoughts

Of course, how teachers think is always known to have a significant impact on their school system, and by extension, the kindergarten students in that system are impacted. In association with this change in thinking, it has been found that there has been a significant increase in time spent on literacy in kindergarten.

The Importance Of Language In Early Childhood

In the past couple of decades, emergent literacy has been largely discussed among experts as one of the most important for later development. Lasting from toddler to preschooler age, it involves introducing your children to letters and the basics of reading and helping them expand vocabulary.

According to numerous studies during these years, children learn thousands of different words by basic memorization and connecting these with pre-known concepts. One of the most essential points in early childhood language development is that kids tend to learn phrases by merely hearing and directly memorizing them.

With this in mind, it is essential to know how you as a parent can guide them through this period in a fun and effective way.

Focusing On Single Rules

One of the common cases, especially with learning languages that aren’t as verb-friendly (such as English), is that children take a specific rule and apply it to all the verbs they are familiar with. This results in the past tense for did being “doed” as they are quite confident that any past tense does end with the suffix “ed.” In these situations, you are the one who plays the essential role to correct them and explain that languages don’t call for overgeneralization.

Keep in mind that the same way children could learn and overgeneralize certain principles, they should be able to get familiar with the exceptions and start applying them in daily conversation.

Can Proximal Development Be Used For Teaching Children?

The scaffolding derived from Vygotsky’s theory of proximal development seems to be impressively effective in teaching children new words and grammar rules. 

It all comes down to guiding your children to acquire new knowledge by being more experienced and elaborate at certain words’ pronunciation. This can be applied to the examples above, and thus, when they say “I doed that,” you should continue the conversation by saying, “You did what?”. 

This stands as an effective and non-intrusive way of presenting them with new grammar rules and explaining that they shouldn’t be overgeneralizing certain principles. While you are still allowing them to figure out the right pronunciation, adequate guidance is the key to this approach.

The Importance Of Private Speech

Stimulating your children to rewind what they have learned on their own is one of the most entertaining ways for them to memorize words and grammar rules. This is something that adults do as well, and while it may not be as profound as conversations with other individuals, it is quite useful in terms of remembering or acquiring new concepts.

Concluding Thoughts

Language development in early childhood is an essential part of emergent literacy, which is why your guidance is so necessary. It all comes down to making learning new words and grammar rules a fun and engaging process.

Promoting Literacy In Early Education

Since the beginning of time, humans have used vocals and sounds to communicate with each other. As centuries and millennia passed, different languages were developed, and today, being multilingual is a valuable skill.

When a child is born, he/she is immediately exposed to learning a language – first in the form of listening and later in reading and writing. This is where a parent plays a huge role, as successful early development goes a long way for literacy later on. 

Children are all about connecting what they know with what they see, so allowing them to write and scribble is a great way to stimulate their interest. While it is clear that writing and reading are related to literacy, one might ask whether it is the same for listening and speaking? Absolutely!

The Importance Of Fluent Speaking

According to numerous studies, children who are strong in verbalizing their emotions and needs have an easier time learning how to write and read during elementary school. The main reason for this is that they can recognize vowels and consonants that comprise the word that they will be writing.

One of the best practices for literacy is “sound awareness,” through which children can point out sounds, letters, and phrases that they hear. 

Is There an Increased Risk For Certain Children?

Not everyone has the same opportunities. There is a gamut of social and health-related factors that can affect one’s ability to read and write. This includes disorders, such as autism, cerebral palsy, dyslexia, and even chronic ear infections, that hinder listening and speaking.

On the other hand, certain families simply cannot afford the needed equipment to teach their kids the basics of connecting speaking and listening with literacy. Also, there is a higher risk of illiteracy in children whose parents, grandparents, etc., are illiterate. 

One of the red flags that you should look out for is difficulty remembering words and letters. 

Immediate Reaction

The key to changing course and helping your child become literate is to react immediately by investing more energy into their learning. As parents, the first option is to engage your child in nursery rhymes, pointing at objects in books, talking to them about daily activities, or encouraging them to describe their experiences.

The second option is to hire a speech-language pathologist. They can work with older children, and they have designated methods for stimulating interest and improving one’s ability to read, speak, learn, and listen.

Concluding Thoughts

Literacy is the key to interpersonal communications and having a successful professional and private life. The importance of early development is immense, and the best way to achieve this is by engaging your child in reading, listening, speaking, and writing in a playful way every day.

40 Questions to Ask When Choosing Your Child’s Preschool

In six months or so, we plan to move my 4-year old son Matthias to a new preschool. We are looking for a location that is close to where we live, and that has a strong Kindergarten readiness curriculum. While jotting down the questions that we wanted to ask prospective preschools, we began to think that we should make them public. Below you will a list of 40 questions that we think you should ask when choosing your child’s preschool.

  1. What has been your response to Covid-19? What policies/protections do you have in place? How do you keep kids safe from infectious diseases?
  2. In what ways do you implement an anti-racist curriculum or resources into your existing curriculum?
  3. How important is diversity to your center’s teachers and administrators?
  4. Do you serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks?
  5. How do you prepare students for Kindergarten? Do you have a formal Kindergarten readiness curriculum?
  6. How are preliteracy and numeracy skills taught at your center?
  7. Can you tell us more about the school’s educational philosophy? Its overall curriculum?
  8. Do you have any longitudinal data on your students’ learning outcomes after they leave your center and enter Kindergarten? How about Kindergarten through 12-grade?
  9. Have any efficacy studies been done on the curriculum that you use?
  10. Is certification a prerequisite for employment at your center?
  11. What background checks do you run on prospective employees? Are they subject to criminal and child abuse checks? Do they undergo psychological and behavioral testing?
  12. What is your stance on the importance of male teachers in early childhood centers and elementary schools?
  13. Are you accredited and licensed by NAECY? The State of Virginia?
  14. Have there been any complaints made against your center or any of its staff in the last year? If so, can you provide us with a list?
  15. Can you provide us with a copy of your last NAECY Report?
  16. Can you provide us with a copy of your policies and procedures handbook?
  17. What are the racial demographics of your students and staff?
  18. What days/holidays are the center closed?
  19. What are your hours of operation?
  20. How long have you been in business?
  21. What will a typical day be like for my child?
  22. Do the children go outside? How often, and for how long?
  23. Do the children take naps? Where?
  24. What is your center’s approach to discipline?
  25. When and how are parents informed of discipline issues involving their child?
  26. How do you handle bullying or teasing?
  27. If I provide the food, are there any items that I can’t include?
  28. What is your policy on food allergies?
  29. What is your sick child policy?
  30. Are the toys and games and equipment sanitized periodically?
  31. How often is the play equipment inspected?
  32. What is the policy for visitors?
  33. What is your sign-in/sign-out procedure?
  34. Who is allowed to pick my child up?
  35. Do you have fire and emergency drills?
  36. Do you have a disaster plan in place? What’s the procedure in case of an emergency?
  37. What type of safety training do your teachers have
  38. Is everyone in the building trained in CPR and first aid?
  39. What is the student to teacher ratio?
  40. Who else is in the building?