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.

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.

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:

1. Naming emotions as they play. “Suzy, great job catching that ball – you must be so proud of yourself!”
2. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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?

1. 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.
2. 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:

1. This activity is appropriate only for infants who are able to support their body weight enough for tummy-time activities.
2. Spread the blanket on the floor in an area where he will be protected from other activity in the room.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Give him time to shake, mouth and touch the toy.
6. When he shows you he is ready for a new experience, place another toy just at arm’s reach for him to grab.
7. Encourage him to use the opposite arm by placing the toy within closer reach of the arm he did not previously use.
8. 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.

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:

1. 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.
2. As you read the book together, invite him to talk about the different things that the rabbit makes with his cardboard box.
3. After reading the story, show your child the recycled materials you have collected.  Working together, decide what you will build.
4. Allow your child to take the lead, but don’t be afraid to join in and share ideas!
5. 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.

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.

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.

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.