Become an advocate for play

Provide the resources for stimulating play

Join in the fun

Let your child take the lead

Encourage your child to use his imagination

Evaluate your child’s structure activities

Look for opportunities to discuss other people’s feelings

Watch your language

Explain to your child that there are causes for people’s feelings

Stop bullying in its tracks

Make space for social time

If your child is in child care or preschool, be sure to build strong connections with your child’s caregiver or teacher.

Avoid ignoring or belittling your child’s feelings

Try to see the world through your children’s eyes

Pay attention to how you talk about your children in front of them.

Treat your child as an individual

Let your children know that anything is possible

Talk with your children about feelings

Recognize that emotional intelligence correlates to success in life.

Work within your child’s zone of development

1. Follow your child’s interest. Don’t try to make your child do a task you assign, but instead figure out what the child wants to do. Let her set up the problem she wants to work on, whether it’s putting shapes into matching holes or finishing a puzzle.
2. Reduce the number of steps your child has to go through to achieve the goal she has set for herself.
3. When your child gets frustrated, encourage her to stick with the task. Don’t try to make her stick with it; try to moticate her by saying things like “We can do it together!” or “Let me help you.”
4. Demonstrate. Flagging motivation often indicates a good time to show your child how the task is done.
5. Talk about the difference between what your child did and what needs to be done. You can says something like “It doesn’t work when you force it, but it might work if you put it in gently.” By calling attention to the differences, you are teaching him alternative efforts to an end.
6. Make connections for your child to things she does know how to do. Effective teachers for people of all ages help the learner to link what they are learning to things they already know.

Stress effort, not achievement
What we need to teacj them more than anything is that it’s okay not to be perfect, that we make mistakes, too, and that we love them for their effort. In contrast, an intense emphasis on early learning teaches them not to think outside the box. Yet this is just the opposite of what develops an intelligent person. We need to praise the strategies they use to solve a problem, rather than their intelligence. This implicitly says to children that with the right approach, they can do most anything. In this way, we free our children from the anxiety of disappointing us and enable them to focus on persevering in challenging circumstances.

Don’t insist that there is only one right way to do something
If your child comes up with a novel solution to a problem, that’s great! An emphasis on creative, intellectual play will encounrage children to believe that intelligence can be added to, one problem at a time.

Show your kids that you make mistakes too, and let them correct you
Not only does this take the pressure off your children to be perfect, but it also presents learning as a lifelong pursuit.

Focus on developing your child’s creativity and independent thinking

Playing with words
Play with language by singing songs or reading children’s poetry that rhymes. Read Dr. Seuss, a genius at using rhymes to tell stories. Play word games in the car too. When driving, you can look for objects that start with different sounds.

Make reading a part of your life – and your child’s

Create an environment that is rich with literacy materials
Try some creative options for exposing your child to print, such as alphabet magnets for the refrigerator. You can be sure your child will want you to spell out her name, and you can play a game by asking her to find letters for you. You can also take a product with a big label off the shelf i your kitchen and ask your child to copy its name on the fridge in the letters. In addition, your child will love lots of blank paper of different colors and writing materials on a low shelf where they can be easily reached.

Use stamps to help your child learn the letters.

Start a conversation

Try out some word games

Engage in dialogic reading
First, encourage your child to take an active role during story time. Active learning is more effective than just listening. When your child is very young, ask him to point at particular pictures or to name pictures. Once your child has some language, you can ask him to predict what will happen next or talk about how the characters feel.
Second, give your child feedback. Feedback can certainly take the form of praise, as in “Great job, Irving! That is a dinosaur!”.
Finally, continue to “up the ante” during book reading. Once your child knows the name of the object on the page, ask the child what the object does. Once your child knows the name of the whole object, point out the names of the object’s parts. You’re always looking for ways to go beyond (by just a little) what your child can do on his own.

Make reading fun!
You can also pretend to make mistakes. Chidren love correcting their parents, since they get corrected all the time.

Talk about what your child is observing and doing.
Whenever our children become enraptured with something, we should view it as a teachable moment and build on their focus of attention.

Build on what your child says
We are implicitly showing them that there are other, more complete ways to say what they just said. It also adds information to the dialogue that they can retrieve and use at another time. Conversations with parents help children hear multiple ways of conveying their meaning and subtly teach them new vocabulary and information.

Be a conversation elicitor, not a conversation closer
Find ways to engage with your child so that you can keep the conversation going. The social dance requires that we ask questions and probe for answers. We want not only to build on their answers, but to scaffold and support their talk to us. Ask specific questions rather  than broad ones.

Don’t be afraid to use baby talk
With its exaggerated singsong facial expressions, baby talk is just the things to get your child interested in the dance. The high-pitched talk seems to act as a signal that this language is for them. Baby talk also conveys emotions to children, so it is highly communicative. And because baby talk exaggerates language’s properties, it helps babies figure things out about the way language works.

Limit TV time to small doses

Evaluate your child’s language environment at child care.
Silence is not gold en when it comes to child care environments. Children should be engaged and talkative. Markers of a solid language environment:

1. Responsiveness: Does the caregiver or teacher respond when the child addresses er?
2. Positive emotion: Does she respond with a smile and positive disposition?
3. Does the teacher have the attention of the children? Is she talking about things the children is interested in?
4. Expansions: Is the teacher asking questions and building on the children’s talk?
5. Reading: Is the room filled with written material and books? Does the teacher read to the children?

If you’d like to introduce a second language, do so in a real world situation

Discovering Hidden Skills

Counting On
Get five toys and let your child play with them. Then separate them so that they form tow distinct sets of three items and two items. Ask your child to first count the three-item set and tell you how many toys there are. The give your child the two-item set and ask, “How many are there now?” What does your child do? Does she “count on”? If she doesn’t, try this experiment again in a month and see if your child has now developed this ability. It will usually come in around age 5.

Conservation Problems
Every conservation problem has three components: First, the child must agree when asked that the two sets of identical items before her (whatever they are) have the same number of items. Second, as the child observes, the adult manipulates the set, either squishing the objects within it together or separating them. Finally, the adult again asks whether the sets are the same or different.

It is truly shocking to see your child be fooled by how the sets look. After all, you haven’t added anything or taken anything away. But children will often fall into this trap. Furthermore, if you put the items back into alignment, they will agree that you both have the same again! No wonder siblings fight over who got more goodies: If the goodies look different – regardless of whether they have the same number in the set – children will insist that someone has cheated.

The one-to-one and stable-order principle
Collect some objects to make three small sets, with maybe three or four objects in each set. Ask your child to count one of the sets and see if she assigns only one number tag to each item, thereby using one-to-one principle. Try this again in a few months if she doesn’t.

The Cardinal Principle  Abstraction Principle, and Order-Irrelevance Principle
See, for example, whether your child uses the cardinal principle. When you ask “How many dogs, birds, toys… are there?” does your child know that the answer is the highest number that he counted in the set? And is your child willing to count anything, showing that he follows the abstraction principle? Ask your child to count one of the tangible objects, and then ask your child to count the number of clouds in the sky or the number of times you called grandma last week. Does he object? Or is he willing to consider counting anything you ask, even if it is far away and out of reach?

Finally, see if your child operates with the order-irrelevance principle. Point to one object in a five-item set and ask her to count how many there are. Then have her do it again while you point to a new starting object. Does she count up with the same answer both times? Is she willing to do this? Ask your child why it always comes out the same way. Don’t expect her to be able to say something that makes sense, but it is fun to see what kind of rationalization a child comes up with.

Teachable Moments

The number line
Take three sets of objects (one with three objects, one with five objects, and one with seven objects) and ask your hild which set is the biggest and which set is the smallest. Can your child do this? Since this is a comparison between two sets that differ in magnitude a lot, it shouldn’t be that hard. Then ask your child about the middle set. Now things might get trickier, since the middle set differs from each set by a smaller magnitude. Is it bigger than this set (point to the smallest one)? Is it bigger than this set (point to the biggest one)? See how your child responds to this task.

A Homemade Number Line Game
Many board games have the number line at their core. The goal of these games is to get from the start line to the finish – and to be the first one there. The spaces on the board are a kind of number line, and we move through them with the roll of the dice. When the die has siz dots, we move six spaces and are immediately ahead of the player who oved only three. Not only do children learn one-to-one correspondence here (one space for every dot on the die), but they also learn principles of the number line. They move forward toward the goal (which we could even set as a specified number of spaces, say 50).

If you want to get very fancy, you could even make your own game. By cutting strips of paper and making lines on them to represent the numbers zero to 50, children can watch pieces move up the number line toward the numerical goal. The sophisticated parent can even add write-ins spaces that say “Go back two spaces” so that children can learn the relationships between adding and subtracting on this two-way street.

Bringing the lessons home

Think blocks not videos. The very best way to learn about numbers is to manipulate objects, line them up, compare sets, and so on. There is simply no substitution for playing with objects, and these actions speak louder than words. Plus, this type of play is something children love to do without being told!.

Find the numbers everywhere. Signs, buildings… Now that you know where to look, you’ll discover that numbers are found in every corner of our lives. You need only notice these – as your children do – and seize the opportunities for learning.

Playing = Learning. We need not to be concerned about being “educational” with our children; all we need to do is follow their lead and play games they love that foster mathematical curiosity.

Encourage your child to learn in context. When baking muffins in the muffin pan, he remarked, “Mom, did you realize that having two rolls of three muffins is exactly the same thing as having three rows of two muffins?” With experience and play, mathematical skills blossom. Our job is simply to recognize the teachable moments in every day.

Bringing the Lessons Home

Let the buyer beware!
Don’t let yourself be taken in by the messages about enhancing your baby’s brain development that appear on flashy product lines.

Think outside the box – literally
Your child will learn more when you play with him than when you buy him fancy boxes containing self-proclaimed “state-of-the-art” devices with exorbitant claims to build his brain. So what is an appropriate way to use playtime? Take your cues from your children. By taking the time to notice what they are interested in, you can begin to see the environment in a whole new way, as a series of natural opportunities that are stimulating your children at all times. You can then build on these opportunities to make them even more enriching.

Switch from Sesame Street to Barney and Teletubbies
Children love repetition. Indeed, although it may be deadly for us, children love to hear the same stories night after night – they get something new each time and enjoy finding predictable patterns. Here’s your assignment: Watch an educational program with your children and see what they enjoy. What does your child find interesting in the show? Use it to build on your child’s interests. Perhaps take out some children’s library books on those topics. These interests can also yield conversational material your child will love to talk about.

Move from memorizing to learning in context
There is no pressing need to have our children read before they go to school. But if we read to them and for them when they ask us what is written on that cereal box or street sign, we are implicitly teaching that reading is fun and has utility. This is what we mean by learning something in context. Learning is always more powerful and lasting when it occurs in context.

Plan a field trip – to your own backyard
While you are in the backyard, you can stimulate creativity by asking them to imagine what it would be like to be the size of an ant. What would look different? What could you hear? What would you be afraid of? Children often love to imagine the fears others may have, so they know they are not alone. And along these lines, ask if they can hear the music of the backyard. Are the instruments to be made from sticks and stones? Whistles from leaves and rhythms from the raindrops. Bring out a blanket and lie down with your eyes closed. What can you hear? Do you hear the leaves rustling in the wind? A bee buzzing? A car grinding? The timpani of thunder? The chickadees’ chatter and the mockingbirds’ trills? Where do the animals and insects in your yard live? Discover each creature’s home. How do animals build their homes? And if you can find this much in your backyard, imagine the stimulating environment you’d encounter at the zoo. Or at a children’s museum.

Move from city malls to tennis balls
At home, an activity as simple as rolling a ball back and forth on the living room carpet can be as fascinating to your young child. How do you roll it so that it lands near the other person? How hard do you have to push? What is the angle you have to use? Will the ball hit other objects along its trajectory? This is experience-expectant learning at its best, with physics and math concepts thrown in for free. And it costs no more than the price of a ball. Pots and pans and plastic containers are a blast in the kitchen and make a great symphony with a wooden spoon. Laundry baskets on their sides are great for climbing in and out of, as are the large boxes that appliance arrive in. For some reason, children love hiding in and under things and climbing in and out. Blanket forts made by spreading a blanket over a few chairs can be fun for hours if you join in the make-believe and make it grandma’s house. Adding a pillow and a few stuffed animals and books inside can make it a friend’s house or a room at preschool. And why do babies always like to pull things our of drawers? To see what’s inside! Take one low drawer and fill it with surprising and fun things (stuffed animals, books, cars, pictures of family members, and so on) that you change periodically, and let the baby have a ball unloading it all. Never underestimate the power of ordinary objects when examined with a child’s eye. For children, they are not ordinary at all. And these experiences – free and fun and unfettered with concerns abour doing something educational – all build better brains.

And the farmer takes a wife
The farmer takes a wife
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The farmer takes a wife

And the wife takes the child
The wife takes the child
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The wife takes the child

And the child takes the nurse
The child takes the nurse
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The child takes the nurse

And the nurse takes the dog
The nurse takes the dog
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The nurse takes the dog

And the dog takes the cat
The dog takes the cat
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The dog takes the cat

And the cat takes the mouse
The cat takes the mouse
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The cat takes the mouse

And the mouse takes the cheese
The mouse takes the cheese
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The mouse takes the cheese

And the cheese stands alone
The cheese stands alone
Hi-ho, the derry-o
The cheese stands alone

One for my master,
One for my dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir,
Three bags full.

One for my master,
One for my dame,
And one for the little boy
Who lives down the lane.