Creative Writing in a Preschool Setting

This post will be a condensed version of the workshop I conduct on this topic.  This topic is near and dear to my heart as an author, former homeschooling mom, preschool teacher, and early childhood literacy advocate.  Helping children to create with words is one of my passions.  This post will contain four different activities that can be used with preschool children to promote creative writing.  I will also provide information on what makes each activity so important for the creative process.

How This Works in a Preschool Setting
As I said, I have conducted workshops on this topic several times.  Many people might think that creative writing should not be done with preschool children.  They believe this to be too academic to be developmentally appropriate for this age group.  However, I am not asking the children to write a story on their own.  I do not try to make them come up with something that is grammatically accurate or has a plausible plot.  I want the children to use language in a creative way.  I simply act as the scribe and write down exactly what they say.  At first, the children's creations will be nonsensical.  However, it does not take long for the children to figure out how this works and begin to create stories that do have somewhat of a plot to them.  At least in the minds of the children, their story has substance.

Interactive Writing
The first activity on the list is what I call "interactive writing."  In this activity, the group comes up with one sentence and one sentence only.  Then the teacher and the students together write the sentence on a large piece of paper or board.  For this activity the teacher will have to know the level of alphabet knowledge the children in their care possess as well as the level of the children's drawing/writing ability.  Some children will be writing certain letters.  Some children will be able to draw sticks and circles.  Some children will not be able to make anything but scribbles.  When the group has decided on the sentence that will be written, the teacher must divide the writing between the children so that everyone gets an opportunity to write something.  For those children that are able to write certain letters utilize them for those letters.  For those children that can make sticks or circles, let them make letters that use those shapes and help them to finish them or do it yourself.  For those that only scribble, use the hand over hand technique to help them write a letter that contains sticks and/or circles to help them learn how to make those shapes.  Let each child use a different color marker and reserve black for yourself.  This way the child can identify quickly which letter he/she made and show that to his/her parents.  As you write the sentence go over each word as it is finished.  Talk about the letters that make up the word as well as the sounds those letters make.  Once the entire sentence is completed, read over it several times running your hand under the words.

Expand-a-Story
The second activity is called "expand a story."  In this one, the teacher either reads a familiar story or tells it orally.  Then the teacher asks the children what happens next.  As the children tell their story, the teacher writes it down as close to what they say as possible.  Sometimes during this one, I have to hold up my hand to make the children wait until I catch up.  I also try to give each child an opportunity to make up one sentence of the story.  I have used books, books on tape/CD, retelling familiar stories (The Three Little Pigs, etc.), and the stories from my blog, The Adventures of Polliwog Pond for this activity.  It is actually best to use a oral story for this activity to give the children opportunity to build their listening skills.  A teacher can tell by how the children expand on a story as to how much they followed the original story.  This will give the teacher an indication of how well the children in his/her care follow a story that is told strictly orally.  Being able to follow an oral story is an invaluable skill for preschool children to develop.  It lays the foundation for being able to comprehend a story without pictures later in the later elementary grades.

Using a Picture
The next activity involves creating a story from a picture.  I usually use paintings of landscapes or dwellings, but you can also use photographs if you want.  I am a big fan of Thomas Kinkade and have many old calendars that contain his paintings, which is what I use for this activity.  I bring out the picture and let the children study it for a little while.  Then I begin to discuss with the children what they think is happening in the picture.  When the children begin to talk about what is happening, I begin writing.  I am very careful to let the children bring out what they want from the picture.  Children will always be drawn to something more obscure than adults.  What you as the adult take from the picture will most likely be the exact opposite of what the children take from the picture.  Please resist the urge to control this activity.  Let them go in whatever direction they choose.  This is not about you, the adult, making a story from the picture.  It is about them placing themselves inside the picture in their imaginations and drawing out a story.  This is an especially important activity for developing creative thought.  Right-brained dominant children will be better at this activity, but left-brained dominant children need experience with this type of activity as well.  Make sure every child has the opportunity to create at least one sentence for the story.

The Word Bucket List
The last activity comes straight from my experience as a children's author.  I learned this technique while taking a correspondence course from the Institute of Children's Literature a very long time ago.  It involves a word bucket.  For the preschool I have a bucket that contains words written on little pieces of paper.  I took these words from different books of first words in which my children were familiar.  I let them draw out three or four words from the bucket.  Then we make a story from those words.  In my writing, I have a similar bucket that contains many more words.  I draw out 10 words to create my children's stories.  This is a word association activity.  It calls on the children to make associations between random words.  I will tell you this is a higher-order thinking skill and is vitally important for many subjects later in a child's educational journey.  At this stage, you will only be concerned with a beginner's effort.  The children's associations will seem very random to you, and that is perfectly normal.  If you have a child that makes incredible associations, you probably have a child with an extremely high IQ on your hands.  Just as with the picture activity, please resist the urge to control this activity.  You want the children to make the associations, not you.  The associations they make between the words will become more feasible with practice.  Let the stories be as random as the children tell them, and please do not try to fix them.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Dealing with Lazy Tendencies in Children

This post will start a series of posts looking at character issues from the "dark side."  We live in a world that has both positive and negative forces.  Trying to deal with character issues in children from strictly a positive point of view usually only touches half the problem.  Unfortunately, ignoring these negative character issues or only trying to build the positive opposites of these character issues does not make them go away.  We live in a fallen world, and if we want to curb these negative tendencies, we must deal with them head on.

Lazy!!!
First of all, let me confirm that I actually dared to use the word "lazy."  I did not say unmotivated or slow to respond.  I used the word "lazy" on purpose because it is a real condition of the soul and runs so rampant in our society it is shameful.  If we are all honest, we have to confess that we all have a tendency toward laziness to some degree.  Some have it worse than others, but a hard work ethic usually does not come to any of us as a birthright.  A solid work ethic usually comes from a lifetime of thwarting the lazy tendencies inherent in all of us, and does not come any other way.  Therefore, teaching children how to thwart their own lazy tendencies is absolutely imperative if we want this next generation to develop a work ethic of any kind.

The Definition
What exactly do I mean by lazy?  Webster defines lazy as (1) disliking activity or exertion (2) encouraging idleness.  I will deal with both of these aspects of laziness.  I call laziness being allergic to work.  If something calls for more than a little effort, the lazy will avoid it like the plague.  What's funny is that sometimes people put more effort into getting out of work than the work actually requires.  For example, some of the children that attended school with me cheated off of me all the time.  They learned to read my handwriting upside down, sideways, and every other way from as far as 10 feet away.  If they had put the same effort into studying their lessons as they did in learning my writing habits, they would have been straight "A" students.  However, I guess they figured cheating was easier so they bullied me and learned how to get their answers through stealth and force.  This attitude runs so prevalent through our society right now that it is sad.  People will jump through all kinds of hoops or go to great lengths to get out of what they consider "hard work."

Breeding Laziness
I know there are many people who will assert that lazy people are simply unmotivated, and if you can find the right motivation, any person will work hard for you.  Oh really?  I am afraid I have my eyes open and have dealt with way too many people in my lifetime that are lazy to the core.  All you have to do is watch some of these reality television shows to see the extent of how far people will go to get out of work.  It is amazing to me that up until 50 or so years ago being lazy was shameful.  Now, it is celebrated in very subtle ways throughout our culture.  It has become the norm to have someone else whether that is "the rich" or the government take care of you, and these attitudes have been fully embraced by the children in our midst.  This is breeding laziness in our children and a sense of entitlement, which when combined produce horrible ramifications for the both society at large and the individual children.

Stop Being an Enabler
How do we fight this tide of laziness that seems to be sweeping over our nation?  Number one - stop being an enabler.  For helicopter parents this is probably the hardest thing on the planet to do.  However, you, as the parent or caregiver, must come face to face with the fact that you created this monster, and it falls to you to slay it.  Let me tell you, when you stop being an enabler, the enabled will go off the deep end at first.  For preschool children, they will throw hissy fits and temper tantrums unparalleled to anything you have ever seen.  The viciousness that will come from the enabled once the enabling stops will rip your heart out and make you feel like the most worthless person on the planet.  Do not underestimate the lengths an enabled child will go to remain enabled.  This holds true whether they are 2 or 50.  However, you must stop doing their work for them, period.

Make Them Do for Themselves
Once you have stopped doing it for them, the next step is to find a way to make them do it themselves.  My favorite tactic for 3 and 4 year olds is to set up the situation in such a way that they will miss out on something if they do not hurry up and finish.  This can also work for smart 2 year olds.  Pick-up time is always a battle anywhere children live.  I give the children here a certain amount of time to pick up their area, and then I move on without them.  This works for about 50% of the children nowadays.  However, I am noticing that the degree of the laziness kicks up every single year now.  More and more children are requiring tougher and tougher measures.  My plea to parents of young children is this - make your child pick up after themselves so that I as a caregiver do not have to kick your child out of childcare because of the hissy fits pick-up time brings out in your children.  This is ridiculous.  Do not make excuses for your children.  Understand that this is laziness pure and simple.  Do something about it.

The Difference between Work and Play
Finally, I want to touch on a subject that is very much taboo in our culture, and that is teaching children the difference between work and play.  Many early childhood professionals would absolutely go into spasms if they heard me talk to the children here about work and play.  I teach the children here that work is something that must be done whether you like it or not and whether you want to or not.  Work is a no choice proposition.  How have we gotten so far from our roots that I have to fear being tarred and feathered for trying to teach children what it means to have a work ethic?  I am so sorry if that offends your sensibilities, but that is the definition of a work ethic.  The work is done before anything else and it is done without fail.  This is how successful people function and living otherwise produces pitiful results in your life.  This is a truth that cannot be ignored or gotten around, and we must begin to teach this to our children again if we want to have a thriving society.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Teaching Foreign Language in a Preschool Setting

This post will delve into the pros and cons of teaching foreign language in a preschool setting.  This topic also strikes very close to the hotly debated subject of academics in preschool.  I will bring out the research on brain development concerning this topic, and also bring in my unique perspective as a homeschooling mom.

Is a Second Language Necessary?
I want to start this discussion with the question - Is it really that important for children to learn a second language in their preschool years?  This question does not have a simple yes or no answer.  Let us start with the facts.  It is a fact that children between the ages of 0 to 5 years of age have more neurons and neural activity than at any other time of their life.  During this period neural connections are either made or pruned.  Simply put, the areas of the brain that receive reinforcement during this time period gain neural connections, and those that do not receive reinforcement do not gain neural connections.  Therefore, it stands to reason that exposing young children to a second or more languages helps the area of the brain dedicated to language to gain neural connections especially those areas that allow for  different words pertaining to the same object.  In other words, the child's brain becomes hardwired for language acquisition.  Does this translate into ease of language acquisition later in life?  I believe it does.

Yes and No
However, I said this question does not have a definite yes or no answer.  The reason I said this is because language acquisition may not be a priority for that family or child.  The brain research only matters if language acquisition falls on the top end of the educational priority list of a culture, family group, etc.  If language acquisition falls at the bottom of the educational priority list, then other areas of learning become more important.  Our society has always treated education as a cut and dry subject and some areas of learning are universal such as reading and basic math.  However, the education of children is also very much subjective and depends greatly on the priorities of the culture into which a child is born.  Opponents of universal curriculum, such as the Common Core curriculum which is so hotly debated these days, have a point.  Education should be locally controlled or parents and educators will feel like certain aspects of the curriculum are being shoved down their throat.  This is also why diversity of preschool programs has such importance for parents.  Some parents want more academic content for their children.  Some parents want more play-based activities for their children.  Guess what?  Parents should be able to choose which type of program they deem important for their children rather than being told what kind of program their children should attend.  Therefore, regulations surrounding preschool programs should allow for this diversity instead of shoving one style down everyone's throat.  When government involves itself too heavily in the education debate, a mess of great proportions always follows.  This remains one of the biggest lessons we should have learned from history but never do.

Exposure Not Fluency
Now, let us say that you are a parent that finds language acquisition valuable.  How do you go about teaching preschool children a second or more languages?  Here is the point where many on the academic side of the debate usually hit the ditch.  It is not necessary for a child to be fluent in two or more languages for them to benefit from foreign language instruction.  Granted there will always be that child so predisposed to language acquisition that they do learn to speak two or more languages by the time they are three or four years of age.  However, they will always be the exception and not the norm.  The point is exposure not fluency.  Remember the goal is to help the brain retain or gain neural connections that involve understanding multiple words for the same object or idea.  For example, we want the child to understand that red, rojo, and rouge are different words for the same color.  Will they retain all the words we teach them in preschool?  Yes and no.  As the adult you will never be able to predict what sticks and what does not.  That depends entirely on the child and how relevant the child finds the information.  Some children find foreign language fascinating and others do not.  Some children remember the names of colors in more than one language but nothing else.  However, even if they forget every word you taught them in preschool, you have still hardwired their brain for language acquisition.  Later in their life, the concept of another word for the same object will come easy to them, and picking up another language will not be as difficult as it might be for another person without that hardwiring of the brain.  How do I know this?  My biological children were exposed to foreign language in preschool continuing on through elementary school.  When they reached high school, they remembered some of the words I taught them.  However, picking up two or more languages in high school was easy for them.  I had hardwired their brains, and it paid off for them in major ways.

Dos and Don'ts
Before I leave this subject let me hit on some "dos and don'ts" of presenting foreign language to preschool children.  Do present words that are relevant to their world such as colors, body parts, articles of clothing, etc.  Don't label everything in the classroom in multiple languages and call that foreign language instruction.  Just seeing words in a different language does not benefit prereading children.  That tactic in an elementary classroom where all the children can read would be much more beneficial.  If you do have multi-lingual labels in your classroom, the only way to make those beneficial to preschool children is to read them very frequently.  Otherwise, they are decorations.  Do read books that have both the English and another language with pictures to support the story.  This allows the children to hear two different languages describing the same picture.  Don't read stories that just randomly throw in words from a different language without any explanation.  This will not make sense to the children.  When it comes to learning a foreign language, oral presentations will always trump visual presentations until a child learns to read.  If you want to use visuals, use pictures and say the word.  Remember, I am not a fan of whole language reading techniques.  This transfers to teaching a foreign language.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Helping Children Have Courage

This post will deal with helping children to face fears and attempt risks.  Our society today is raising a generation that is so sheltered they are being called the "fragile" generation.  I really do not think we as a society have even fully considered what kind of long-term ramifications that will have on us as a nation.  For over a hundred years Americans have been known for their pioneering spirit and ingenuity.  We can kiss that reputation goodbye if we have not already.  We will simply continue our slide into obscurity and another nation will rise to prominence.  We have fallen into the same trap in which every other prominent nation throughout history has fallen prey.  We have become complacent and raised generations of children that became increasingly more sheltered.

The Definition of Courage
Webster defines courage as the ability to conquer fear or despair.  In order to conquer fear and/or despair, children must experience both fear and despair.  Helicopter parents do everything in their power to keep their children from both of these experiences.  I have said over and over and over again that our society's fixation with a "perfect" childhood will be our undoing.  Childhood cannot and should not be "perfect."  If it is, children will not grow into properly functioning adults.  I am afraid that is just the cold hard facts.

The Lessons of History
The saying that "those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it" very much applies to the trends we see in our current society.  I become so frustrated with people trying to build a utopia on this earth.  These type of people have such narrow focus that they do not see how they follow the paths that brought serious decline to other empires.  They will tell you (if you point out to them what they are doing) that this time will be different because the world has changed.  To quote the Bible "there is nothing new under the sun."  It has not worked ever before, and it will not work this time, either.  When you raise subsequent generations of spoiled and sheltered children, a more dominant culture will come to displace that society, and the displaced society will suffer.  The spoiled and sheltered children will become completely defenseless adults destined to be victims.

The Importance of Courage
I hope the previous paragraph scared the life out of you.  Courage is absolutely and completely necessary for the survival of any people.  What are we doing to build courage in our children?  All I see in current trends is sheltering and redirection.  Both of these techniques has created our "fragile" generation.  Courage comes out of adversity.  How do you see children dealing with adversity?  What I see are children that throw hissy fits over the least little inconvenience (I also see adults doing this as well).  I do not believe that is instilling courage in anyone.  Yet, we continue to push sheltering and redirection as the most beneficial methods of raising children.

The Trouble with the "Perfect" Environment
At this point I want to take an in depth look at the two types of disciplining techniques I find to be the most at fault for creating our "fragile" generation.  The first is what I will refer to as sheltering, but it comes with many and various labels.  Basically, this deals with the discipline technique where adults try to prepare for every contingency and try to create environments that are perfectly safe.  Number one, this is impossible.  I guarantee for every "perfect" environment there exists a child that will find some way to hurt himself/herself or others.  For this reason, providers are put in a position of enormous pressure to maintain said impossible "perfect" environment and hung out to dry when they fail.  Unfortunately, this is almost a given.  I have seen so many good providers completely devastated and villianized when that time comes where a child finds a way around their "perfect" environment.  Yet, these types of environments are not even in the best interests of the child.  As I stated earlier, courage comes with adversity.  Adversity involves risk-taking.  Risk-taking in these types of environments is squashed in all but the most stubborn of children.  Children have to learn how to weigh risks in order to make good decisions.  Helicopter society is going to have to back off or we will continue to raise generation after generation of adults with no concept of how to deal with fear or despair other than to be dominated by them.

The Trouble with Redirection
The other major misstep we are making as a society involves redirection.  In theory, this one sounds like a wonderful idea.  Rather than having to deal with constant power struggles with two year olds, we simply redirect them or try desperately to avoid situations where power struggles will occur.  However, avoiding power struggles with two year olds only puts you, the adult, in the position to deal with an extended period where children throw these irrational hissy fits.  Instead of dealing with this period of irrational hissy fits head-on, we are dealing with teenagers throwing hissy fits that would rival any two year old in history.  Unfortunately, hissy fits and power struggles are a part of a two year old's normal development.  When we avoid dealing with these hissy fits, we are depriving the child of learning to accept that the world does revolve around them.  This is a lesson a child should begin learning at the age of two, and when they do not, we end up with young adults with an extremely skewed version of reality.  All one has to do is look around at our society to know that I speak the uncompromising truth of the matter.  Another aspect of allowing children to work through their hissy fits instead of redirecting them has to do with what my husband calls the "suck up and deal with it" factor.  Courage has a lot to do with the ability to deal with unpleasant circumstances and make the best of a bad situation.  Have you ever considered that by avoiding power struggles we as a society are depriving our children of one of the most important aspects of courage - learning to deal with unpleasantness.  It starts at age two.

The Importance of Risks
To sum it all up, if we want children to develop courage, we need to let them take risks.  We need to quit hovering over them and saving them from every little setback.  Let them flounder.  Let them work through their own difficulties.  Back off and let them be.  Also, do not let a few tears and hissy fits send you into compromising situations.  Let them cry and scream and flail.  Stand your ground.  They must learn that the world does not revolve around them if you want to have adults that can truly function in the real world.  This will breed children with resilience and character capable of overcoming what life throws their way.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Building Oral Language in Children

This post will deal with the important task of building oral language skills in children.  It has been proven that children from homes with parents that have a college education do better in school than children from parents without a college education.  Why is that?  The children from educated parents hear on average 1000 more words per day than children from parents without a college education.  This translates into a higher working oral vocabulary for these children, and it makes a huge difference in school readiness.

The Importance of Oral Language Skills
Oral language skills really do make or break a child's ability to decode words either using the phonics method of reading instruction or the whole language method of reading instruction.  In fact, it is extremely important for children who will be taught to read using the whole language method.  Children taught using the phonics method still benefit from a rich oral language base.

What makes oral language so important?  When children have a rich oral vocabulary, they have basically prewired their brains for language acquisition.  This benefits reading, writing, and foreign language acquisition later in life.  Children are born with millions of neurons and all through early childhood the brain either makes connections or prunes connections.  When children are exposed to rich language experiences, the brain makes more permanent connections in the section of the brain designated for language.  When children are not exposed to rich language experiences, the brain makes fewer connections and prunes more in the section of the brain designated for language.  This really has significant impact when a child reaches school-age.  Those early connections make reading much easier for those that have them.  For those that do not have them, reading and all language based skills become  much more of a challenge.  Lack of money is not the main detrimental aspect of poverty on children.  It is this language deficiency that seems to accompany poverty that truly puts these children at a disadvantage.

The Decline of Oral Language Skills
In the not so distant past, it seemed that only children from at risk environments seemed to experience this language deficiency.  However, recent trends from those of us on the front lines of childcare have seen the language immaturity of children skyrocket despite parents' socio-economic status.  The trend of educational level of parents still seems to be holding somewhat true, but even children from educated parents are showing less oral language skills than children from educated parents just five years ago.  What has changed?  The level of technology use is what has changed.  Now, instead of having conversations with their children, parents often hand them a phone or other device to keep them occupied.  As childcare providers we see it everyday.  Parents come in to pick up their children talking on their cell phones.  These parents continue their conversations while they sign out their children, grab the child and his/her stuff, and walk out the door still having the same conversation on their phone.  The scenario is exactly the same in reverse at drop-off time except the parents will take a small break to kiss and hug their child goodbye before they go out the door still talking on their phone.  How many times have you seen a child in a public place being pacified with an electronic device while the parent shops or does other things?  Psychologists are beginning to raise the alarm about the lack of real social skills among today's young adults because of social media and electronic communication devices.  This trend is also greatly affecting children's oral language skills.

What Can We Do?
Unfortunately, as childcare providers there is only so much we can do to counter these trends.  We can work hard to provide rich language experiences for children while in our care, but we do not have them all the time.  The lack of language experiences during the rest of their time has an affect on these children.  Even though it is not fair, it falls to us to try to educate parents as to the importance of providing rich language experiences for their children all the time.  Following are some suggestions for parents to help them do a better job of hardwiring their little ones for a lifetime of language learning.

READ!!!!!!
The first and probably one of the most important activities a parent can do for a child is to read to them. However, getting parents to read to children can be one of the most difficult endeavors anyone undertakes.  Some school systems have gone to extreme measures to make sure parents of early elementary children read to their children.  My granddaughter's kindergarten teacher has my daughter document how many books she reads to my granddaughter every week.  It is part of my granddaughter's grade.  I use a more subtle approach at my childcare by providing "traveling suitcases" for the children to take home over the weekend.  I cannot tell you how many parents have come in Monday morning complaining about how many times they had to read that book over the weekend, and I simply smile to myself thinking how that parent grew up over the weekend despite himself/herself.  However, I have also had parents refuse to take the suitcases home because they did not want to fool with them.  As I said, there is only so much you can do as a childcare provider, but never quit trying.

Sit-Down Meals
The second suggestion for parents involves encouraging them to have sit-down meals that are electronic-free.  Again, in our society getting parents to do this one is just as difficult as trying to get them to read.  Some people simply cannot go for any amount of time away from their smart phones.  It is sad.  However, the electronic-free aspect of this suggestion presents only half the problem.  It absolutely amazes me how many people do not cook meals anymore.  They eat in the vehicle on their way to wherever or they pick up fast food and everyone disperses with their food to various rooms of the house and usually engages with some form of electronic device from televisions to video games.  Having sit-down meals in our society has nearly become extinct, and it is affecting the oral language skills of our children.  Sit-down mealtimes provide invaluable conversation between adults and children.  Even when the conversation involves only the adults for a time, it is important for children to listen to this type of conversation.  When children are privy to adult conversation, they have better oral vocabularies.

Do Not Dumb Down for Children
The last of my suggestions deals with how adults talk to children.  When my biological children were small, I never dumbed down my vocabulary for them.  I talked to them as if they were a person.  Some people do not realize how much they dumb down their vocabulary for children, and it does the children more harm than good.  Children need to hear a wide variety of language even when they are small.  The more exposure they have to these bigger words, the more likely it is that these words will become a part of their oral vocabulary.  I still talk to the children in my care the same way I talked to my biological children.  I use some big words.  If I get a funny look from them, I simply explain the word and go on.  People have commented over the years about how impressive the oral vocabularies of the children in my care are in comparison to the other children around them.  There is a reason for that.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Teaching Children to Be Persistent

This post will deal with the task of teaching children to stick to a task in the midst of trials and tribulations.  I have written a post on diligence.  Persistence deals with sticking to something when the going gets tough.  Diligence, on the other hand, deals more with simply sticking with something until it is finished.

The "Fragile" Generation
Children in today's society have been referred to as the "fragile" generation.  When they meet with the least little resistance, they crumple and give up entirely.  What has caused this upcoming generation to be so fragile?  There are many related culprits.  However, the main one has to be our overemphasis on positive reinforcement.  We are raising a generation that does not know how to deal with negative reinforcement.  Is that such a bad thing?  Absolutely.  Negative reinforcement just happens to be built into our universe.  We cannot escape it.  When you jump off a building, you will go down whether or not that happens to be what you intended.  It is called gravity.  When you choose to ignore the laws of nature, you will become acquainted with negative consequences.  Maybe that is why for thousands of years, parents have used negative reinforcement to train their children.  It has only been in the last 50 years or so that childhood "experts" have decided that children must be trained solely using positive reinforcement.  I would say their grand experiment has been been an utter failure.  Children must have positive and negative reinforcement in equal measures to develop into functioning adults.

The Idealist View of Childhood
Another culprit on the list of causes involves our society's idealistic views of childhood.  According to the "experts" children should be allowed to do what they want without having restraints put on them.  Instead of being told what to do, children should have choices and be the one in charge of their activities.  Childhood should be a magical time full of wonderful ooey gooey moments without any thoughts of the bad realities of our world.  All of this sounds so wonderful in theory, however, it does not produce functioning adults.  What it does produce are young adults with no sense of reality that come into adulthood in need of almost constant counseling in order to deal with the realities of the adult world.  That might be wonderful job security for the counseling profession, but it does not bode well for our society at large.  We know we are in trouble when a college student cannot deal with getting a "C" that they fully deserve without going into the depths of despair so hard they require medication.  I remember getting my first "C" in college.  It really bummed me out, but I also had to admit that I put almost no effort in that class and fully deserved what I got.  Therein lies the huge difference.  I was used to negative reinforcement and therefore, put the blame where it squarely belonged - on me.

A Society of Victims
That brings me to the last major culprit - our society of victims.  In this society it is always someone else's fault.  Children blame their parents.  Parents blame their children.  Students blame the teachers and on and on and on.  People do not take responsibility for their own actions, which is one of the most basic components of persistence.  In order to be able to persevere, a person has to understand his/her part in the failure.  A person cannot fix something unless he/she knows what is broken.  That takes a great deal of self-awareness and self-acceptance not self-esteem.  Self-esteem and our overemphasis of it has caused our society of victims.  We feel good about ourselves without understanding ourselves at all.  That has to be the most useless trait in a person.  When we take a honest evaluation of ourselves, we put ourselves in a place where we can change.  Changing for the better produces a self-esteem that actually does good rather than harm.  The self esteem that has no bearing on positive results makes children believe that the world owes them.  That produces a society of victims.  Victims crumple to the ground and do not persevere through adversity.

The Need for Negative Reinforcement
Let us take this into the early childhood realm.  If we want persistent children instead of fragile children, we must use negative reinforcement in equal measures with our positive reinforcement.  Children cannot gain experience in dealing with the negative aspects of our world if we constantly protect them from it.  I wish that were not the case, but wishing does not change that we live in a fallen world and all the wishing in the world will not make it a utopia.  If you want to think deeply about a philosophical topic, every time a society has tried to build a utopia on this earth, they have caused the opposite to evolve instead.  Guess what?  The same is true about trying to build a perfect childhood.  You end up creating people who have great difficulty growing up.  We must let children have struggles and trials and tribulations.  If we do not, we deprive them of the ability to deal with the life in which they were born.  Persistence comes from working through difficulties.  We cannot attain this particular character trait without problems.  Let children work through their own problems as much as possible.  Above all, please restrain yourself from saving a child from their consequences.  Those consequences are vitally important to that child's development.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Teaching Children to Be Gentle

This post will deal with helping children to self-regulate and learn when it is okay to be loud and rowdy and when it is necessary to be gentle.  It seems to me that children in today's society only have one gear and that is loud and rowdy.  Our society seems to have completely given up on the concept of teaching children to be still and quiet at all.  However, children in every other century that children have lived on this planet have learned to be calm when necessary.  Therefore, children in this century can learn this as well.

The Definition of Gentle
Webster defines gentle as follows:  to make or become mild, docile, soft, or moderate.  I like that Webster uses the word make as well as become in this definition because a child will not become gentle until that child is made to be gentle.  When someone makes something out of clay, for instance, the making involves creating boundaries and shaping the sculpture through both force and guidance.  Too much force ruins the sculpture as does guidance without any force.  It takes just the right amount of both to bring the object desired from the lump of clay.  Children will not become calm and gentle until they are made to calm down and directed as to what that looks like.  How many times have you witnessed an adult telling children to calm down without instructing them as to what that means?  That scenario usually ends with the adult giving up and just letting them run wild.  On the other hand, how many times have you witnessed an adult saying to a child, "Now honey, we use our soft hands when we play with our friends" while the children are completely ignoring the adult and smacking one another?  This scenario plays out even if the adult is demonstrating how to use our soft hands because she has no firmness in her speech.  If no one has ever told you that it takes both negative and positive reinforcement to truly train children, let me be the first.

The Overindulgence of Children
Before I tackle training children to be gentle, I want to touch on some aspects of our culture that complicates this process.  These aspects must be addressed before you will be able to see results in the training of gentleness.  The first aspect is overindulgence of children.  Gentleness involves a great deal of self-control.  Overindulgence robs children of most or all of their self-control.  When a child gets their way all or most of the time, that child does not have opportunities to develop self-control.  Sometimes I feel like C. S. Lewis when dealing with the ideals prevalent in this culture.  He often stated in the Chronicles of Narnia that certain people have read all the wrong books.  Books from before the mid 20th century often portrayed people that always got their way as selfish and lazy.  However, nowadays the "experts" would have you believe that children should never hear the word "no" in order to be normal human beings.  If you force them to do anything, you will damage their self-esteem and inhibit their ability to develop in their own way.  To that, I say hogwash to use a good old-fashioned Southern term.  These "experts" have read all the wrong books.  If you want to curb overindulgence, you must rain on children's parades from time to time.  They must learn to deal with not getting their way in order to develop into fully functioning adults.  That is just a simple fact of life.

Overstimulation
The second aspect of our culture I would like to address is overstimulation.  Many children in our culture are so hyped up on adrenaline that being gentle is completely out of the question.  The causes for this vary, but the main causes are not enough good sleep, way too much additives and chemicals in the children's diet, and no emphasis in our culture in providing downtime for children.  Many people do not know the true value of nap time for children.  Most people in today's society think nap time can be optional for children not knowing that the reason their children do not sleep well at night is because of overstimulation.  When children do not have rest during the day, they become so wired they cannot calm down enough to get good sleep at night.  I always have a hard time with new parents and my nap policies.  They freak out because I really put a lot of emphasis on training children to take naps during the day.  Usually these are the ones that have children that do not sleep well at night, and they think a nap will only complicate matters.  However, after a couple of weeks, these same parents praise me as a genius when their child begins to sleep through the night for the first time in years.  I shut down the vicious cycle of overstimulation, and the children are much happier for it.  I will not dwell too much on diet in this article, but it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that chemicals and additives in food just might cause hyperness in children.  At my facility I have the three pillars of well being for the children.  One is a good nap.  One is good food, and the last is good instruction.  All three of these components depend on one another.  Good instruction without the other two does not garner anywhere near the results that it does with the other two.  I also really watch for overstimulation in my facility because I have children in my care with ADHD.  These children can launch into orbit without much notice at all.  Therefore, I make sure all the children here have times of quiet play along with rowdy play.  The quiet times help the brain reset itself.  It is absolutely necessary.

Teaching Gentleness
Once you have ensured that your environment is conducive to teaching gentleness, it is time to begin the actual instruction.  As I stated before, it takes both positive and negative reinforcement to truly train children to do anything.  The positive reinforcement comes through modeling.  For this one I have many books and stories that talk about how and when to be gentle.  I also use puppets for this.  Puppets give children an opportunity to be gentle with something they feel is alive but really is not.  It is a great precursor to learning how to handle pets.  The negative reinforcement comes when you call them down for being rowdy, and yes, I did just advocate calling the children on their bad behavior.  It is absolutely necessary.  Sometimes the only way to truly get a child's attention about his/her bad behavior is to call it out in the heat of the moment.  Does that embarrass the child?  Possibly, but sometimes shame that leads to repentance is a good thing.  That type of shame deals specifically with the behavior and not the worth of the child.  If your correcting deals strictly with the bad behavior and not belittling the child, then that is appropriate.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

What Phonics Instruction Looks Like for 4 Year Olds

This post will conclude the series of posts I have been doing on the weekend about phonics instruction in a preschool setting.  As with all the other posts on this subject, this post will deal with the wide divergence of abilities and maturity among 4 year olds.  I will look at immature to advanced and gifted children.  Remember, I do one-on-one instruction at my facility.  Therefore, some of my suggestions may be difficult to carry out in a regular classroom setting.  Use your own judgement and discretion as to how to fit this type of instruction into your setting.

The Great Divide
As I stated in both of the previous two articles on this subject, children begin to diverge according to maturity and ability around the age of two.  That becomes more pronounced at age three.  At age four, in my facility, that becomes a divide that is unbelievable.  This great divide among four year olds in my facility probably stems from my one-on-one instruction and the fact that I do not hold back children just because of their age.  I have some two year olds ahead of some four year olds because the two year old is gifted and the four year old is extremely immature.  Fortunately my set-up allows me to pull the immature four year olds up very quickly, but sometimes they never pass the advanced and gifted three year olds.

Immature 4 Year Olds
I will start this discussion with the immature four year olds.  This group of children will probably be the most time-consuming bunch because often there is an enormous amount of ground to cover before kindergarten.  I have had four year olds walk through my door not even knowing all of their body parts.  As I have stated in an earlier post, I start all children that walk through my door at the same place.  What differs from child to child is the pace and amount of instruction.  When an immature four year old arrives on my doorstep we start from the beginning but work on many different concepts simultaneously.  If the child also has language problems or delays, we will work the babble games concentrating on developing the tongue muscles.  Some of these children pull up quickly once they are exposed to quality instruction.  If these children do not pull up quickly, that is my first red flag that a developmental delay may be involved.  I usually give a child six months of instruction before I recommend testing.  If an immature four year old does not pull up immensely with six months' worth of instruction, there is a good possibility that something is hampering that child's development.  Many of the immature four year olds benefit as much from the group time instruction as they do the one-on-one instruction.  The younger children benefit from the group time instruction, but the immature four year olds seem to gain the most.  Therefore, put many language activities into your group time activities if you have immature four year olds in your midst.  This will help you gain more ground in the short amount of time you have before kindergarten.

The Importance of the Alphabet
With four year old children, I start the letter instruction as soon as I possibly can.  As I have stated before, it is imperative that children arrive at kindergarten with a good working knowledge of the alphabet.  We can argue all day long as to whether this is developmentally appropriate or not, but the fact remains that if a child arrives at kindergarten without a good working knowledge of the alphabet, they are behind as soon as they walk through the door.  These four year olds need to at the least be able to recognize all the capital letters of the alphabet.  It is better if they can recognize all the capital letters, many of the lowercase letters, and know most of the sounds of the letters.  If you can reach this point, the child will be able to cope with kindergarten on a basic level.

Blend Instruction
Many of the normally developing four year olds in my care, learn all their capital letters before they enter that final year before kindergarten.  With these children I concentrate on lowercase letters and letter sounds at the beginning of that final year.  Once these have been conquered, we start putting letters together into blends and then short one-vowel words.  If you have never seen a reading curriculum that is phonics-based, I recommend that you check into some of the leading homeschooling curriculums.  Many of these programs have extremely well-developed teacher's manuals with CDs to help with pronunciation.  Many four year olds are capable of reading short one vowel words before kindergarten.  It does give these children a huge advantage to arrive at kindergarten being able to sound out words.  The Common Core curriculum that is presently being pushed in the public schools is about 50% phonics and 50% whole language.  Children with a solid phonics background will thrive with this curriculum.

The Advanced and Gifted
Now I come to the advanced and gifted children.  These children will conquer short one vowel words either before or right at the beginning of that final year before kindergarten.  As I have said over and over and over, I do not hold children back.  These children can learn to read sentences and then paragraphs.  If you have a good phonics-based curriculum at your disposal, it is not difficult to teach these children to read at all.  One suggestion from my background as the mother of a gifted child, break the lessons into smaller segments scattered over the day.  These children still have a shorter attention span than older children, but they do well with more short segments than one long session.  People who oppose academic instruction for preschoolers often picture children sitting for long periods of time doing school work.  However, as a homeschooler, I know that is not what it looks like at all.  Academics for preschoolers comes in short bursts all day long sandwiched in between a great deal of free play time.  These children can accomplish so much more than many people think doing "school" in this manner.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Teaching Children to Be Peacemakers

This post will look into how to teach children to be peacemakers.  In order to be peacemakers, however, they must first learn to be at peace.  Being at peace involves self-acceptance and contentment.  We will look into helping children to be at peace with themselves and others, and then how to help others to be at peace with themselves and others.

The Definition of a Peacemaker
Webster defines peace as (1) a state of calm and quiet and (2) freedom from disturbing thoughts and emotions.  Peacemaker is defined as one who settles an argument or stops a fight.  Many people do not often consider that it requires a peaceful person to step in and act as a peacemaker.  Have you ever encountered a person that relishes in drama trying to stop an argument or stop a fight?  What happens?  Most of the time the argument escalates or the fight gets completely out of hand.  A peacemaker must possess a calm and peaceful demeanor in order to step into a situation and promote calm.  A person that has out-of-control emotions cannot possibly help another person bring his/her emotions under control.

Emotional Intelligence
One of the biggest pushes recently in the early childhood field has been to promote emotional intelligence.  This has probably been one of the best movements to come down the pike in years.  However, most of the time the parents need this instruction worse than the children.  Many of the millennials have a hard time with controlling their emotions.  Don't believe me?  Cross someone under the age of 25 and see how fast things escalate.  They truly have a hard time understanding the consequences of their negative emotions.  As an early childhood provider, it is difficult to teach emotional intelligence to children raised by parents with little emotional intelligence.  Sometimes it feels like we are trying to raise two generations at the same time, and many times we are put in that situation. We have to train parents as much as we train children.  This is one of the biggest reasons early childhood professionals burn out in just a few years.  It is also something that seems to be growing worse with every passing year causing many long-time childhood professionals to retire.  For me personally, I have become very picky about the children I take.  If a parent walks in and there is drama within 15 minutes, I send that parent packing.  Drama spreads like gangrene, and maybe I am just getting too old to deal with it anymore.

What exactly is emotional intelligence?  It involves having an understanding of the different emotions and how to control those emotions.  It is not enough to just know about emotions.  Many activities for preschoolers fall into this category.  They simply teach the children about the different emotions, but that constitutes half of what makes up emotional intelligence.  That would be like getting a 50 out of 100 on a test.  This produces children who will scream at you at the top of their lungs that they are angry.  They have the right emotion, but do not know how to control that emotion.  This is the problem millennials have.  They are in touch with how they feel, and they feel everyone should know about it in every way possible.  They let their emotions rule them instead of learning to rule over their emotions.  We must do better with this next generation, and in the process, teach their parents what emotional intelligence looks like as well.

Basic Anger Management
A great deal of the instruction I do with my children is basic anger management techniques.  I teach them to take deep breaths when they feel their emotions getting out of control.  I have a place for them to go to calm down when they are upset.  We talk about how to handle different scenarios especially those where the child has to deal with not getting his/her way.  This is probably the most important lesson a preschooler can learn.  The second most important lesson a preschooler can learn is how to pull back when they are becoming overstimulated.  However, many times adults have to step in to help children when this happens.  With so many American children being diagnosed with ADD and ADHD, this skill has become of the utmost importance, and yet I have witnessed parents and caregivers with very little understanding of overstimulation.  They have no idea why the children in their care are aggressive and completely out of control.  A child becomes overstimulated when they go too long without rest or quiet activity.  This can happen when children do not nap.  It can also happen when children are allowed to run wild most of the day.  Children need times of quiet activity to reset their brain.  We are raising adrenaline junkies that have trouble sleeping and controlling their behavior.  It is important to teach children that quiet play is as important as loud rowdy play and help them to have a good mix of both during their day.

In the Early Childhood World
Now we come to the point where teaching children to be a peacemaker comes into play.  When children have good emotional intelligence and understand how to keep themselves from becoming overstimulated, they will naturally help their peers to be more peaceful.  They will tell their friends to calm down.  They will emulate you if you have done your job well in training them to take deep breaths when they are upset.  Nothing is cuter than watching a 4 year old tell a friend that is upset to stop, take 3 deep breaths, and calm down.  It is like watching a future counselor in the making.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

What Phonics Instruction Looks Like for 3 year olds

This post will deal with the practical aspects of phonics instruction in a preschool setting.  Many of the activities promoted for early literacy development actually fall into the whole language camp rather than the phonics-based camp.  I will address these activities to show how they can be tweeked to promote phonics.  I will also discuss activities that wholly fall in the phonics-based camp.

The Great Divide at 3
In my post dealing with phonics based instruction for infants and toddlers, I discussed how children truly begin to diverge at the age of two as to maturity, ability, and exposure to good learning experiences.  When children reach the age of three, this continues and becomes more pronounced.  In any given three year old classroom in the United States, you will find children not pottytrained and not speaking very well to children who are nearly ready to begin learning to read.  The causes of this wide divergence are as varied as the children themselves.  However, dealing with the wide divergence has become one of the hottest topics of discussion in early childhood and early elementary teachers.

Providing preliteracy instruction for such a wide divergence of abilities and maturities can be extremely challenging.  In this post I will provide activities for children ranging from very immature to advanced and gifted.  How you incorporate these activities into your setting will depend on the ability and maturity level of the children in your care.

The Immature 3 Year old
Preliteracy instruction for immature 3 year olds will look very similar to what I suggested for 2 year olds.  For those children who are still struggling with speech, the babble games are the most important activity you can do with these children.  Many immature children also have speech issues by this age.  A lot of this is due to underdeveloped tongue muscles.  When you do babble games with this age, it is very important to make it a game about the tongue and where the tongue goes to make each sound.  Sometimes this will require you to sit and think carefully about how your own mouth makes these sounds before you try this with the children.  For example, the "L" sound is one of the most common problems that comes up.  For that sound the tongue must touch the top of the mouth behind the teeth in order to say it correctly.  For many children this is a challenge, but keep after it.  The tongue is a muscle and will develop with use.  Being able to pronounce all the consonant sounds is the first stepping stone of learning to sound out words.  I cannot stress how important this particular stepping stone is for future phonics instruction.

Beyond babble games, one of the most important activities you can do with children is read to them.  For three year olds with little experience with books, you will need to choose books that have easy repetitive text.  As with normally developing two year olds, this type of book gives them experience with "reading" a book.  They will pick up this repetitive text and say it with you.  In the phonics based method this is more about learning to use language than actual reading as advocated in the whole language method.  Playing with words is extremely important for this age.  For three year olds that have had good exposure to books, you will need to choose books that rhyme or use alliteration (all the words begin with the same letter).  Again, the purpose is for children to play with the sounds of language.  These types of activities prepare a child to break down words into their basic sounds.  The whole language method advocates trying to help children learn how the whole word looks.  The phonics method, on the other hand, deals with the way sounds are used in words.  When reading to children, play with the sounds of language as well as expose children to as much language as possible.  These are the activities that prepare children to decode words not just memorize them.

Normally Developing 3 Year Olds
Normally developing three year olds typically begin to learn some of the letters of the alphabet.  This is the next stepping stone.  Children must know the names and sounds of letters to learn to read through the phonics method of instruction.  One of the best suggestions I ever received in one of my early childhood literacy classes came from a woman that also taught kindergarten.  She told us to plaster the alphabet everywhere and point to letters naming them as much as possible.  This contradicts what many early childhood experts suggest.  They suggest we plaster words all over the place.  However, she understood how vitally important knowing the letters is for children entering kindergarten.  Children that enter kindergarten not knowing the names and sounds of the letters are behind as soon as they walk in the door.  That is just a simple fact of life.  Learning the letters can start for many children at age three if they have had good experiences with books.  When you work with the children on learning the letters, make sure to include the letter sounds as well.  How you teach the letters will greatly depend on your teaching style.  There really is no wrong way to teach the letters if the children are actually learning them.  Let me give you a word of caution.  Some activities are fun, but when the activity is over, the children have not gained knowledge of the letters.  Make sure the activities you are doing help the children to learn the letter names and sounds.

The Advanced 3 Year Olds
Most three year olds will probably begin learning the letters but will not fully conquer them until they are four years old.  However, there will be the small minority of children that conquer all the letters at three and are ready to move on to harder tasks.  My middle child fell into this category.  These children are ready to begin to put letters together into blends and short one vowel words.  As I have said over and over and over again.  I never hold back a child because of his/her age.  It just is not fair to advanced and gifted children to keep them from what they are capable of doing.  Many times they will do this in spite of us.  My middle child learned to read sitting in the floor playing while I did her older sister's kindergarten instruction.  She was three.  She looked like she was playing but she was listening to every single thing I taught her sister.  When I realized what she was capable of doing, I just let her go for it.  She does not remember not being able to read, and she thinks that is the coolest thing in the world.  To her, every child should have that opportunity.  However, I understand that only a few three year olds fall into this category.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Teaching Children to Be Content

This post will deal with the subject of contentment.  Many, MANY American adults have absolutely no concept of this character trait.  Americans are known for constantly wanting more and more and more.  We are never satisfied.  Is that a bad thing?  It is when it applies to stuff.

The Definition of Contentment
Webster defines contentment as ease of mind or satisfaction.  I like the idea of ease of mind as a definition.  That implies a lack of internal strife and striving.  Being satisfied is what most people think when they consider contentment.  I will take it a little further.  The best word picture I have ever found for contentment is found in Psalms 131:2 "Surely I have composed and quieted my soul; Like a weaned child rests against his mother, My soul is like a weaned child within me."  The picture of the weaned child depicts a lack of striving.  The child has ceased to demand the breast and will sit in his mother's lap satisfied with the situation.  Contentment involves a quietness of the soul that accepts what comes without fear of the future.  For those of us who are Christians, it is that place where we are totally dependent on God and satisfied in that position.

Count Your Blessings
How in the world do we as adults achieve this awesome quietness of soul called contentment?  I truly believe the first step involves counting your blessings on a daily basis.  When we look at what we have rather than what we do not have, it changes our perspective.  This works for people with much and people with little.  In fact, sometimes I think it works best for those with not so much to little.  For people who do not have all the things that they desire, it is easy to get caught up in constantly wanting those things.  We see the beautiful new car driving down the road while we are driving a car that is 20 years old, and sometimes it can be hard to be thankful for that 20 year old car until it breaks down leaving us with no car.  Then when we get our car back we are very thankful for our 20 year old car.  Contentment comes into play when we can look at the things we have even if they are not the greatest and are thankful for them.  We force ourselves to realize that having what we have is better than having nothing.

Stop Complaining
After we reach the point where we can count our blessings, the next step involves ceasing to complain.  For some people if they could not complain, they would have nothing to say.  Complaining has become such a huge part of their personality that it is almost like a security blanket.  Complaining is the only way they feel comfortable.  However, complaining becomes a poison of the soul because we dwell on what is wrong and what we do not have.  A person cannot count his/her blessings and complain at the same time.  I know we all complain especially when we get hit with something unexpected and unpleasant.  However, do you live there?  Can you rise above the situation and look for the good?  Or do you settle into a complaining mentality and wrap it around yourself like a blanket?  The people that can move beyond the initial shock of unexpected and unpleasant circumstances to find the good in the situation are the people that have learned the secret of contentment.  They understand how to have the ease of mind that contentment can bring.

Be Okay with Not Getting Your Way
How does this relate to the early childhood world?  My word picture described a weaned child, which is a child in early childhood.  Therefore, contentment is not something that is out of reach for young children.  The main lesson young children learn as far as contentment goes involves learning to be okay with not getting their way.  However, in order for them to learn this lesson it is necessary for them to have times where they do not get their way.  Our culture caters to children so badly that American young children do not really get a lot of experience dealing with not getting their way.  When an opportunity arises for them to actually experience this, they throw such a hissy fit the parents/caregivers give in and let them have whatever they want.  Thus, they learn to throw a hissy fit to get their way.  This will never teach them contentment.  Parents/Caregivers are going to have to be thick-skinned enough to let them have their hissy fits without even thinking about caving into their demands if they ever want to teach the child what it means to quiet their soul and go with the flow.  A child that learns this lesson not only learns to deal with not getting what they want and being okay with that, but contented children also tend to be able to entertain themselves.  It is a byproduct of contentment.  Want to know why American children have such a hard time entertaining themselves?  Here it is.  Discontented children have to be entertained.  Contented children can entertain themselves.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

What Phonics Instruction Looks Like for Infants and Toddlers

This post will deal with the practical applications of laying the foundation for all literacy instruction in infants and toddlers.  Building language skills begins at birth.  Many people do not realize how important it is to lay a good solid foundation for future language acquisition in the infant and toddler years.  The information presented will be applicable for all children, but I will explain how all of these activities help children develop phonemic awareness and build speech fluency.

Talk to the Child
For infants and toddlers the most important activity a parent or child care provider can do is talk to the child.  Children must hear language in order to learn it.  When we talk to infants, we expose them to the various sounds in our language.  I am not talking about "baby talk," either.  Use normal vocabulary with your infant.  Let them hear a wide variety of words from you.  Research has proven that children who hear a wide variety of words talk sooner and even read better latter in childhood.  Much of the poverty gap with our public school children actually comes down to a language gap more than a money issue.  Turns out that children from middle and upper class parents hear more words in early childhood.  This can come down to a multitude of factors, but talk is free.  When you have an infant or toddler in your care, talk to that child as much as possible.

Read to the Child
The second most important activity for infants and toddlers is related to the first.  Read to that child.  Even infants benefit from exposure to books.  For infants word picture books offer the most benefit.  Pointing to pictures and naming them helps build that child's oral vocabulary.  Toddlers also benefit from word picture books, but the delivery needs to change with age.  As the child grows, the adult needs to change strategy from naming the pictures for the child to letting the child name the pictures.  This gives them practice using language.  Also, make sure to repeat the word pronouncing it correctly after the child says it.  I know it is adorable how the child pronounces some words, but you do not need to reinforce that.  It is extremely important for that child to hear the word pronounced correctly for the child to develop speech and phonemic awareness skills.

Play Babble Games
The third most important activity flows from something the child does naturally - babble.  These babble games give parents and caregivers a marvelous opportunity to develop phonemic awareness and speech.  Most of the time when a child babbles, we simply copy what the child is doing.  However, the adult can take the lead and change the babble to a different sound.  Often, the child will stop and listen to you, and then try to copy you.  In this way you can expose the child to every consonant sound in our language.  Many speech issues in young children that stem from a lack of exposure to language sounds can be eradicated with rich babble game experiences.  Also, many speech issues that stem from physical problems will show themselves earlier when an adult plays these babble games with children.  Early detection is always a good thing.

Stories with Repetitive Phrases
As the children reach older toddlerhood, it is time to start exposing the children to real stories.  The best stories for this age involve stories with repetitive phrases.  After just a few readings, this age group will pick up on these repetitive phrases and begin to "read" the books to themselves.  Again, the goal is language exposure at this age.  Choose books that also have rich vocabulary intertwined with the repetitive phrases.  The more a child hears a word, the sooner that word will find its way into that child's working vocabulary.  Research has proven over and over that children from parents with higher education are exposed to richer vocabulary at an earlier age.  This really does give these children an advantage when they reach school.

The Great Divide at 2
As children approach two years old, they truly start to diverge according to experiences and abilities.  Some two year olds still are not talking much at all, and some talk in sentences and even paragraphs.  This is the point where I begin to apply individualized instruction.  For those children with little oral language skills, I will concentrate on babbling games and word picture books.  For those children with more oral language skills, I will move on to the repetitive story books.  For those with advanced language skills, I will introduce more advanced stories, easy rhyming activities, and other activities that allow the child to play with the sounds of language.  It is extremely important for a child to understand and hear the sounds that make up our language.  This lays the foundation for being able to decode words and spell words when that child reaches "big school."

Two Year Olds with Advanced Language Skills
I diverge from my colleagues greatly when it comes to two year old children with advanced language skills.  Many early childhood experts consider what I do as developmentally inappropriate.  However, I say what I do is individually appropriate, and I never hold back a child because of their age.  One of my biological children is gifted.  She taught me the importance of letting her spread her wings when she was ready not when some "expert" said she ought to be ready.  I apply that to the other end of the spectrum as well.  Children who struggle need extra support not pressure especially when those children have developmental delays and issues.  They will spread their wings when they are ready and not before.  I really wish our educational system in this country could be designed around ability rather than age.  Our children reach school age at such varying places when it comes to experiences and abilities.  We do most of them a disservice by trying to apply a one-size-fits-all curriculum for a particular age group.  They would benefit so much more from a curriculum set for their particular ability level so that they will be able to experience true progression in education.  This is why my program provides one-on-one instruction rather than group instruction.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Teaching Children to Be Generous

This post will deal with teaching children the joy of giving.  Being a generous person, however, means more than just sharing material goods.  I will deal with both sides of this character trait.

The Definition of Generous
Webster defines generous as 1. free in giving and sharing 2. high-minded, noble 3. abundant, ample, . . openhanded.  I will look at the first two definitions here.  Most people consider the first definition of generous most of the time.  When we think about a person being generous, we imagine someone being "free in giving and sharing."  However, the definition of being high-minded and noble does not normally come to mind.  I am an avid reader of medieval literature, and this concept is easier to picture when you think of a benevolent lord.  A benevolent ruler takes care of those in his charge and makes sure everyone is amply supplied.  This, too, is a definition of generous.

Overindulging Children
This time of year brings out the generous in most everyone.  This season has ample opportunities to share and give freely.  However, for children this time of year can be a very selfish time, and for them, it is more about what am I going to get rather than what can I share and give.  The blame for this does not fall on the children.  We give them more presents than they could possibly need and wonder why they do not really appreciate any of it.  I do not know whether we as the adults are trying to live vicariously through our children and make up for lean years we experienced, or if we just simply do not have self-control when it comes to Christmas for the children.  Whichever is the case, we do our children no favors by overindulging them.  If you do not want your children to be selfish and greedy, you might want to consider less for Christmas.

The Youth Camp Lesson
At this point I want to share one of the best life lessons I ever learned at a youth camp.  This particular game was sprung on all of us unexpectedly at lunch one day.  Each of us was handed an envelope containing play money.  Some of us received a lot, some received about half of that, some of us received very little, and some received nothing.  Then we had to use the money to buy our lunch.  Those with a lot bought their lunch and went on as if nothing happened.  The ones who had received half of what the first group received, bought our lunch and complained because it was not enough.  The ones with very little bought what they could and shared with those who had nothing.  The first two groups did not share at all.  I was in the group that received half, and when our youth director pointed out that the ones with little shared with the ones with none, I was the most ashamed of myself I think I have ever been.  Some of the ones that shared were not known for their generosity, but something about that exercise brought out the generousness in them.  What is the lesson in this exercise?  I truly believe the biggest lesson is for the middle of the road group.  We all expect the haves to be selfish, but the somewhat haves can be just as selfish as the haves.  The have littles and the have nots often tend to be the most generous people in the world.  Why?  I think it is because they have learned the secret of making do with what they have, or they have learned to do without and be okay.  Those are two of the most valuable lessons in this world.

"I've Been There
Being generous is so much more than supplying someone from our excess.  Actually, sometimes we can come off as snobby when we do that even if we mean to do good.  Being generous is more about understanding what someone needs because you have been there yourself.  For example, I have had some of my parents write me bad checks unknowingly.  Every time that has happened, I have been reminded of when I made that very mistake, and I treated them just like I wanted to be treated in the same situation.  That one thing alone has won me some extremely loyal customers.  Many people do not necessarily think about that as being generous, but it is.  I was generous with my understanding as well as my money since I had to wait patiently for their payment sometimes.  This is where the high-minded and nobleness comes into being generous.  When we treat people as we would want to be treated in the same situation, we apply generousness to the situation in more ways than one.  This is the type of generousness that needs to spread the whole year and not just at Christmastime.

Doing Without and the Golden Rule
How does this come down to the early childhood world?  Number one, we need to teach children to do without and be okay with that.  I do believe that is probably the greatest way to teach a child to be generous because the child will actually have a concept of what it means to do without something.  We cannot have empathy for someone if we have absolutely no concept of what it means to be in his/her circumstances.  When a child understands what it means to have to be without something even if it is just for a little while, that child's giving can come from a deeper place.  It will mean more to that child.  Number two, teach children the Golden Rule and reinforce it every single opportunity that you get.  When children grow up following the Golden Rule as a lifestyle, then they will become a community of people that promote a generous culture.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

What You Need to Know about Systematic Phonics Instruction

This post will provide basic information on systematic phonics reading instruction.  It will also highlight the differences in systematic phonics instruction and random phonics instruction.  As I stated in my post on whole language reading instruction, it is my intention to help early childhood educators have a working knowledge base of the types of reading instruction used in the various school situations in the United States.

What Is Systematic Phonics Instruction?
Basically, systematic phonics instruction involves the application of various rules and letter sounds to decode words.  It usually involves the teaching of word families to help children gain familiarity with how certain groups of letters work together to make certain sounds.  These rules work for approximately 90% of the English language.  The other 10% are taught as sight words using the same methods as the whole language method of instruction.

Random Phonics Instruction
Some schools employ a system of phonics instruction called random phonics instruction.  This type of phonics instruction usually accompanies whole language instruction.  The mix of phonics and whole language can vary widely from school system to school system.  The new Common Core curriculum falls into this category with approximately a 50/50 mix.  This type of phonics instruction usually involves learning the letter sounds as well as some of the mixed-letter sounds without a great deal of emphasis on the rules of phonics.  Children are taught to sound out the first part of a word or all of a short word, and then taught to employ the whole language clue system to figure out the entire word.

The Work of Dr. Jean Chall
Systematic phonics instruction follows the guidelines set forth in the work of Dr. Jean Chall.  This type of phonics instruction follows a set pattern.  Children are taught all the letter sounds as well as combination of letter sounds before they are taught whole words.  When whole words are introduced, they are introduced in such a way that the phonics rules are taught in a systematic way.  Many private school and homeschool curriculums follow this method of reading instruction.  Very few public schools follow this system.  Why?  Systematic phonics instruction is labor intensive in the beginning stages.  It requires a more academic preschool background to be successful in kindergarten.  In public school settings too many children arrive at kindergarten not prepared for systematic phonics instruction due to the lack of academic content in many preschools.

The Biggest Criticism
This leads me to the critics of phonics instruction.  The biggest criticism of phonics instruction comes from what I stated in the previous paragraph.  Phonics instruction is labor intensive.  Many public schools struggle with simply maintaining control of the classroom and simply do not have the time needed to work on phonics on a large scale.  This is probably the biggest reason public schools opt for random phonics instruction over systematic phonics instruction.  Private schools and homeschool situations do not have the same chaos problems, and therefore have the time to devote to working on phonics on a large scale.  This also comes into play with the preschools.  Public and large private preschools have the same chaos problems as public school systems.  Working extensively on academic content becomes difficult.  Heavy regulations and a whole language bias also play heavily into why preschools have a hard time preparing students for a systematic phonics reading program in kindergarten.

The Next Biggest Criticism
The next largest criticism of phonics instruction I actually find very racist.  Many early childhood experts will say with a straight face that minority and underprivileged children cannot learn systematic phonics instruction.  These are the same people that would basically throw the rest of us in jail for even hinting at such a proposal.  However, during one of my research projects in graduate school I came across a study that refuted their assertion.  This study took a sampling population of underprivileged and minority preschoolers and broke them into three different groups.  Each group was assigned a method of prereading instruction.  Two of the groups followed a variation of whole language and the third group followed a systematic phonics approach.  The third group greatly outperformed the other two groups.  This study proved not only that systematic phonics instruction is superior, but it also refuted the claim that this population could not handle this type of instruction.

The Last Criticism
The last criticism usually launched against a systematic approach is that in the beginning the stories must contain words that follow the rules the children have learned thus far.  Whole language approaches throw larger words at children sooner to add greater variety to the beginning stories.  However, it does not take the phonics approach very long to surpass the whole language approach in the variety of words used in the stories, and once surpassed, the systematic phonics approach can add words exponentially faster than the whole language approach.  The kindergarten and beginning first grade readers in the phonics approach do have very simple vocabulary.  However, halfway through the first grade, phonics readers surpass whole language readers and never look back.

How Does It Work?
What does phonics instruction look like in the early childhood setting?  This will actually be the topic of the next several weekend posts.  Starting next Saturday I will begin to explain how early childhood educators can prepare the children in their care for a systematic phonics approach to reading.  Even if the children enter a school where the Common Core curriculum is used, this foundation will serve them better than a fully whole language approach to preschool.  If the children in your care actually do enter a school that uses a systematic phonics approach to reading, your parents will think you are worth your weight in gold.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457

Teaching Children the Difference between Joy and Happiness

This post will cover the concept of joy versus happiness.  These two are not the same.  Happiness is based on circumstances.  Joy comes from inner strength.  Very few adults have this difference conquered, but that does not mean that children cannot learn this lesson early in life.

The Definition of Joy
Webster defines joy as a feeling of happiness that comes from success, good fortune, or a sense of well-being.  Joy encompasses happiness, but happiness does not necessarily encompass joy.  Let me explain.  Have you ever had success at something and at first it made you very happy.  Then something else came along that sucked all the happiness out of the situation.  Happiness can be very fleeting.  Joy, however, is more stable.  You can take joy in a success even when others are trying to suck the life out of your success.  I had this happen when I was submitting my first book for publication.  I was so excited about publishing my first book that I was nearly beside myself.  Then someone came along and squashed all my happiness with a few snarky remarks.  They made me doubt my good fortune, and thus stole my happiness.  I had to rise above the snarky remarks in order to have joy in the situation.

Happiness Junkies
Our culture is absolutely chalked full of happiness junkies.  They search after happiness not understanding that happiness can be a very fickle emotion.  Happiness very much depends on having everything going your way.  When suddenly something does not go your way, happiness disappears as suddenly as it came.  It is very easy to get sucked into this trap.  On a daily basis everyone has good and bad happen.  It's part of life.  When the good happens, we feel elated.  When the bad happens, it makes it seem like the good never existed.  I remember one day in particular that happened a couple of years ago.  I received four different bits of really good news.  Any one of these would have been enough to put me in a very good mood for days.  Then later that day I had to deal with a very ugly parent episode at my childcare.  That episode sucked all the life out of me and made my four pieces of good news seem like nothing.  I relied on happiness instead of letting joy be my anchor that day, and I paid for it.

A Sense of Well-being
What exactly makes joy more lasting than happiness?  I think we can find the key in the last phrase of the Webster definition.  It is a "sense of well-being."  However, it goes deeper than that.  I would phrase more as a "sense that everything will be okay and work itself out in the end."  For Christians it very much comes down to Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose (NASB)."  We have this great sense that all things are working toward a greater good and purpose in our lives.  We accept the bad as lessons to be learned and try to use them to become better people.  We take joy in our lives because it is based on something beyond just our temporal experiences.  It can feel as strong as happiness at times.  At other times it is like this constant flow of goodness that we cling to in order to maintain.  Thus, joy can be experienced when it seems the world is collapsing around you.  Happiness cannot do that for you.

True Success
How do we translate this into the world of toddlers and preschoolers?  First of all, we teach the children about true success.  Children that are handed everything on a platter will never experience anything beyond happiness and that might be very fleeting at times.  Children that have to work for their successes will learn the joy of a job well done early in life.  Therefore, do not be quick to step in and do things for children if they are capable of doing them.  It is okay to let a child flounder for a while.  It builds resilience in that child.  Nothing beats the look on a child's face when they finally conquer something they have struggled with for a long time.  That is pure joy.

Count Their Blessings
Secondly, we teach children to count their blessings.  Again, children that are handed everything on a platter never truly appreciate anything.  Therefore, it is okay to make a child do without.  I am not talking about life necessities like food, water, and shelter.  I am talking about all other material things that are not necessities of life.  Sometimes the best thing you can do for a child is make them work for the things they want rather than just having everything given to them.  If that child is not willing to work for that special something, that child can do without it.  It will not kill them contrary to popular belief.  When that child has to work to acquire that special something, I guarantee that child will take more joy in it and will take better care of it because the child will have a sense of what it is worth.

A Loving God
Lastly, teach them about a loving God that does cause all things to work together for the good.  When a child sees an adult that truly believes this and lives by this, then that child will grow up with a greater sense of overall well-being.  The one lesson I pray is my legacy to my children and grandchildren is that my God has never failed me.  We have lived through some hard, hard times but we made it and did okay because God always provided what we needed.  We may not have gotten all we wanted, but He never failed to provide what we need.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at:  https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457