We Love Starfall

Since the days when I taught in public and private classrooms, Starfall has been the hands down favorite for educational activities.  If you don't know about Starfall, you'll want to and if you do, I might be able to show you a few things today that you didn't realize were available (because I've just discovered them, too)!

With my kindergarten classes, we always worked on the ABCs section until they were proficient in their letters and sounds, then we moved on to Learn to Read.  Both of these sections are complete free.  The ABCs page works on letter naming, letter sounds, and both uppercase and lowercase identification.  Learn to Read provides sight word practice, phoneme blending, and word family games.

I had our (then) toddler first try out Starfall when we got our home theater PC.  She was 2 1/2 years old. Lately, we checked it out again and I stumbled upon new (to us) sections (that actually published about a year ago) called More Starfall.

In addition to literacy and reading, there are sections for math and songs/rhymes.  Like the other sections, it was easy for me to level our preschooler to what she needed to work on like numbers 11 to 20...

...and sorting by several attributes.

Starfall offers one month trials to anyone who requests them.  When ours expires, we'll definitely be subscribing.  To get your free trial, just email Starfall and ask (and let them know that Still Playing School sent you, please)!

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Infant Language Development: 3 Months Cooing and Babbling

Baby D is 3 months old.  In addition to cooing, he is also starting to babble.  Cooing is the vowel sounds: oooooooh, aaaaaaaah, while babbling is the introduction of some consonant sounds.  Lately we are hearing a lot more gaaaaaa, goooooooo, and maaaaaaaaa.

E is an amazing big sister (again!) so we've been coaching her on how to help D learn to talk with the following tips, which are helpful for siblings and adults alike.  Of course, we don't give E all the child development reasoning, but we do tell her she's an awesome big sister!

- E will tell me that D is crying when he makes any sounds.  I had to explain to her that sometimes what sounds like fussing is actually him just practicing his "words".

- When D makes some of his pre-linguistic sounds, we repeat the same sounds back to him.  We can also teach real words by saying some that start with the same sound.
D: "Maaaaaaaaaaa!"
E: "Maaaaaaa!  Yes, Momma!  Mommy is in the kitchen."
We know that he isn't asking for me yet, but I can step in then and wave to him.  This allows him to begin to recognize that the sounds he is making can be put together to mean something.  It's also great initial sound practice for E.  "D said gaaaaaaa.  What can we show him that starts with a /g/ sound?"

-  After D makes a sound, we answer, then we wait for him to respond.  This verbal back and forth sets the stage for the turn taking of conversations.  He is learning expressive and receptive language.  One study shows that 4 month old infants who have pre-linguistic turn taking with an adult have greater cognitive ability when they are 2 years old.

- E shows D objects around the house while telling him their names.  Adults can do this by carrying the baby to different rooms to take in new sights, but E needs to stick to bringing things to him.  "Look, baby D, this is Cowie!  Cowie is a cow.  Mooooooo!"

- Today she also showed him her sippy cup and signed "milk" to him!  I was so excited that she remembered the sign, but then she did the same sign for grape juice and duck, so obviously we need a refresher course on baby sign language.

Not only do these exercises allow my kids to interact while I may be occupied with other things, but we are also teaching D to use other sounds (instead of crying) to get our attention.

Here are some great sample infant sound recordings!

Before I know it, they really will be whispering secrets to each other!

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Emerging Writing

E came downstairs this morning with a note she had written for my parents who live on the other side of the state.

I had her "read" me what she had written so I could underwrite.

This was an exciting development for many reasons:

- It was completely independent and self motivated work.

- E has internalized and been inspired by a lot of modeled reading and writing behavior.  My parents regularly write to her and send her packages in the mail.  She sees me writing notes and lists often.  She helps me write on her projects, adding meaningful text to birthday cards and helping me determine the initial sounds of words as I write them for her.

- I could pinpoint her stage of independent writing.  She is creating scribbles moving from left to write horizontally across the page.  Her "signature" shows some mock letters in her name.  (Sometimes her independent E has more than three lines to it.)

- She saw my enthusiasm over this note.  I underwrote, took a picture, and showed her how I am emailing it to her grandparents.  (You can see where I started to rip the note out of her notebook to mail it, but she protested.)  She then went on to write more letters for a good portion of an hour, dictating out loud who she was writing to and what she was saying to them.  I wish I had recorded this because it was priceless! She was "writing" too fast for me to keep up with her ideas.  When she saw me blogging about this, she decided to get her play laptop and camera so she could "take pictures on the 'puter and write" there, too.

---
E's age: 3 years, 1 month

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Toddler Attention Span - What's Appropriate?

Since our Play & Learn Classes began in March, I've had several questions about what is appropriate for toddlers and pre-schoolers' attention spans.  Today I'm going to try to address this question, but my answer won't be a clear and specific time frame per age.

When teaching kindergarten, I could say that 5-year-olds, for the most part, were capable of sitting and engaging in an adult selected activity for 15 minutes when allowed to participate in verbal and physical ways (passing a puppet, listening to others, clapping syllables, singing a song, etc.)  Toddlers are harder to define for a variety of reasons.

Anytime we start discussing what is "typical" we have to remember skills are on a continuum.  When you visit you pediatrician, s/he gives you a range of words your child should be saying, weight and height is on a percentile, and skills develop at ages that vary by several months.  During early childhood, children are growing and changing at such a rapid speed that it is impossible to put milestones on an exact timeline for individuals.

Also, at the age of 3, a child's brain has formed twice as many connections as an adult's.  Many of these synapses will be used or eliminated during the years of elementary school.  Connections that are frequented more will strengthen and grow while other passageways will die away due to lack of use.  So we have to remember that your toddler's mind is BUSY, just like their bodies.  That's why adults are often exhausted while they run circles around us.

Lastly, aside from the variability of each child and the fast paced way that toddlers' minds work, we also have to factor in that each child is geared towards personal interests.  What is rewarding to one might not be interesting to the next, just like with adults.  E has the attention span to do multi-step arts and crafts, but isn't as likely to focus on building with blocks at this point.  She will set up elaborate pretend homes and meals for several people (or dolls or animals) and assist you in cooking for much longer than she'll participate in gross motor activities.  There is also variance in how long she'll dedicate to an activity on any given day.  Bath time length changes day to day and lasts much longer if she has her Daddy with her because she didn't see him all day, versus Momma who is trying to fold laundry or reply to emails at the same time.

That last variable is a clue to what we can do when we want to engage our child's attention for longer periods of time. Children are naturally self directed, but if we are engaged with them, they will stay dedicated to an activity for longer.  One goal at our Play & Learn classes is to communicate to parents how much their undivided attention, even for a short amount of time, leads to more intentional play and learning in their child's day.

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