Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your toddler will learn about the idea of perspective by using everyday objects and comparing their sizes.
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Materials Needed:
- Paper (can be a newspaper, magazines, paper bags, notebook paper, etc.)
- A pencil or other writing tool
- Tape (optional)
Developmental Goals:
- Understand the idea of larger and smaller.
- Increase the use of mathematical vocabulary such as larger than or smaller than.
- Support understanding of ordering objects by size (smallest to largest or largest to smallest).
In the Future:
- The ability to order objects by size will build the foundation for the understanding that numbers represent different amounts.
- Your toddler’s ability to compare two or more objects by size will build prior knowledge that will allow her to compare two or more objects by other factors (color, texture, speed, weight, etc) that will be useful in further math and science understanding.
- Understanding the concepts of bigger and smaller is a foundation skill for eventually understanding fractions and parts of a whole.
At-Home Activity:
- With your toddler, trace their hand (or foot). Also trace your hand and the hands (or feet) of any other family members, neighbors, or caregivers.
- Either tape the traced hands (feet) on the wall or lay them on the floor. Do so randomly at first.
- Ask your child to find a handprint that is the same size as theirs. Challenge them by asking, “I wonder if you can find a print that is larger/smaller than yours?” You can also ask them to choose a print that they think may be the same size/larger/smaller than yours or other members of the household.
- When your toddler is finished exploring the sizes of the prints, challenge them to line the prints up from smallest to largest or from biggest to smallest. As they do so, guide them by asking “I wonder how we can decide which print to start with?” or “I wonder which print should come next?” As your child works, don’t correct any “mistakes.” Rather, when they’re is finished, look at the order with them and ask if the prints look as though they are lined up from smallest to biggest. Encourage your child to compare each print to observe the different sizes.
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Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your preschooler will collect and sort leaves by different characteristics to practice early math concepts.
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Materials Needed:
- Bag or box to collect leaves
- Leaves
- Paper (can be a newspaper, paper bags, magazines, notebook paper, etc.)
- Pencil or something to write with
Developmental Goals:
- Promote the use of problem solving and inquiry
- Practice classifying objects
- Provide practice counting and quantifying objects
- Promote conversation and teamwork
In the Future:
- The ability to classify objects by different characteristics is a stepping stone for understanding the math concept of one-to-one correspondence which will eventually build into simple addition and subtraction.
- The ability to generate guesses in an investigation is the skill of making hypotheses in the scientific process.
At-Home Activity:
- Go outside with your child on a leaf hunt and collect a variety of leaves in her bag.
- Next, look at all your leaves and decide how to sort them. You might ask, “How should we organize these leaves? What things are the same and different about these leaves?” to get your child thinking about the different characteristics. For example, they may choose to sort by color, by size, or by how many points on the leaves.
- Once your child has chosen a characteristic, have them sort the leaves accordingly, helping as needed.
- Together, count each pile and assist in writing the number. Then, pose the question “Are there more green leaves or brown leaves? Which number is bigger? How many more?”
For younger preschoolers and toddlers: you can stop at collecting leaves and just talk about how they look and identify characteristics instead of sorting.
For older preschoolers: you can see if your child can count each category that has been sorted and then compare which category has the most? Which category has the least? You could challenge them to figure out how many more one has over the other? Or how many less?
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From a child’s first soccer team to recreational softball leagues to rooting for your favorite team, sports hold an iconic place in our lives. And they play an equally important role in helping children’s development in the early years.
It’s easy to see how sports can help with children’s gross and fine motor skills development. Less obvious, but just as critical, is the role that sports and play-based learning activities have in social-emotional development and speech and language development.
Be a Good Sport
As babies grow into toddlers, they gradually start to regulate their emotions. Playing sports with others gives them the opportunity to experience feelings such as joy, frustration, pride and patience in a non-threatening situation. To help them develop social-emotional skills, try:
- Naming emotions as they play. “Suzy, great job catching that ball – you must be so proud of yourself!”
- Help your child regulate his emotions when he is upset by talking about their feelings. “Tyler, I can see that you’re upset about missing the goal – let’s talk about why you’re upset.”
As children continue to grow and begin to play on teams, they develop teamwork skills that will be invaluable on and off the field. Team sports also provide a great opportunity to encourage empathy while learning new skills and celebrating successes. Try these tips to make sure your child will win the sportsmanship award:
- Model the behavior you want to see – cheer as loudly for all the children on the team as you do for your child. Encourage your child to be a “cheerleader” for their team.
- Reinforce the importance of taking turns at shooting the basket or practicing on the balance beam.
Hat Tricks, Fartleks and Setter
Every sport comes with a vocabulary of its own. Which means more and more opportunities to expose your children to new and varied language! From silly to repetitious to obscure, how do you make the most of this treasure trove?
- As your child plays, name actions and items that are involved in their sport. Kick, run, pass, racquet, ball, tee, somersault…..the list is endless.
- Have your child put the game into their own words – ask them to tell you how the game works.
We can’t guarantee that your child will become the next Serena Williams, David Beckham, Simone Biles or Derek Jeter, but we do know that time spent playing sports in the early years will pay off in many other ways!
Recommended for Infants
Materials Needed:
- Several small, interesting toys (rattles, teethers, colorful blocks, shakers)
- Soft blanket
Developmental Goals:
- Promote gross and fine motor development that encourages them to move, reach and stretch.
- Purposeful movement of own bodies.
In the Future:
- Infants need plenty of opportunities to increase their strength and motor development to eventually be able to crawl and then walk.
- Reaching for objects is goal directed behavior; as infants become successful at obtaining objects, it will encourage them to continue to act with purpose.
Activity:
- This activity is appropriate only for infants who are able to support their body weight enough for tummy-time activities.
- Spread the blanket on the floor in an area where he will be protected from other activity in the room.
- Place him on his tummy on the blanket. Show him a toy and describe it to him. Look, (Child’s Name), I have a blue and white rattle.
- Put the toy on the blanket just at arm’s reach from your child so that he has to stretch his arm out to grab it.
- Give him time to shake, mouth and touch the toy.
- When he shows you he is ready for a new experience, place another toy just at arm’s reach for him to grab.
- Encourage him to use the opposite arm by placing the toy within closer reach of the arm he did not previously use.
- Repeat the interaction for as long as your child is interested. Pay particular attention to his activity level. It is hard work for your child to lie on his tummy and reach for toys. You may notice that he is beginning to have a hard time supporting his head and neck, he is no longer reaching for objects, or he has an unhappy look on his face. When your child shows you that he is finished or that his body is getting tired, help him change position so he can rest his muscles.
As you are playing with your baby, consider how he moves his arms and the rest of his body to reach the toy, in what ways does he grasp and manipulate the toy, and how long is he able to attend to his experience.
Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your toddler will compare objects and ask questions to help understand their differences in quantity.
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Materials Needed:
- Two small bowls or boxes of the same size
- Small objects found around the house (hair barrettes, legos, crayons, buttons, keys, coins, toothpicks, clothespins, bracelets, etc.)
Developmental Goals:
- Encourage curiosity and problem solving
- Promote the understanding of more or less in terms of quantity
- Assist in the use of mathematical vocabulary such as more, less, greater than, less than, larger, smaller and same
In the Future:
- The process of making informed guesses about what will happen is a key piece to the process of science that children will need throughout their school life.
- By first understanding the concept of more or less, children are building prior knowledge for the understanding of volume and conservation (that objects don’t change in volume when transferred from one container to another).
Activity:
There are two ways to think about more or less, either looking at objects or containers. For toddlers, it’s best to start with object comparison. Think about the items and ask which container has more or fewer items than the other container?
Thinking About the Objects:
- Give your toddler two containers that are the same size.
- Ask them to pour some of the chosen objects into one container and some into the other.
- Ask them which container they think has more (or fewer) objects?
- As you are playing, encourage your child to investigate by asking, “I wonder if there is another way we can decide which container has more buttons?”
- They can then come up with a strategy on their own, such as lining both sets of objects up, counting each set of objects or stacking each object.
Be sure to keep it fun and act as investigators. There is no need for a “right” answer at this stage. What’s more important is that your toddler is beginning to understand that not all amounts are the same.
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Recommended for Preschoolers
Materials Needed:
- Not a Box by Antoinette Portis
- Cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes, other recycled materials
- Bedsheets or blankets
Developmental Goals:
- Using language to share ideas.
- Using imagination in play.
In the Future:
- Being able to express ideas through language gives young children the opportunity to strengthen their vocabulary and develop their conversational skills.
- Imaginative thinking provides children with opportunities to develop flexible thinking, strengthening their ability to problem solve, which is important when attempting later math and reading problems.
Activity:
- Introduce the book to your child. As with any new book, take time to allow your child to explore the book’s pictures on his own before sitting down to read it out loud.
- As you read the book together, invite him to talk about the different things that the rabbit makes with his cardboard box.
- After reading the story, show your child the recycled materials you have collected. Working together, decide what you will build.
- Allow your child to take the lead, but don’t be afraid to join in and share ideas!
- After the play space is built, ask him to describe what he built.
For older preschoolers: have them use writing tools to record a blue print of what they want to build prior to building. This provides them with the opportunity to analyze, plan and follow through on their ideas.
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When the reality of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was clear many months ago, Start Early and our partners quickly pivoted to support our youngest learners virtually, and we’re continuing to innovate and evolve to ensure our most vulnerable children and families don’t get left behind as the pandemic stretches on.
One of our strongest partnerships is with the Educare Learning Network. In 2000, Start Early developed the first Educare school in Chicago to provide high-quality care, education, and a stimulating learning environment for children birth to age 5. Since then, we have partnered to create 24 Educare schools across the country to provide children in under-resourced communities with quality early learning experiences. In accordance with CDC recommendations, 22 of the 24 operating schools within the Educare Learning Network are currently closed, with 2 schools having reopened to provide essential services at a reduced capacity. But that does not mean our early learning programs have stopped. From online lesson plans to reading and singing sessions via Facebook Lives, our educators are helping to ensure children and families have the resources they need during these challenging times.
Check out a couple of our favorite Educare moments from the past few months:
Beyond center-based programs, we are ensuring that the families and parents-to-be we serve through traditional home visits and doula services are supported in this new environment as well. Home visitors are finding innovative ways to connect with their families utilizing everything from phone calls, texts, web-based platforms, snail mail, picking up and delivering their school lunches and sending care packages with diapers and wipes, board books, and activities. Read more on how our programs are keeping families connected to resources during the COVID-19 crisis.
While we must support the children and families we work with, we cannot do that without supporting the teachers and practitioners who work most closely with them. We are restructuring our training and professional development services to ensure early childhood professionals can adapt to this rapidly evolving landscape. From quickly converting in-person, in-classroom, training material to an online platform to “virtual drop-in groups” for home visitors, we are changing the way we support the early childhood field. We also launched a new online hub for early childhood professionals – the Early Childhood Connector – to ensure they can quickly connect and share what is working across the country in the wake of COVID-19.
Over the past several months, both the strengths and shortcomings of systems and supports for young children and families in the United States have been illuminated. While strength and innovation have shown through, we‘ve also seen the harsh realities of the families we serve. Many do not have the necessities (food, internet access, etc.) needed to support a healthy learning environment on their own. While we do not know what the future holds, Start Early is committed to ensuring that when the dust settles, the state of early education and care in America is better, stronger, and more equitable than ever before.
Start Early works to provide a bright and just future for all children, and this would not be possible without recognizing that each child, family and community has been uniquely impacted and traumatized by generations of institutional racism and long-tolerated inequities. As an organization committed to making sure that children, particularly our youngest learners, have the best chances in life, we stand in solidarity with those peacefully protesting the historical trauma, institutional racism and police brutality that is rampant in major U.S. cities. We unequivocally condemn this senseless violence and acknowledge the problems that plague communities of color across the country — lack of economic opportunity, over-policing, inaccessible health care, housing instability and environmental inequities. We see these issues, among others, as a direct threat to our mission, and we will continue to identify and prioritize the populations most impacted by these barriers.
Although the racially charged murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and now George Floyd are currently in the spotlight, for every high-profile death that makes national news, thousands of similar incidents are quickly dismissed or ignored. As we face the loss of another Black life taken at the hands of police officers, the raw emotion and exasperation of protesters is justified and heartbreaking. We also see the generational inequities of racism embedded amid this global pandemic. The majority of “essential workers” are people of color who are dying from COVID-19 at disproportionately high rates due to the underlying health conditions that often impact poor and minority communities.
Start Early commits to strengthening and deepening its work as an anti-racist organization that works in true partnership with communities to ensure equitable access to high-quality early childhood care and experiences. We look forward to working with our staff and our partners in the fields of research, policy and practice to explore ways we can leverage our mission to dismantle racism and support children from historically marginalized and under-served populations. We aim to approach this critical work with humility and reflection.
We do not have the answers, nor do we pretend to. However, we are working with our partners to do more than listen and heal. We are working to dismantle and rebuild. We refuse to compromise our mission by tolerating explicit or implied practices and policies that negatively impact the integrity or ability of Black children and their families to thrive and prosper long-term. We are prepared to act accordingly to confront anti-Black policies and practices, and we won’t allow them to go unchecked.
To the Black men, women and children in this country who have been carrying the burden of racial injustice and systemic anti-Black sentiment for generations: we see you, we hear you and your life matters.
In May 2020, the Illinois General Assembly approved the state’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget plan, and on June 10, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the budget into law. See below for Start Early’s (formerly known as the Ounce) complete point of view on the state’s approved investments in children and families.
MAY 26, 2020
Over the weekend, the Illinois General Assembly approved the state’s Fiscal Year 2021 budget plan, which we anticipate Gov. J.B. Pritzker will sign into law. We applaud the legislature for passing a budget amid a global pandemic that sustains state funding for early childhood programs and provides the administration the authority to spend significant federal resources on the early care and education system.
The budget package includes:
- $7 million increase to the Early Intervention program at the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) to accommodate the state’s growing caseload
Level-funding for the Child Care Assistance Program at IDHS - The legislature increased the federal appropriation for the child care program by $138 million to allow for the spending of federal CCDBG and CARES Act funding in the current and upcoming fiscal year.
- Level-funding for evidence-based home visiting programs for expectant and new parents through Healthy Families and Parents Too Soon at IDHS
Level-funding for the Early Childhood Block Grant at the Illinois State Board of Education
In addition, the legislature appropriated more than $500 million in federal CARES Act funding to the Coronavirus Business Interruption Grant Program (or BIG Program) to reimburse costs or losses incurred due to business interruption caused by required COVID-19-related closures. $260 million of that funding is to be directed toward a program for child care providers. These grants will help protect the health of the state’s early childhood mixed-delivery system.
Unfortunately, it will be challenging to implement this budget plan fully because of COVID-19’s impact on the state’s economy. The administration’s decision on how to proceed will depend on future federal relief packages and the state’s economic recovery. We will share more information as it becomes available.
But states cannot weather this storm alone, which is why we call on Congress to direct additional federal early childhood resources – through trusted programs like the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) or the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) – to states like Illinois to protect the system we’ve spent years to build.
We thank the legislature for affirming the state’s commitment to the health and sustainability of the early care and education system despite our ongoing fiscal challenges. The recent crisis has exacerbated the needs of families, certainly among those already lacking equitable services and opportunity. It has also brought into sharp relief the essential nature of the work performed by professionals throughout the early childhood system – workers whose efforts are central to the well-being of children, families and communities.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic we’d hoped to see more state funding included in the FY 2021 budget for these core early care and education programs. However, given the dramatic changes of the past two months, the budget package approved by the legislature does provide much-needed stability to the state’s early childhood system.
In 2019, Start Early, the Center for the Study of Social Policy and Early Opportunities hosted the Harnessing Community Momentum Convening, which brought together early childhood leaders from across the country to discuss the urgent need for better collaboration and real-time connection across the early childhood field. As a result of the convening, work began to co-create a suite of essential tools for the early childhood movement, including the development of an online community: Early Childhood Connector.
Watch & Learn More About Early Childhood Connector
To build the original version of Early Childhood Connector, state and national partners gathered to establish a shared vision for the design of this online community. More than 40 local, state and national partners gathered to establish a shared vision for the design of this online community. The goal was to create a public good — a space that promotes meaningful connections to peers and experts, access to knowledge and ways to capture, curate, and share knowledge in real time.
When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, Start Early recognized that the need for real-time connection and collaboration across the field was even more urgent. Early childhood partners needed a place to navigate the implications of the global health crisis together. To support this, Start Early as the sponsoring organization for Early Childhood Connector led the launch of the initial platform months ahead of schedule.
Early Childhood Connector quickly brought together early childhood partners in a simple, judgement-free online community to connect with each other, share ideas, curate best practices and elevate work happening at the local, state, and national level in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The group provided a neutral location to host the most up-to-date COVID-19 resources and information including emerging community, state and national strategies.
Early Childhood Connector has given me a space for self-care: a place to share my thoughts, process my opinions and connect with peers across the nation. Through this community, we can elevate voices that need to be heard – now, more than ever. As a united community, we are a strong force.
Kresta Horn, Early Childhood Connector Member
The value of and the need for this platform was immediately clear. For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, a child development director from Arizona asked fellow members to share their strategies on how to best support child care workers adopt guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on wearing protective face coverings while balancing concerns for how this might impact day-to-day interactions with children. Responses from members across the country poured in, offering ideas of the different types of masks she could investigate and giving the director a sense of validation and connectedness. Ultimately, the director learned of masks with clear mouth coverings that are now in use in her pre-K classroom to better support children in reading their lips when speaking.
This is just one of many connections that resulted in an improved practice on the ground across our country. As we continue to build on the success of Early Childhood Connector, we are excited about the potential this initiative has to accelerate knowledge sharing and spread promising practices across early childhood partner networks to improve outcomes for children and their families.