To celebrate the new year I have had fun creating a list of 118 fun days to celebrate in 2018. The printable calendar offers a range of holidays, celebrations and festivals representing many different parts of the world, including days raising awareness for a range of important social and environmental issues, birthdays of some of […]
12 Verbal Literacy Games for Speaking, Listening & Thinking
I play a lot of verbal games with my girls, especially when we are travelling or waiting at appointments. Verbal games are great for developing speaking and listening skills, vocabulary, thinking and reasoning abilities and even social skills, such as turn taking. And the bonus is that we need nothing but our brains and our […]
Nurturing Curiosity
There is something about preschoolers, isn’t there? The questions fly thick and fast, sometimes too fast for a bewildered mama to keep up. ‘What’s that flashing light for Mummy?’ ‘How did that building get so tall Mummy?’ ”What are these bugs doing here Mummy?’ and on and on they go. Curiosity; seeing something for the first time, […]
Literacy Spot #12: Literacy in the Block Corner
I have spoken before about children having natural preferences for one type of play. Like Immy who turns everything play related into an imaginative game. I have also mentioned that as parents and educators we can extend our child’s play beyond that which they already know and love, you may remember this quote which I […]
Everyday Learning at Home
If you watch and listen carefully you will find lots of spontaneous opportunities for everyday learning all around your home. Like rainbows in the vegetable patch. Or delicious fresh corn that you grew yourself. Not to mention the plethora of creatures who reside there with you. And these everyday learning opportunities lead to lots of […]
Literacy Spot #11: Playing Library
Recently Immy asked if we could play visiting the library. Setting up our little library space was very simple, we simply used our existing bookshelf, books and table and decided to use two small blocks as a scanner and a stamp. We gathered together a few cloth bags to act as library bags for the […]
Learning to Read Part 2: Letter Sound Relationships
The following video blog is the second in this series discussing important components of early reading programs – letter-sound relationships. If you missed it, the first installment can be found here. For parents looking for ways to support the learning of letter sound relationships happening in the classroom, try the suggestions in these posts; Learning […]
Learning to Read: What Does a Good Reading Program Include?
As an early childhood teacher who has taught in the early grades of primary school ,the most rewarding part of my job was always working alongside the children as they began the exciting journey on the road to learning to read independently. This series of four short video blogs introduces the components which research tells […]
Baby Steps Online
This post is by regular contributor Cath Oehlman aka SquiggleMum. There’s no escaping the fact that technology is being introduced to our children earlier and earlier. My four year old daughter is already using an interactive white board (IWB) in her prep classroom and loves finding animal info online at home, while my two year […]
We Play: Link Up and Play With Us
Our collection of shells has come back into vogue this past week, maybe as it was on the breakfast table and Immy has enjoyed looking at and sorting through the shells as I prepare breakfast. There has been lots of matching, grouping, and talking about shapes, sizes, colours and patterns. We keep our shells in […]
