The next time you are at the beach and your child needs something to do, send her on a beach stone scavenger hunt. She will have fun searching while at the same time reinforcing what she knows about textures and other descriptive words.
Start by having your child bring you a rock she thinks is pretty. Ask her to describe the rock to you. “Why do you think the stone is pretty?”, you might ask. She may describe its shape or color or even how it feels.
Next, send your child off to find a stone with a particular quality. You might ask her to bring you a stone that is smooth, for example. Other qualities your child could search for include speckled, striped, round, wet, smaller than a penny (you may need to have a penny on hand for this one), or too big to carry.
Each time your child retrieves a stone, have her describe it to you. If you are permitted, let her keep a few of her favorites for a collection at home. (A tackle box or a craft box with dividers works well for a rock collection.) Encourage your child to show off her rock collection to friends and relatives using descriptive words to tell about each stone.
Resource: Ellison, S. & Gray, J. (1995). 365 days of creative play. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Written by BRWI Staff on July 18, 2011
You may not realize, but your preschooler probably experiences something that is new to him almost every single day. It may be a new taste or a new smell. It may even be a new word. Try the following activity to help your little one experience various textures while at the same time learning some new vocabulary to go with them.
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Written by Laura on July 13, 2011
Emotions just happen. There isn’t any way to stop them from happening, but you can control how you deal with emotions you are having. However, this comes only with a lot of experience and practice that small children simply haven’t had yet. One of the biggest challenges for youngsters when it comes to dealing with feelings is that they are still learning what they are and how to ide
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Written by Laura on June 22, 2011
One of the local radio stations where I live plays a game each day called, “Mystery Box.” In this game, the DJs will shake a box with an object in it, allowing listeners to hear the sound the object makes. The DJs will also give two or three clues about the mystery object. Listeners then call in to the station to announce their guess.
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Written by Laura on June 15, 2011
My own two children are starting to outgrow one of my favorite preschool television shows. It airs on the public broadcasting station and is a wonderful program for introducing numerous science concepts. One of the best learning features of the show is the use of correct science terms.
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Written by Laura on June 1, 2011
As adults, we often have low expectations of what our preschool children are able to comprehend. We will often speakwith them using only short, common words instead of engaging them in a conversation with the more accurate vocabulary appropriate for the topic begin discussed.
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Written by Laura on May 2, 2011
When reflecting upon your childhood school days, you may recall filling in books of “Mad-Libs”. These are short stories that are completed by having one person prompt another for words or phrases that represent different parts of speech. For example, the fill-in-the-blank story may ask for a noun. The writer would prompt the speaker to name any person, place, or thing.
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Written by Laura on March 30, 2011
When speaking with little kids, we adults tend to use little words. We seem to think that young children will only be able to understand conversations that are short and sweet. This misconception may, in part, be due to the fact that we are so used to using simple words that those are the only words children do understand because they have never heard more complicated words used with them in con
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Written by BRWI Staff on October 22, 2010
Although you may not present your preschooler with in depth details about the inner workings of quantum physics, there are science concepts that they are able to understand. The key is to present the ideas at their level. The concepts of solids, liquids, and gases are great concepts to present to preschoolers because they are everywhere, and children can concretely experience them everyday. G
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Written by BRWI Staff on August 16, 2010
It would probably seem a little weird to sit your preschooler down at a desk and require her to write or even dictate definitions and sentences in order to learn new vocabulary words. However, you may also wonder if your child will learn enough vocabulary through simple conversation. I believe that children gain the most through an approach that is somewhere in between these two extremes. As inf
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Written by Laura on July 5, 2010
Our goal is to give you the tools and confidence to teach your preschooler the joy of reading and writing.
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