Day 6

Fun Fact for the Day: Today I am continuing to talk about reading. There are so many important areas that developing a working knowledge of reading and that concept will change the way that your child learns for life. Caroline Snow and her associates at Harvard University did a long-term study on home factors affecting literacy. Here are the factors that encourage childhood reading, ranked in order of their effect:

1. Home "literacy" environment: books, newspapers, attitudes
2. Mother's educational expectations of the child
3. Mother's own education
4. Parent-child interaction (side note...this means TALKING with your child)

The father's expectations and background apparently had no effect on reading, but they were important in promoting the child's development of writing skills.

It is important that reading is not just a once a day task. There are things all around our homes that we can use to teach reading. The guide channel on the TV, cereal boxes, magazines, mail, store signs, etc. We so often neglect what our children see on a daily basis and forget to use those things to teach a skill.

Tip of the Day: Write books with your child. At the earliest stage, when your child begins to play with crayons (around 12 months old) save the papers that they have drawn on and staple them together (3 or 4 tops at this age.) Sit down with them and make up a story about the "pictures" that they have drawn. Now...I do understand that at this age most of their "pictures" will be scribbles at best, but that does not matter. You are teaching your child that they are important, what they do is good and has meaning, not to mention all of the reading benefits that this activity has. As they get older and begin to draw real pictures, let them tell you the story and you can put the book together as a team. Now, you are encouraging not only reading, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, self esteem, quality time, but you are beginning to teach them the art of writing. As they begin to write letters, have them listen for the beginning sound on that page and write that letter at the top. For example: mom: "what is this?" child: "Boat" mom: "what sound do you hear, B-B-B-Boat?" child: "B" Mom: "good! Do you know how to write a B?"

You get the picture. Scaffold and model for your child, you will be amazed at how they will surprise you!

Sign for the Day: "Thank You"

The sign for "thank you" is made by touching your lips with the front of the fingers of your right hand.

Your hand should be an "open-b."

Move your hand away from your face, palms upward.

Smile.

Day 5

Fun Fact for the Day: Did you know that for most of history, reading out loud was MUCH more common than reading silently. It was the monks who first made known the art of reading silently. So, why in school have we slowly done away with read alouds? If you ask any reading specialist, they will tell you that read alouds are a very important component of any reading program. Yet, it is the first thing left out of the day when our day becomes busy with "teaching." Reading aloud to your baby is critical in the development of their imagination. Babies who are read to from an early age tend to go through the developmental stages quicker. Why? When we read to our baby, they begin to see the world as more than what they can touch at that exact moment. I remember when my daughter was about 18 months and I saw her acting out a scene from one of her favorite books while she was playing. She had now made that transference from what she was hearing and seeing in her books to what she was doing and that became her new reality.

Tip of the Day: So, of course reading should be an important part of your daily routine. Most of us have some sort of story time before bed. I want to encourage you to involve your child in choosing the book or books that they want to read. I went to a workshop that showed research to support that at the infant/toddler level, a baby/toddler has the attention span to listen to one age appropriate book (let me know if you need resources on how to find age appropriate books) per how many years they are old. For example, my daughter is 4 years old, so we read 4 books a night. This is true up until the age of six. What if you don't have a lot of money to buy a ton of books. Books can get expensive. Another great way to activate this same response from the brain is to tell stories. This is completely free! Take turns telling what will happen next in the story, children LOVE this.

Sign for the Day: This is a shocker... "book"
This sign is a noun/verb pair. If you use a double motion it means book. If you use a single motion it means "open book." If you reverse the motion by starting with the hands open and then closing them, it means "close the book" or "close your books."

Day 4

Fun Fact for the Day: Yesterday, in my post, I quoted the book "Inside The Brain" by Ronald Kotulak. If you ever want to learn more than you will EVER want to know about how the brain works...read that book. One thing that I thought was interesting and wanted to share today is that around the age of four, the brain goes through a type of restructuring. It is deciding which connections to keep and which to reroute and use for some other purpose. So, from the ages of birth to 3 years old we can pretty much teach our children anything and the brain will hold on to it and store it somewhere. If we can activate and use every area of the brain by the age of 4, think of the possibilities! This is why a baby/toddler is so curious about everything in their environment. The brain is constantly making connections between what it is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and feeling. If you really want to teach your baby/toddler something new, allow them to experience it using more than one sense. This brings us to the "Tip of the Day"

Tip of the Day: Let your baby/toddler experience something using more than one sense. When I was a PPCD (preschool program for children with disabilities) teacher, I loved making things that the kids could really experience. So, here are some recipes for edible finger paints. Roll out butcher paper, news paper or if it is a pretty day then go outside and paint the concrete. They can taste it, smell it, see it as well as work on their gross motor skills all at the same time. You will want to be sure and have them wear an old baggy shirt or an apron to be sure that it does not get on their clothes. There are many websites that you can find all kinds of fun recipes like these. ( I off set them so that you could see the individual recipes better)

Pudding Paint

What you need:

• Instant Vanilla Pudding

• Food Coloring

What to do:

Mix pudding according to directions.

Add food coloring for desired color.

Finger paint on paper plates.

Completely Edible!

Kool-Aid Finger Paint

What you need:
• 2 cups flour
• 2 packs unsweetened Kool-Aid
• 1/2 cup salt
3 cups boiling water
• 3T. oil
What to do:
Mix wet into dry.

Jello Finger Paint

What you need:

• Any kind of flavored jello

• Boiling water

What to do:

Mix jello into boiling water until it is a goo consistency for fingerpaint. Use normal fingerpainting material or glossy paper. Kids love the smell and feel of it.

Sign of the Day: "Please"
To make this sign place your flat right hand over the center of your chest. Move your hand in a clockwise motion (from the observer's point of view, use a circular motion towards your left, down, right, and back up) a few times.

This is a good sign to teach when your child starts requesting things, using gestures, signs, words or pointing. Require your child to imitate the sign for "please" before giving them what they want. Simple manners.
P.S.Excuse the video today. Abby had just taken her bath and was ready for bed. :)

Day 3

Fun Fact of the Day: I love to learn about brain research, finding out how the brain learns and functions is an amazing thing. When we look at how language is acquired in infants, we have to look at the brain research. From the book "Inside the Brain" by Ronald Kotulak, "Babies whose mothers talked to them more had a bigger vocabulary than others. At twenty months, babies of talkative mothers knew 131 more words than infants of less talkative moms, and at 24 months the difference was 295 words." Look at the numbers taken from this same research...staggering.

• children in white collar families hear 2100 words per hour on an average day compared to 1200 words per hour in the average working-class family and 600 per hour in the average welfare family.
• Children in welfare families hear negative remarks twice as often as positive ones
• By age four, children in welfare families have 13 million FEWER words of cummulative language experience than the average child in a working-class family.

Why is this important? Does this say that children who's parents don't work will have lower IQs. NO! The study continues to say "Further analysis reveals that parents' education, social status, race or wealth are not as important to IQ levels as how much THEY TALKED TO THEIR CHILDREN and interacted with them in other ways. The intellectual differences had occurred by the age of 3, long before the children had gotten into a formal education setting."
The key to improving your child's IQ and language abilities is very simple...TALK to them.

Tip for the Day: Tell your baby about EVERYTHING that you do. Explain why you are putting the dishes in the dishwasher that way. Why don't you just throw them in there? Why the big ones are on the bottom and not on the top. Talk about your thinking. Babies are amazing! If you begin to explain the reason you think a certain way and do things a specific way when they are an infant, you will be amazed at how receptive they are to hearing an explanation for "why you can't throw a ball in the house" as a toddler. They know that there is a reason behind your thoughts from a very early age and it makes sense to them. I remember when my daughter was about 2 years old, my parents would say that she is "narrating life." What a great compliment! I had given her the vocabulary and experiences to retell and explain why she was doing certain things. She was constantly saying, "I think I want this here, because..." and she would be playing by herself. She had the tools by 2 years old to think about her thinking. That is something that we try to teach kids in school and it is a real struggle.

Sign for the Day: "finished" The sign for "finish" is made by placing both of your open hands in front of you. Each hand should face you, with your fingers pointing upward. Twist both hands quickly a couple times ending with the palms pointing (somewhat) forward. You can also do this sign with just a single twist which makes it seem more "final."

Begin to introduce this sign with meals or bottle time and generalize into other areas such as playing when they are older and more mobile.

Day 2

Fun Fact for the Day: Each day, your baby will develop more language abilities. As you already know, babies will start their verbal communication with cooing. This is their way of getting an auditory feedback for verbal speech. As they "coo,"their brain is beginning to process the tactile and auditory stimuli that comes with spoken language. They are beginning to notice your response to them as well. Up until now, they had a "feeling" from you. They felt warm, safe, etc. Now they are starting to react to your responses and vocal communication. During this time, it is very important to exaggerate your intonation (rhythm of your voice) and pitch (frequency of your voice or how loud or soft). This is teaching your baby the very basics of language development.

Tip for the Day: Begin to sing songs to your baby. Create a song for every activity. Not just ones that you already know, but be creative. For example, I would always sing a bath song to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Around the Mountain When She Comes." Every time I sang it would be different words, but something to the affect of,
she'll be super clean by bedtime when she's done
she'll be super clean by bedtime when she's done
we will wash that nose and tummy
scrub those toes and bummy
she'll be super clean by bedtime when she's done
It doesn't have to make sense or even rhyme. You are teaching your child how to have a conversation and how to use her voice in a variety of ways. Make up songs about EVERY activity. Be Creative!

Sign for the Day: "More"
Handshape: Both hands use a semi-flattened "o"
Location: Normal signing space in front of the body
Orientation: palms facing each other
Movement: Inward. Bring both "flattened-O" hands together.
I begin introducing this sign with food or a bottle. Eventually, generalize to toys, patty cake games, etc.

Day 1

Each baby that is born has a vast ability to learn. So often when that sweet bundle of joy is put in our arms, all we see is innocence. Babies are the most amazing people. The day that a baby is born their brain has 100 billion neurons. Connections in the parts of the brain that control basic survival and reflexes are already well-developed, and myelination (the process of forming a coating or sheath of fatty substances known as myelin on the axon of a neuron) in those areas is nearly complete. The newborn begins a rapid period of brain growth. Synaptogenesis (the process of creating synapses, or connections, between neurons) continues very rapidly, with neurons in all parts of the brain making trillions of connections. Myelination continues in most parts of the brain. The neurons controlling hearing and vision rapidly become myelinated.
Now, what does that mean for us as parents? From day 1 of your child's birth, their brain is making connections between what they hear and see.

Practical Application: Talk to your baby from the moment they are born. When I say "talk" I don't mean "hi sweetie," with that cute baby talk. This is however is very important part of their language development, so DON'T STOP that. What I am talking about is daily conversation. Tell your baby what you are doing, what to expect, give them the language to connect a word with what they are seeing or hearing. For example, when you are nursing or bottle feeding, sign the word "milk" over and over during this process. This will give your baby a "label" for what is happening. Another example is when you are changing their diaper, your conversation should go something like this: "oooohhhh you are wet, time for a diaper change. up up up go your legs and dooowwwwnnn goes the diaper, etc." When you do this, you give your baby the ability to understand what is going on around them and to know the expectation.

Sign for the day: "milk"
The sign for "milk" is made by forming the right hand into the letter "s." Open and close your hand, alternating between the letters "c" and "s."