writing

Charlie’s Cues: Using Your Word Wall

| Chalimar Rios

The words children are exposed to regularly become a part of their everyday vocabulary. Creating a space where children can refer to, observe, listen to, and repeat familiar, new, or theme-related words is the basis of good auditory, linguistic, and communication development. One way to do this is to create a word wall in your preschool classroom.

The Fireflies curriculum helps you build your own word wall by offering four Word Wall Words in each monthly kit. July’s first theme, America the Beautiful, includes the words America and map. Both cards offer children an early exposure to geography, social studies, and patriotism. Children will learn the words fish and hook in Fishing Fun, July’s second theme. Fishing Fun is a summer-inspired theme, during which children will learn about fish, caring for fish as pets, other sea animals, and the sport of fishing.

Continue reading →

Using STREAM Techniques After Disasters to Keep Kids Learning and Engaged

| FunShine Express

Guest Post
by Andrew Roszak
Executive Director, The Institute for Childhood Preparedness

With natural disasters on the rise, many child care programs have endured floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, and severe weather conditions. These programs face many obstacles when re-opening, including a lack of electricity, supplies, fresh drinking water, and food, as well as the on-set of fear and mental health conditions in children.

We are always searching for new ways to make child care providers and teachers more resilient. One new trend is to incorporate principles of STREAM into early childhood education – to help students learn about S: Science, T: Technology, R: Reading, E: Engineering, A: Arts, and M: Math.

In the absence of a standard operating environment, and without creature comforts – such as electricity, providers may want to think about how they can incorporate the principles of STREAM in a post-disaster setting.

Continue reading →

Early Literacy – Writing Development

| FunShine Express

by Kelley Jilek

Children learn about writing long before they are able to write themselves. They discover more about written language each time they see print in their environment. It was once believed that children would not be able to write until they had mastered the basic aspects of spoken language, but children are “writing” when they experiment with different paint strokes or when they scribble various marks across a paper. We now know all developmental aspects of early literacy (speaking, reading, and writing) build on each other and develop simultaneously.

Continue reading →