The Importance of Locomotor Skills

Locomotor skills include walking, running, skipping, hopping, galloping, leaping, jumping and sliding and they are the foundation of human movement. From basic human development we understand that generally, children are ready to practice walking at around 12 months, they can start running/hopping/jumping at 24 months and galloping/sliding/skipping at 36 months. As the building blocks of coordination, it’s very important the you practice locomotor skills with your child.

Play is a great way to provide opportunity for practice of these critical skills and these skills should come naturally to most children. The key to teaching locomotor skills is proper modeling and repeated guided practice.

Here are a few tips on what to look for and how to reinforce the proper development of locomotor skill:

· Walking: look for smooth, straight steps with arms swinging gently in opposition of feet.
· Galloping: one foot leading and the other foot following behind.
· Jumping: feet should be close together, pushing off with both feet and landing on toes. This is a good time to try
jumping rope.
· Hopping: with one foot on the ground, push with the toes. Landing should be fairly quiet.
· Side-sliding: move sideways with one foot leading (a sideways gallop).
· Leaping: go over an object leading with one foot and land on two feet.
· Skipping: march with knees high; each time the knee is in the air, hop on the other foot - step/hop, step/hop, step/hop

Locomotor skills can be mastered by most children with some simple guidance. In some cases the skills are leaned by following the lead of older siblings. But a little direction from you can be a big help and as your child masters the different locomotor skills you will see them gain more confidence.

If you have any questions or concerns about your child’s development, please contact your pediatrician.

Sources:
www.familyfitness.about.com
www.greatschools.org

Developing Reading Skills in Young Children

Developing early reading skills plays an important role in laying the groundwork for independent reading in the future. You can help your young child develop these skills in everyday life, where ever you are, shopping, at the playground or at the doctor’s office.

Reading Together is one of the most important things you can do with your child. Reading stories with your child, if only for 10 minutes a day, helps to capture your child's interest in books. Even babies enjoy looking and listening to books.
Here are a few tips on how to help children develop good reading skills at an early age:

1. Teaching Direction
Use your finger to run across the words and guide your child's finger as you read. This will help them understand that the writing moves left to right.

2. Letters
Children need to make the connection between the letter, its name and the sound it makes like “b” makes the sound "buh". Children can gain a familiarity with the alphabet and the sounds they represent at a fairly young age.

3. Language skills
Children can begin to understand the connection between spoken and written word at a young age. Teaching word recognition at a young age can help with reading comprehension at the later stage of learning and reading. Have them listen to and tell stories.

4. Rhyming
Dr. Seuss and other rhyming books are loved by children and they teach kids that words and sentence often have a natural rhythm.

It may seem challenging to teach children reading skills at an early age; however, it will all be worth it. Early intervention in reading prevents future problems

Developmental Milestones: 6 month

Many parents worry about their child’s development. Parents hear what other parents are saying about their child’s development and worry that their child is behind. The truth is, although each milestone has an age level, the actual age when a normally developing child reaches that milestone can very quite a bit. Every child is unique.

What are developmental milestones?

Developmental milestones are a set of functional skills or age-specific tasks that are appropriate for most children at a certain age range. Today we are going to talk about developmental milestones from birth to 6 months. Please keep in mind that these are only guidelines and all children develop at their own pace so don’t get too concerned if your child lags in a certain skill.

Developmental Milestones for a One-Month Old

When you first bring you baby home it seems like all the do is eat and sleep. By the end of the first month your baby should become much more alert and responsive. Some milestones might include:

•Bringing hands within range of eyes and mouth
•Moving head from side to side during tummy time
•Flopping head backward if unsupported
•Keeping hands in a tight fist

Developmental Milestones for a Three-Month Old

Around 3 months of age your baby will become much more active and many newborn traits will begin to fade. Babies around this age often have more control over their body and can spend hour entertaining themselves discovering their hands.

Some milestones may include:

•Raising their head and chest during tummy time
•Grasping and shaking hand toys
•Beginning to babble
•Beginning to imitate some sounds
•Turning head toward direction of sound
•Beginning to develop a social smile
•Enjoying playing with other people and crying when playing stops

Developmental Milestones for a Seven-Month Old

Many important changes occur between 4 and 7 months of age. Your baby will learn to coordinate their motor skills and start to develop their senses like vision, touch and hearing.

Some milestones may include

•Rolling both ways (front to back, back to front)
•Sitting with, and then without, support of her hands
•Supporting his or her whole weight on their legs
•Reaching with one hand
•Tracking moving objects
•Responding to own name
•Beginning to respond to “no”
•Distinguishing emotions by tone of voice
•Enjoying social play

If you have any questions or concerns about you child’s development, please contact your pediatrician or for more information please visit the American Academy Pediatrics website

Source: http://www.aap.org

Learning through Play - Part II

What makes play good or good play at Goddard Schools ?

Experts agree that play creates a successful experience for children of any age, learning anything if the following four elements are in place:

1) Atmosphere,
2) Materials,
3) Adult intervention and
4) Regard for individual differences.

The Goddard School atmosphere provides these four aspects within a relaxed sense of anticipation and freedom – freedom from evaluation/correction and to perform less than perfectly. It is this freedom that generates the higher levels of sophistication that children more often produce in play than in their lessons.

We Provide an Optimal Learning Environment that is Creative and Fun

An enriched learning environment fosters well-rounded, happy and confident learners. Our extensive resources include the creation of a warm, nurturing environment where children can make many supportable choices, independently explore learning materials and develop socialization skills as they interact with others. Toys and equipment are carefully chosen, first for safety and then for how they stimulate young imaginations and help children develop. Enrichment programs augment the Goddard School’s core curriculum to expose children to the skills necessary to support their active lives, develop positive self-esteem and set the foundation for a healthy lifestyle. These programs include sign language, yoga, fitness, art history, music, sports, world cultures and foreign languages.

Goddard’s Professional, highly-Trained Faculty make the most of every teachable moment.

Our professional educators are intentional in guiding and extending children’s play to ensure key developmental milestones are achieved across the learning domains. Teachers facilitate learning through responsive interactions with children as they learn and have fun! Our teachers skillfully weave in academic and learning objectives as they build upon what the individual children can do and encourage them to try new things.

Our Flex Learning Program gives structure and purpose to play. Ask your current daycare/preschool provider for their curriculum and compare to see the Goddard difference.

Learning Through Play

Play is an important aspect of the Goddard educational experience. We realize how important play is to the development of your children. Below are some excerpts from a paper prepared for Goddard Systems, Inc. by Kyle D. Pruett, M.D, an internationally known child psychiatrist and expert on children, family relationships and fathers. The full paper details how early play-stimulation is critical to central nervous system development in infants and very young children, setting them on a better path for academic success.

Why Play Isn’t Just Play
Extensive research and recent evidence indicates that play is a critical component in the educational experience of infants and toddlers; particularly with early stimulation and its effect on central nervous system development.

Play is the theater for learning, not just entertainment as educators once thought. In fact, it is a significant contributor to intellectual, emotional, language and social development. Without adequate opportunities for play, children can burn out from academic pressure. The following attributes of play are critical to driving emotional development.

1. Play affords the child endless opportunities for R & D [research and development]; to learn from his/her mistakes without having to pay for them
2. Play also benefits children’s physical development and perceptual-motor skills
3. Play promotes autonomy

In addition, when given several opportunities for exercise during the day, kids fidget and fuss less, concentrate more, feel better about themselves and behave considerably better in groups than their passive counterparts. Generally, daily exercise is best, and is shown to help language and social development in particular.

Not Enough Structured Play in Daycare, School and Home Environment

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is sounding alarms about the dramatic reduction in play time afforded children in the daycare, school and home settings.

They note the following:
1) 30,000 schools have recently replaced recess/play/arts/music with academics
2) Over the last 2 decades, children have lost 8 hours of unstructured play time from their week
3) 34% of kindergartens have eliminated recess since 2002

The next blog will detail how play should be included in a curriculum and how Goddard balances play with academics.

Celebrating the New Year with Kids

With the New Year just a few days away, you can plan a fun New Years bash with your kids that’s fun and educational. Kids can feel left out of New Year’s celebrations because they can’t make the late night. But with a little planning your kids can have a New Year’s bash that they will remember for years to come.

It’s always midnight somewhere, so plan your party around the world clock and ring in the New Year like you are in another part of the world. This is a great teaching moment to learn about other places in the world and maybe reinforce geography. Another option is ring in the New Year at noon.

Pick activities that the whole family can participate in, make sure you take lots of pictures. Have them make a scrapbook, or make cards welcoming in the new year. Even have them help bake a cake for the birthday of the New Year.

Another activity is to help each other think of resolutions. Make posters or collages that represent the resolutions as motivation for sticking to them. This can help your child learn how to follow through with something they say they want to do.
A great family craft would be to make a family time capsule filled with photos from the last year, letters from each family member and pictures drawn by the kids. Save it for the next New Year's Eve party.

Make noisemakers by filling a toilet paper roll with rice or dry beans. Cover both ends with paper and decorate the tube. Shake it as the ball drops to welcome the new year.

Whatever you decide to do have a safe and wonderful New Year from your friends at the Goddard School.

Socialization

Socialization is important to your young child and working on social skills in preschool is an important factor in developing skills that will help children through the rest of their life.
Socialization is the process of interacting with others. Children begin the process of social development at an early age. They learn to interact through play and by mimicking social actions at home and in school.

Early on in life parents and guardians worry about their child’s social development. It’s not uncommon for teachers to hear questions like, does my child have any friends and do they play well with others?

Socialization is critical to developing skills like taking turns, cooperating, respecting others and forming friendships. These skills will be necessary in the classroom, on the job and throughout the rest of their lives. In fact, social skills have been linked to later success in school. Sharing and listening to the teacher's instruction are fundamental building blocks to reading, spelling and counting numbers. School friendships can also have a positive impact on self esteem which can also increase classroom participation and overall performance.

You probably notice teachers playing games with preschool children and you probably dismiss it as just having fun. However, this play is actually designed to build social skills. Playing games that have children work in small groups or even pairs helps them learn one another’s names and promotes a sense of belonging. As the children get older the teacher’s often lead discussions on friendship and what it means to be a friend, this teaches the children how to interact with their peers.

Developing social skills can be a difficult task but teachers and parents make wonderful role models and children learn from example. You can reinforce these skills at home by speaking positively and sharing positive qualities about others.

Read more: http://www.brighthub.com