Cognitive Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 4)

This post will start the discussion of the component - Phonological Awareness.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first learning expectation is:  Develops increasing sense of syllable structure in oral words.  The performance indicator is:  Claps or beats the syllable rhythm in 2- to 4-syllable words.  This is definitely one that will not develop without direct teacher instruction.  Even with instruction, for some children this will take up to 6 months of exposure before they truly catch on to the concept.  This will greatly depend on the amount of language exposure a child has had.  The best way to expose this concept is to clap the syllables for familiar words and ask how many times you clapped.  Do not expect them to fully understand what is going on at first.  They may also struggle with being able to count the claps.  Keep working on it a little at a time until they begin to attain mastery and be very patient.  This will not come easily for many children.

The next learning expectation is:  Produces rhyming words.  The performance indicator for this one is:  Produces, independently of adult assistance, a word, real or nonsense, which rhymes with his name or another given word (make sure that she is varying her responses and not memorizing rhyming pairs).  Since nursery rhymes have fallen out of favor, the ability for children to conquer this one has diminished considerably.  The concept of rhyming does not get the same level of exposure that it once did.  That lack of exposure makes this performance indicator more difficult for children.  Factor in the great swell of language inexperience and this one becomes even further out of range.  For 4 year olds with a language delay, conquering rhyming is not within their grasp until you pull them up to a certain level of language development.  Only about 25% of 4 year olds will be able to do this without adult assistance by the time they are 5 years old.  We are just dealing with too much language delay currently in the early childhood community.

The next learning expectation is:  Starts to develop an awareness of beginning sounds in words.  The first performance indicator for this one is:  Identifies whether or not two words begin with the same sound (when an adult gives 3 or 4 oral words, child selects those that begin with the same sound and identifies the sound, not the letter).  I teach from a phonics-based approach instead of a whole language approach, and I will tell you the children struggle horribly with this one.  When I find a four year old that conquers this one easily, that child will be an early reader.  Many kindergarten children struggle with this one for the first half of the year.  I hate to tell the kindergarten teachers that this will only get worse in the coming years, but it will.  I see diminished capacity for this performance indicator escalating.  Children are requiring more and more assistance with recognizing beginning sounds than they were even 3 or 4 years ago.  I have to over-exaggerate every beginning sound for them to hear it.  What once took me a month to teach is now taking me 3-6 months to teach.  It is frustrating.  As with everything else, this is tied to the language delay uptick.

The next performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Names several words that begin with the same sound as his name.  If a child has had lots of exposure to their own name, then this one is a little easier for them than the previous one, but not a done deal.  I have to be so deliberate in my teaching of phonemic sounds.  A half-hearted or random exposure approach produces very little results in today's early childhood population.  It just does not come naturally anymore except for the very few.  Guess what causes it?  Language delay.

The last learning expectation for the component - Phonological Awareness - is:  Continues to increase awareness of the syllable structure of oral words.  The performance indicator for this one is:  Consistently claps the syllable beat of words of up to 4 syllables;  blends given syllables to identify a whole word; deletes a syllable form a compound word and identifies the remaining part.  This one is almost laughable.  There are many kindergarten children that do not conquer this one at the end of the year.  Syllable identification is one of those areas where I see children struggle horribly.  They cannot even count 4 syllables when they clap that amount much less do it without assistance or consistently.  I gave a good synopsis of how to teach syllables in the previous paragraph on syllables.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

Building Resilience in Children - Self-Awareness

This post will start a new series on how to build resilience in today's children.  I will also look at ways we are sabotaging resilience.  The children of today have been called the "fragile generation."  However, article after article on successful people shows that resilience is one of the main character traits all successful people possess.  Are we setting up an entire generation for failure?  What will that mean for the future of our society?

The Definition of Resilience
Webster defines resilience as the ability to recover from or adjust easily to change or misfortune.  It is basically the ability to bounce back from adversity and adapt to unforeseen situations.  How well does the "everyone gets a trophy" generation score on this one?  Do I even have to answer that question?  Yet, nearly every article you can read on successful people underscores this ability as one of the greatest contributing factors to life-long success over talent and intelligence.  The truth of life remains that someday, somehow life will knock you down and kick you in the teeth.  It happens to everyone at some point.  How you handle that situation will greatly determine the trajectory of your life from that point.  What will become of our "fragile generation" when this happens to them?  What will happen to our society if we are no longer successful in our endeavors because a large hunk of our population cannot handle the pressure?  The government cannot take care of everyone when there are no successful people left to pay taxes.  This is a huge deal, people.

The Role of Self-Awareness
Self-awareness can be defined as knowing oneself in an honest manner.  In other words, when a person is self-aware, they understand their own strengths and weaknesses.  They understand what makes them tick.  How does this play into resilience?  A self-aware person is more likely to look at mistakes as opportunities for improvement rather than failures.  Therefore, they are less likely to become discouraged over setbacks and disappointments.  They are more adaptable to change and will focus on overcoming an obstacle rather than the obstacle itself.  This self-awareness makes them resilient.  When a person understands that they have both strengths and weaknesses, they will also understand that people grow throughout life.  This gives them a big-picture perspective and helps them to recover from those moments when life kicks them in the teeth.

The Difference between Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem
How does self-awareness contrast with self-esteem?  Self-esteem involves feeling good about oneself.  This is not bad per se, but when self-esteem is divorced from self-awareness, you get narcissistic people.  Much has been said recently about unhealthy self-esteem.  A person that just feels good about themselves without having an honest appraisal of themselves usually thinks too much of themselves.  In order for a person to grow, that person must understand they have weaknesses that need to change.  A person that does not see his/her own weaknesses will not see the need to change.  Therein lies the kicker.  Resilient people have a good healthy view of themselves making them more pliable to change.  People that are not pliable shatter when faced with adversity.  Our culture's overemphasis on self-esteem without self-awareness has created an environment that sabotages resiliency in our children.

Conclusion
So what is the solution?  It is okay to teach children to be okay with their own skin but it is not enough.  We must teach them to understand that everyone has strengths and weaknesses.  Everyone has that one thing that makes them tick.  We actually do children a disservice by telling them that they can be anything they want to be.  That really is not true nor is it fair.  Instead we need to help them find that one thing that they were put on the planet to do, and help them to do it with all their might.  True self-esteem comes from understanding oneself in that fashion.  True self-esteem flows from self-awareness.  Self-awareness is one of the key ingredients to being a resilient person.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade

 

Cognitive Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 3)

This post will continue the discussion of the component - Verbal Expression and Communication.  We will start with the learning expectation - Organizes major steps of an event or story in sequential order.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first performance indicator for this one is:  Retells story with many events in appropriate sequence, with and without pictures.  I will tell you right off the bat that the "without pictures" part will not happen for a large majority of children.  They simply do not have the reference for that type of skill anymore.  For the rest the "many events" disqualifies this performance indicator even with pictures.  I have stated over and over again that sequential tasks fall way beyond the language skills and cognitive skills of today's immature children.  The language deficiencies take a huge toll on developing such tasks.  Most of us in the field work too hard to pull up the language deficiencies to be able to tackle much else.  The only way to develop this one is for teachers to do this on a regular basis, and even then, the children have to have the language to be able to do this.  Simply, having this activity in the roster does not guarantee that children will develop this skill.

The next performance indicator is:  Verbalizes the major events of the day with some sequential order.  This one is actually easier for the children than the previous one.  Children tend to remember events more than stories because they have more experience with this events.  Children are simply not read to enough.  The sequential aspect of this one might be difficult for young or immature four year olds, but most by the age of five can conquer this one.  If a five year old struggles with this one, I would have them tested for developmental delays.

Now we will move on to the learning expectation:  Uses an increasingly complex and varied spoken vocabulary and sentence structure.  The first performance indicator for this one is:  Labels objects in books using a variety of adjectives.  Four year olds vary so widely in their ability to conquer this one.  Some four year olds are so language delayed they do well to use nouns appropriately.  Adjectives are just beyond them.  Some four year olds conquer this one shortly after their fourth birthday.  The difference always remains how much the child has had an adult read to them and how many good language experiences they have had.  If you have a four year old that has language delays, the best activity for them is to read to them as much as possible.  Beyond that talk to them and use lots of vocabulary.  Even for children with language delays do not shy away from using lots and lots of vocabulary around them.  Most of these children hear such a limited amount of vocabulary (and some of it is not good vocabulary) that the more you can supplement for them the better.

The next performance indicator is:  Comments on characters and events in books and movies.  It is a sad commentary on our current country that most four year olds can do this with movies but not books.  They watch movies 10 times more than they have books read to them.  For some children that number would be 100 or 1000 times more.  Some children never have a book read to them at home.  Those same children have a very, VERY hard time listening to stories at school or childcare.  Screen time for young children does not do them good.  Please, limit children's screen time and READ to children.

Lastly, we will look at the learning expectation:  Asks many types of questions and responds correctly to many types of questions.  The performance indicator for this one is:  Asks and answers who. what, where, when, why questions.  As an author I travel to many, many schools and read to lots of preschool and kindergarten classrooms.  I have gotten to the point I do not even ask preschoolers for questions because they do not understand what a question is.  With the kindergarteners I have to explain what questions are before we start and even then I have to shut down many, many stories.  Children's inquisitiveness has diminished greatly in the last 3 or 4 years.  I have seen it in my own preschool.  I have witnessed it in every preschool I have visited in the last several years.  I blame it on the unbelievable rise in language delays we have seen in the last 3 or 4 years.  This will have major ramifications in the public school system this year and every year hereafter until we find a way to bring up children's language skills again.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!!  https://linktr.ee/natawade

The Downside of Inclusion

Before I take off on the negative side of inclusion, I want to say that in many cases inclusion has more perks than problems.  However, many times, especially for new and young providers, the experts never really give you the full story on inclusion.  Personally, I have had both positive and negative experiences with inclusion, and many times, these experiences can happen in the same day.  I wanted to give providers a balanced look at inclusion in order to provide them the means to make a good educated choice for their facilities.

What Is Inclusion?
First of all, I want to make sure to define what I mean by inclusion.  Placing children with physical, emotional, and mental disabilities in classrooms with children of normal development defines inclusion.  In my discussions I will be specifically referring to those children that have moderate to severe disabilities rather than mild disabilities.  I will also be making the distinction between children with delays caused by immaturity rather than delays and disabilities caused by physical abnormalities of the body and brain.  The first group can normalize and pull in sync with their peers through intervention whereas the second group will always need intervention and resources.

The Emotional Toll of Inclusion
Many times when we attend trainings on inclusions, the presenters show all the happy warm fuzzy moments that inclusion can bring.  I will not downplay those moments.  However, that is not the complete picture.  Providing care for these children can be emotional draining and frustrating beyond anything you have ever encountered.  This is especially true for children with autism and emotional disabilities caused by drug-use by the mother during pregnancy.  These children often require you to constantly change your approach.  Methods that worked the previous day will not work the next day.  The euphoria of a breakthrough is usually followed by a setback that causes you to retrench.  It is demanding, challenging, and will call on every character strength you knew you had and did not know you had.  Will it make you a better teacher?  Yes!!!!  Will it make you a stronger person?  Yes!!!!  Will it bring you to the point of a nervous breakdown?  Yes!!!!  Is it for everyone?  Absolutely not!!!!!  That is the main point I want to make through this post.  Inclusion is not for everyone and should not be entered lightly or ignorantly.  Taking on a moderately or severely disabled child may require a level of work that you are not prepared to give.  Inclusion is an arrangement that needs to be entered with your eyes fully open and aware of the requirements.  I believe it to be unfair to require everyone to have inclusive classrooms not just for the teachers/providers but also for the disabled children.  They deserve a teacher that will commit to the task at hand and not be forced into a situation that breeds hostility, contempt, and unpleasantness for all involved.  The warm fuzzy moments happen only in situations where the teacher feels fully capable of handling the stresses of the job.  Many, many teachers/providers do not fit that description.  This represents one of the greatest unspoken reasons for teacher/provider turnover.  It is not politically correct to say that you could not handle the disabled child, but it remains the reality of the situation.  One day the powers that be will realize that forcing people to fit one-size-fits-all regulations creates more than half the problems we have in education and early childhood care.

The Reality of Resources for Providers
Now, I want to touch on probably the worst ugly truth about inclusion.  In most states resources are provided for those children with disabilities.  However, most of the time those resources involve maybe one of two visits per week leaving the majority of the care and teaching to the teacher/provider.  Sometimes, children with severe physical disabilities will have a nurse or other specially trained person to provide assistance on a daily basis.  However, those with moderate physical disabilities or emotional and mental disabilities very often come with only the once or twice per week visit.  That does not even cover the tip of the iceberg.  Let me give you a great example.  I once had a toddler in my care with hearing aids.  He had a speech/language therapist come in once per week.  The rest of the week I was left with the responsibility of his care.  I did not know but a little sign language.  He had a horrible habit of hiding his hearing aids every time I turned around.  We were constantly hunting for that child's hearing aids praying earnestly that none of the other children would find them and put them in their mouth.  The batteries for those hearing aids could be fatal if swallowed.  He needed one-on-one care at that point in his life not group care.  He was a danger to the other children, and I could not sufficiently meet his needs with my level of training.  I did not have sufficient resources to care for that child.  I would have had to hire an employee specifically assigned to him all day to provide the kind of care he needed (an expense I could not do).  Even though I had great teacher/child ratios, we were wholly unprepared to care for that child.  This scenario plays itself out every day with millions of variations in schools and childcares all over the country.  This is the ugly side of inclusion.

A Look at Inclusion from the Unincluded
Many of you will be offended by the title I chose for the normally developing children (unincluded), but I did that on purpose.  The reality of the situation even in good circumstances is that a disabled child requires 75% of your time and attention.  Some days that number goes even higher.  That only leaves 25% or less of your time and attention for the other children in your care.  Unless that child has his/her own personal attendant at all times, the other children in your care do not get the same time and attention.  This truth remains whether we like to admit or not.  A disabled child's care is time consuming.  They require more attention at mealtimes.  They require more attention at bathroom times.  They require more attention at naptimes sometimes.  The emotionally and mentally disabled can have meltdowns that require your immediate and undivided attention until you stabilize the situation.  Most of these children have these meltdowns daily and sometimes multiple times per day.  Avoiding the causes of these meltdowns is impossible because they can be as random and ever-changing as you can possibly imagine.  I have had children on the autistic spectrum in my childcare, and I have had them have meltdowns in the middle of mealtimes when the other children were also at high risk.  I had to drop everything and deal with the meltdown because I was by myself.  If I did not calm the autistic child, she could have sent herself into a seizure.  The safety of the other children had to be put on hold.  That is the ugly truth of inclusion.

Conclusion
Inclusion is a wonderful concept but the reality of that concept does not ever really match the hype.  Unless that child has his/her own personal attendant, the teacher suffers and the other children suffer.  It cannot be helped.  It is the nature of the beast.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!!  https://linktr.ee/natawade

Cognitive Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 2)

We will continue the discussion of the area of learning, Early Literacy, picking up with the learning expectation:  Can organize more events and more complex events in sequential order.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first performance indicator is:  Shows understanding of stories with more complex chain of events.  I hate to sound like a broken record, but children that have been read to on a regular basis conquer this while children that have not been read to on a regular basis do not.  This one falls into the category of reading comprehension and requires a certain level of exposure to read-aloud stories.  When that level of exposure is not there, children struggle horribly with anything sequential.  I have had 4 year olds that could not do even minor sequential tasks because of the inadequacy of their exposure to read-aloud activities.  A great many children in preschools and Headstarts have to conquer being able to sit through an entire story before they can even come close to conquering this particular performance indicator.  Language immaturity affects everything else.

The second performance indicator is:  Begins to predict what might happen next.  This one is also affected by the amount a child has had an adult read to them.  If they do not have enough experience with the basic structure of stories, they will not be able to do this.  Also, this one takes direct instruction.  Because so many children are language deprived by this age, you, the teacher, will have to work on this one.  At first, the children's predictions will be wild and completed unrelated to the story.  However, with practice they will begin to improve until they can with some accuracy predict what will happen next.  I see this one first hand when I read in classrooms.  Some kindergarten classrooms do well predicting what will happen next.  Some kindergarten classrooms look at me like I am crazy when I ask them what will happen next.  Some kindergarten classrooms just start telling stories that are completely unrelated when I ask them to predict what will happen next.  This means 5 and 6 year old children struggle with this one.  Many 4 year old children will not even touch this one until many, many other areas are pulled up to speed.

The last performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Follows a sequence of 3 directions.  As I stated earlier in this post, many of today's children struggle horribly with anything sequential.  If you do not believe me, go to a typical preschool or Headstart and give a child a sequence of 3 directions.  Then stand back and watch.  If that child accomplishes the first item on the list without having to come and ask you multiple times what it is they are supposed to do, I would be pleasantly surprised.  Now most of the children in my care conquer this one by the time they are 4 years old because I expect it.  If I tell a child a sequence of directions, that child knows that I mean for him/her to pay attention and do what they are told.  Now I also have children with attention issues and those children do not conquer this one, but I still work this one hard and heavy even with the children with attention issues.  It helps them to improve.  Most of today's children have never been expected to listen and follow a sequence of directions.  You get what you expect.

We will now move on to the component - Verbal Expression and Communication.  The first learning expectation for this one is:  Engages in Dialogue (conversation with others).  The first performance indicator is:  Asks questions and makes comments related to a topic of discussion.  Truthfully, I have not met many kindergarten children that conquer this one nowadays let alone 4 year olds.  When I read to preschools and Headstarts, I have all but given up on having the children ask me questions.  They have no concept of what a question is.  All 4 year olds like to make comments but it is the rare 4 year old that can make a comment related to a discussion already in progress.  I have said on many occasions that language immaturity for preschoolers has nearly become the norm rather the exception in today's society.  Not only do parents not read to their children, but they also do not engage them in true conversation enough.

The last performance indicator for that learning expectation is:  Understands and uses past, present, and future verb tense appropriately.  I will say that probably the top 20% of 4 year olds conquer this one by 5 years old and most other children will conquer this by their 6th birthday.  However, I do know that kindergarten teachers have to work with nearly half of their children to conquer this one once and for all.  Too many four year olds are language immature, and this skill is simply too advanced for many of them.  I have had to explain verb tense and time words extensively to the 4 year olds I have had recently.  They simply do not have enough language reference to understand how all of that works.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!!  https://linktr.ee/natawade

Relativism: Eat the Chicken, Spit Out the Bones

This post will finish up our discussion of the effects of relativism on early childhood theory and practices.  More specifically, this post will look at how to garner good information from the hours and hours of training most states require that have a definite relativistic bias.

The Weeding Process
Once you realize your training has a bias, the next step is to start the weeding process.  Whether we realize or not, every time we receive new information we pass it through our own personal filter.  For many Americans everything labeled "latest research" automatically passes through our filter.  That is mistake number one.  When you realize that a great deal of the information that comes to you through the media or your trainings has a bias toward relativism, it becomes easier to filter.  If you do not believe me that everyone has a filter, just ask a Democrat about Planned Parenthood.  Then ask the same question of a Republican.  We have built-in political filters on many subjects to the point that blatant evidence still does not sway us from our convictions without a fight.  The same is true for early childhood professionals.  Their training has taught them to have a liberal worldview filter for everything pertaining to children.  This drives me nuts because I do not have that filter.  I have a Christian worldview filter that has been trained over the years through homeschooling to weed out liberal bias.  If you switch your filter, then the very same information takes on a whole different meaning to you.  It is all in what you hold dear.  Many people do not even realize they filter information in the way they do until someone points this out to them.  If you think you have no filter, you are probably liberal.  Most conservatives know and understand this process.  Everyone has a filter because everyone has a worldview.  You filter information according to your priorities and beliefs on the subject.  If you do not believe in relativism, then make sure you filter out all information on every subject that denies the presence of God and His working Hand in the lives of men.  Most of the time if the information denies the fallen nature of man that is a sure sign of relativism.  I always filter information through what I know of the Word of God.  If the information contradicts the Word, the information goes out the window.  However, many people do not have a good working knowledge of the Word of God.  Even if you are not a Bible scholar, you can develop your filter by asking the two points I presented earlier.  Does the information deny God's working in the lives of men?  Does the information deny the fallen nature of man?  Those two questions will help you weed out a majority of the relativistic bias of most information.

Change Foundations
Once you become proficient at spotting the bias and weeding out the obvious relativism, it is now time to start looking for gems of truth.  In everything there will be some truth.  These little nuggets of truth can be very useful when repurposed on a different foundation.  Almost every single class I took in my pursuit of my graduate degree provided several of these little nuggets of truth.  I have had a couple of classes so badly biased that I could not even find any useful information.  This will happen.  However, if you keep an open mind, most of the time you can find what will usually be just a part of a whole point they mean to make.  Part of the point will be blatantly relativistic, but one little section will have some information that will be able to pass through the filter.  When you take that information and plug it into the foundation that the world is built on definite right and wrong principles, you get results that make everyone in the childcare world stand up and take notice.  You see, when you use the right foundation all your plans and procedures work so much better.  It confounds the liberals.  You should not be getting those results with the way you are using that information in their eyes.  They just do not understand that most of the time they have it upside down and backwards.  When you build your foundation on the Rock, your plans and purposes flourish.  When you build your foundation on the sand (relativism), you get a slow moving train wreck.

Specific Examples
One of the best examples of how I did this has to do with choices.  I agree that children need to learn to make decisions and must have opportunities to practice that skill.  However, I have major issue with the complete choice mantra pushed by so many early childhood theorists.  Children should not have complete choice over their lives.  That is ludicrous.  The way I handle choices gives children practice in real-world decision making.  I let them choose their centers whenever we have center times but with stipulations.  I let a different child choose first every day.  This is called the day privilege and rotates between the children.  Therefore, the day after a child gets to choose first they go to the bottom of the picking order.  This teaches them to deal with not getting their way.  The other stipulation I have on the choosing involves abiding by their choices.  I do not allow roaming.  Once you choose that is where you stay until that particular center time ends.  This teaches them to choose more carefully.  I also only allow a certain number of children in an area.  A child at the bottom of the picking order may have to deal with not getting what they want for an entire day.  It does them good.

Another example of how I lifted information and plugged it into a different foundation has to do with how I handle those areas that are not optional.  The training you receive to teach handwashing and other such self-help skills that are universally considered not optional can be transferred to those areas that you do not consider optional that more liberally minded early childhood professionals might.  I do not consider nap optional neither do I consider their one-on-one instruction optional.  I treat this the same way I treat handwashing.  Does this get me in trouble?  Sometimes.  However, once trained I rarely have any issues.  I have only received flack when I had to be observed during the training process.

Conclusion
I labeled this post "Eat the Chicken, Spit Out the Bones."  When you learn to weed out the relativistic bias and glean useful information that can then be plugged into the right foundation, that is exactly what you do.  Life is full of "bones."  Learn to be people that do not gullibly accept everything that comes down the pike and use a little wisdom.

Hope you enjoyed this post!!  Goodbye and God bless!!  https://linktr.ee/natawade

Cognitive Development for 4 to 5 year olds - Early Literacy (Part 1)

We will now switch gears from Language Development to Cognitive Development with the area of learning - Early Literacy.  In this post we will cover the component - Listening and Understanding.  Remember I am taking my information from the Tennessee Early Learning Developmental Standards (TN-ELDS).

The first learning expectation for this component is:  Understands story events and overall theme, and conversations.  The first performance indicator is:  Recalls more detail from stories, using growing vocabulary. Wow, this performance indicator assumes quite a bit.  I have read to many, many PreK programs and Headstarts, and for the first half of the year those poor teachers do well to get them to sit through an entire short book.  Trying to recall details and story events is sometimes not even attempted until nearly Christmas.  Children are simply not read to on a daily basis at home.  Parents just do not understand how vitally important that is for their children's language development.  For those few parents that do read to their children, their children nearly shine out from the pack.  I can tell within 5 minutes of meeting a child for the first time whether or not they have been read to on a daily basis.  Parents, it is that obvious.  Most PreK and Headstarts spend the year trying desperately to undo the language deficiency in which the children arrive at the start of the year.  Some make it.  Some do not.

The next performance indicator is:  Recalls many events from recent experiences.  This one has more potential to be acquired by today's children than the previous one.  However, I am seeing children that still do not have a great concept of time by this age.  They remember what they did and can talk about it using the vocabulary they have developed, but sometimes they confuse when it happened.  Some children cannot do this right after their fourth birthday but can by their fifth birthday.  I have had some very immature 4 year olds that took until nearly their fifth birthday to be able to do this.  A language delay will also affect how well children can recall events and be able to talk about those events.  Language delay affects so many other areas of development.

Next on the list is:  Holds conversation with adult or peers about familiar books.  This one again assumes quite a bit.  A lot of 4 year old children are not familiar enough with a book to have a conversation.  Even if they are in a program at 4 years old that stresses reading books, it takes nearly 6 months of exposure to books to be familiar enough to hold a conversation.  Many of these children do not pay attention during story time enough to even pick up on the plot or the characters.  When the teachers try to have discussion about the book afterwards, these children often interject off the wall comments.  This is where children that are read to on a regular basis shine like the sun.  They can do this.  The others cannot.

Now we move on to the next learning expectation - Relates plot of story to self and own experiences.  The first performance indicator is:  Makes comments during story reading that relate the story content to previous stories, or to his own life experiences.  Realistically, every class of preschoolers has one or two children that can do this well.  Most of the other children usually make comments that might somewhat relate but are usually off the subject entirely.  If the conversation of the class turns to something they know, they will make appropriate comments.  However, the one or two that really conquer this concept start the conversation.  The others just chase rabbits.

The other performance indicator for this learning expectation is:  Correctly answers questions about the story plot and events.  This one assumes the child was listening.  Most often that is not the case.  There will always be those few that do listen and can answer these questions, but they are usually the lucky few that have parents that read to them on a consistent basis.  I hope you are picking up on the theme of this post.  Parents read to your children!!!!!!!!!  Nothing replaces this valuable experience for your children and if you do not, your children's teachers will have to work that much harder to make up for your lack of reading.  Rant over.

I hope you have enjoyed this post.  Goodbye and God bless!! https://linktr.ee/natawade