This is Camille reading:

I started Pre K Scholars because I wanted to make sure my girls are prepared for kindergarten—I want to give them every advantage I can for future success. As a mom, it excites me to see her so eager to read!

If signs of spring are not showing in the climate you are in, you’re sure to see them in almost every store you enter—plastic eggs line the shelves everywhere! Every color imaginable; in grocery stores, drugs stores, and in quantities of unbelievable amounts. We have found a practical and educational use for all those plastic eggs, and the kids are loving the game.

Easter Egg Alphabet Match: It’s inexpensive and easy to make—all you need is 26 plastic eggs and a permanent marker. Take a plastic egg, write an uppercase letter on the top half and the corresponding lowercase letter on the bottom half. Break the egg apart and place in a basket or on the floor. (Continue until you have completed all 26 letters of the alphabet, from A to Z.)

The fun begins! Ask your children to match the letters and put the eggs together. Once the matches are made I have the children place the whole eggs in real egg cartons that I have saved!

I often field questions from other moms: What exactly are fine motor skills? Are they really that important? Is it really imperative that my child be able to write his or her name? How about cutting with scissors—straight lines, curved lines, diagonal lines—is it really that important?

Fine motor skills involve the small muscles in your child’s body, such as all of the muscles in your child’s fingers and hands. These are important in enabling functions like writing, coloring, cutting, grasping small objects, getting dressed, tying shoes, and many others. They require strength and dexterity with the use of small muscles as well as a certain level of hand-eye coordination.

How does that translate into school experiences?

Strengthening your child’s fine motor skills will ease the difficulty of many tasks required in school. In addition to writing and cutting, tasks like working on the computer, reading books, and writing letters and numbers will eventually lead to an increased ability to write mathematical equations and stories.

Won’t my child just naturally gain the necessary strength in their hands as they mature and grow? Are fine motor skills something that can be nurtured and promoted?

There is so much we can do, as parents and teachers, to help strengthen children’s fine motor skills, and guess what? We can have fun in the process! Of course, you can paint, color, bead, cut, do puzzles, play with Playdough and so much more, but I have discovered a few newer activities that are a HUGE hit with the kids.

Swiss Cheese Cubes
At the NAEYC conference in Washington D.C., I picked up these rubber swiss cheese cubes that came with two little mice. The kids manipulate the mice in and out of the stretchy holes of the cheese. They love them, they smile, they giggle, and they ask for more time with them! They come to class asking if the mice are out…do you think they realize that they are strengthening their fine motor skills?

Bendaroos
The second one I discovered for “B” week are Bendaroos—the excitement the Bendaroos generate is thrilling. This time, do you think the children realized they were strengthening their fine motor skills AND reinforcing letter recognition and letter formation?

Have fun as you explore fine motor skill development with your child!

After receiving positive feedback at the NAEYC Conference this past fall, we learned a few things:

1. Our concept was well received
2. Our product was aesthetically pleasing and considered “innovative” in that it’s quite comprehensive
3. We offered only two products—the Family Kit and the Teacher Kit
4. Our prices were out of the price range of most teachers, so they needed to get school approval to use school funds
5. Several questions were common:
   • “Can we buy just your guessing game cards?”
   • “Do you sell just the map of Scholarville with reinforcement stickers?”
   • “Would you sell us your character cards?”
   • “I’m tired of the phonics program we are using…do you sell just your phonics component?”

So, in an attempt to share our products with everyone, the individual parts of our whole kit are available to all of our customers.

Many parents and teachers alike are in search of a quality “phonics only” program to enhance their children’s reading readiness skills and they have found this kit component very useful. We have been approached by advocates of the Down Syndrome Association, ESL teachers, preschool teachers, kindergarten teachers, and non-profit agencies, all expressing their admiration in our phonics component and how there is nothing else out there like it!

The town of Scholarville and all of its community members are “one of a kind” watercolored line drawings that have been created by an amazing artist and educator. Scholarville is unique, multi-cultural, engaging, motivating to children, and a perfect springboard into the world of letter and sounds! Their action is evident and their affiliated motions help ALL learners grasp the letter/sound connection!

The Guessing Game is a favorite of all students! It is perfect for vocabulary development and beginning sound reinforcement.

Each piece is important in and of itself, and when combined as a whole kit you have an exemplary kindergarten readiness program!

Click here to learn more about our Kit Components.

I spoke of the New Year in an earlier post as a time of new beginnings, new goals, new outlooks for the future…all of those things that add up to make New Year’s resolutions such a universal term.

For me and my family, 2010 really is about new beginnings. After 12 years in southern California (and after four children!), my husband and I have decided to move back north. “Wow!” That’s what we hear from our friends. Others ask, “How do you have the guts to uproot your whole family?”

How do I respond to this? (Perhaps this is why I’ve had writer’s block the past few weeks—I have been trying to wrap my brain around it all to process an appropriate response.)

Let me begin with an answer to “why now?” The simple answer is that three of our four kids will begin attending new schools in the fall—of course, that will happen whether we move or stay here in Newport Beach. But in moving, we’re also seeking more affordable living; as we plan our long-term financial goals for our future with four children, we want more affordable living that will enable us to put more money into savings. And in the process, we’re also trying to achieve a more wholesome lifestyle with an environment that further accentuates our personal values and beliefs.

I know that the unknown lies ahead and that we are taking a huge leap of faith, but something about this is so exciting! My five year old daughter sets the tone beautifully when she said (as we’re looking at possible new homes in El Dorado Hills), “I’m not so sad about moving out of our house.” Her voice sounded so small from the back seat of the car, but she continued, “because we are all going to be together and it’s us that makes a house a home.”

I return to those words often as I imagine what life will be like in our new location, and what impact it will have on our children; change is good, but change is still change and it can create anxiety.

I’m trying to remain sensitive to this as our last months in Newport Beach unfold, and I welcome any advice!

Scissors—and cutting—have become a lost activity in the home. Do parents not understand that cutting experiences enable the development of fine motor skills in the hands and fingers of young children?

Cutting enhances fine motor coordination as well as eye-hand coordination. All of these skills are valuable because they promote the strength and dexterity that will be required in school; by teaching our children how to use scissors, we’re giving them the proper tools to be successful in school!

In order to be successful cutters, however, one must know how to properly hold the scissors—as you can see in the picture posted to the right, children can get very creative. Having not been taught the proper scissor hold, this particular student would use the table to leverage the scissors into a opening and closing positioning to make the snips needed to complete this activity. Creative? Yes! Easy? No! This did the trick but not in a timely manner, and it made the task much more laborious!

The correct way to hold scissors

To demonstrate proper scissor handling for your child, put your thumb into the scissors’ smaller hole and your index and middle finger (together) into the larger hole (it’s okay to also put your ring finger into the larger hole, if it fits). Make sure you’re holding the scissors so that your thumb is on top and that the scissors are straight.

Having the proper scissor hold you will quickly learn how much children like to cut paper! Over time, you will also see all the ways in which it improves your child’s fine motor coordination.

With so many children not having scissors at home you can imagine the feeling of empowerment, motivation and excitement they feel when I give them their own Pre K Scholars Home Activity Binder with a supplies pouch—complete with their own pair of scissors! Happy Cutting!

I am also able to assess what enhances my children educationally and developmentally. I can distinguish applications or websites that are purely recreational from those that actually have educational enrichment capabilities.

Below, I’ve outlined the applications and websites that I recommend for young children—sites where I have witnessed their value firsthand:

• iwrite
  This application allows a child to use touch to learn the proper formation of letters, numbers and three-letter words. It reinforces on directionality (all letters and numbers start at the top): the child drags their finger along a dotted path to the finish line in sequential order to properly form the featured letter or number. Once completed, they are given the auditory confirmation of what they just made.
  Once a child has mastered letters and numbers, it’s time to move on to three-letter words and to begin some basic reading—my kids love it!
• Math Magic
  This is a favorite of my kids as they learn number recognition, number value and basic addition and subtraction
• Hangman
  Thought this game was just for adults? Nope!
  I play it daily with my five year olds. If you enter two-player mode, you can create your own word (or words) to be guessed by your opponent. We create puzzles with their names to reinforce the spelling, and we use simple sentences to reinforce the few words they know how to read like, “I Love you.” They love it!
• Connect Four and Tic Tac Toe
  These are not just games—they enhance spatial awareness, critical thinking, taking turns and more!
• Doodlebuddy
  This application is utilized the most in our family! We love to play “The Squiggle Game” (that’s what we have named it); to play, one person makes a squiggle and hands it over to another person to turn it into something. You will be amazed at the creativity that is sparked and the vocabulary development opportunities that are created. Try it with your little one and I promise you will be playing for quite awhile!
• Starfall
  This website should be accessible to EVERY pre-school age child. It is such a great resource for children and parents—from making letter-sound connections to beginning reading you will find it all here. It is a site that is easy to navigate for children and also has the resource for parents to print out reproducible pages to work on with their child. A definite treasure of a site!

I am a huge proponent of the philosophy that “Learning can be fun!” There are so many other applications and websites out there, and the fun is in finding them and seeing what kind of learning light they turn on for your child.

When you find technology that is benenficial for pre-school age children, please share! The parent-teacher-child realtionship of learning is so powerful when all are committed!

My 11 year-old has an iTouch, which she graciously shares with her little sisters. Until recently, when one of my four year-olds would ask, “Where is my iTouch?” I would shudder—how indulgent it sounded! I mean, a four year-old with an iTouch…how ostentatious! I would die if anyone ever heard her ask this question.

On the other hand, my four year-olds are avid fans of the iPhone (both my husband and I have one) and the iTouch, and the educational enrichment they have received from the variety of applications is hard to match. They love Math Magic and are able to do addition and subtraction facts up to 10. They love playing the matching game with letters and numbers. They love matching uppercase and lowercase letters. And together we enjoy DoodleBuddy, where a squiggle is given and the other person must turn it into something.

I am amazed at the creativity and the comprehension! And guess what? These benefits all come from free “apps”—just download and voila!

Comparable options include several “age appropriate” handheld electronic games, but they come at a high price and often require additional charges for each extra game cartridge, and the kids’ interest in any particular game is limited. Adding to the cost, the cartridges are only about an inch wide and tall, and are frequently “misplaced”—who needs one more thing to keep track of?

I’m now convinced that, comparing the options, I spend less on an iTouch. The initial cost may be higher, but in the long run, we have access to more apps, most of which are free or relatively inexpensive (an iTunes gift card can go pretty far in the apps department!). Plus, there are no extra cartridges to keep track of.

The multitude of experiences a child can have with an iTouch, both educational and recreational, far exceeds many other single-unit electronic toys and games. And the iTouch can grow with the child rather than being limited to a narrow age range. It requires no additional fees in AAA batteries, either; plug it in and let it charge!

Apple’s iTouch offers great exposure for the technological future that awaits our children! At least, this seems to be a recurring theme in conversations lately, and I think I have changed my attitude from shuttering at the thought of a four year old with an iTouch to a feeling of wise revelation on the part of the parent and embracing a high tech toddler in training!

Although this seemed a little crazy, I must admit that I am guilty of turning back for home just to retrieve our kids’ “special blankies.” We’ve also had household searches for “special bunnies” before bedtime; it happens so frequently that we have coined the phrase, “Bunny alert, bunny alert!” (Heaven forbid we put our twins to bed without their bunnies!)

I’m sure most moms can relate to this appeal, and to how priceless our children’s security blankets become. Perhaps that’s where the term “lovey” comes from for describing a child’s personal favorite blankie, stuffed animal or doll; “Lovey” sums up just what these items mean to our children and how they make them feel! It’s probably not surprising that I could completely identify with this mother’s sense of loss and her willingness to pay to regain possession of her little boy’s “lovey.” It got me wondering…Do children become attached to security blankets? What purpose do they serve?

According to Psychology Today, an inanimate object that a child chooses to bond with (either naturally or through encouragement by a parent) can help to reduce anxiety that a child may feel. It helps a child adapt a little easier in a new situation or it can help comfort a child in the absence of a parent at bedtime.

Why are they so important? A security blanket brings a feeling of familiarity to a child. This is important because it provides comfort and a sense of security in a new situation or an unstable environment! Additionally, the security that the child feels from his/her “lovey” can translate into a boost in self confidence in unfamiliar situations.

Research shows that there are no long-term harmful effects from a child having a “security blanket.” So keep a close eye on your child’s special “lovey” and avoid a mother’s emotional search for her child’s lost treasure!

Modeling behaviors you wish to instill in your child seems to have the biggest impact. Hence, in raising a reader for life, I can’t place enough emphasis on reading yourself—read, and then read some more to your child! When it comes to reading to children, I have found that the more animated the reader is, the more engrossed the children become. The story seems to come to life!

Outlined below are a few tips that are helpful in engaging your child in a book and developing a love for reading:

1. Let your child pick out their own book—the motivation seems greater when they know it is a book they chose. This is a key lesson learned from my recent visits to the library.
2. Children like repetition—it is common for them to choose the same book to be read over and over. Oblige them, even if you are tired of the story yourself!
3. Pattern books seem to be a popular choice with preschoolers; the pages tend to be predictable and the children feel successful.
4. Picture books (with no words) are fun because you and your child can create your own story to go with the illustrations. You can control the length of the story based on the attention span and interest of the child.
5. Not every book needs to be a catalyst to a teachable moment or a grammar lesson. Make the reading fun and geared just toward your child and his/her comprehension of the story.
6. Coincide reading time with quiet time to assure reading success.
7. Allow your child the ability to create his or her own book by dictating a story to add to illustration he or she created!
8. Consider reading time as quality time spent with your child!

Basic literacy skills begin before children actually enter kindergarten; I recommend reading Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel for additional information here. Evidence suggests, though, that there is a direct correlation between early literacy and later literacy achievement. (And this further brings truth to the saying, “those that start behind, stay behind.”)

Don’t let your child start behind—take advantage of these important years and facilitate your child’s success in early literacy. Let him or her grab a book of their choice and let the fun begin!