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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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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Attachment ─ the security, confidence, and trust that infants and toddlers have with the adults responsible for their care ─ is the framework within which babies develop their growing ability to regulate emotions and behavior. Babies thrive when they are securely attached to their mother, father or primary caregiver who knows and responds consistently and reliably to their unique personalities. Infants and toddlers who are not securely attached are likely to become preschoolers who are unable to control their behaviors and kindergartners who have difficulty engaging in the process of learning.
Recognizing the importance of secure attachment, Start Early implements a continuity of care model in partnership with our network of early learning schools, the Educare Learning Network. This model minimizes the disruptions that children experience by keeping infants and toddlers with the same classroom team of teachers until they transition to preschool.
Secure Attachment
Learn more about the research behind secure attachment and continuity of care.
In this blog post, home visiting expert and former Start Early vice president for training, Janelle Weldin-Frisch, MA, explains the importance of bridging the gap between systems in the home visiting sector through the use of professional development.
Intensive, long-term home visiting services are proven to produce the best outcomes for families and help prepare children for school. Understanding the factors that keep families engaged in these services has given rise to research, training and evolved program requirements. And yet, sustaining family engagement is still often regarded as the primary responsibility of the home visitor. Family engagement is an impossible task alone for even the most highly skilled a home visitor. Strong partnerships at the systems, community and practitioner levels all impact what happens between a family and their home visitor.
At this year’s National Home Visiting Summit, I’ll be sharing a case study of two state leaders that are partnering across systems to strengthen the outcomes of each of their programs. In my session – Bridge Gaps between Systems with Professional Development – I’ll explore how this strategic collaboration can be replicated with other state and system leaders, to improve outcomes across the sector.
Some of the factors impacting family engagement include reliable program funding, competitive salaries for home visitors and supervisors, and access to professional development. With the turnover rate of home visitors exceeding 20% annually, it is critical that system leaders construct a professional development framework to support and retain home visitors and supervisors. In the example shared during the session, we will explore how the two state leaders leveraged a professional development resource – The Essentials of Home Visiting – to develop and implement a PD framework for their home visitors and supervisors. The Essentials of Home Visiting, an online professional development program with unique learning experiences created specifically for home visitors and supervisors, includes self-paced courses, webinars, and tools for supervisors to increase their impact on home visitors, and improve their outcomes with families.
Ensuring that home visiting practitioners have the organizational, supervisory and professional development supports to keep them engaged in the field, are essential factors in promoting family engagement between home visitor and parent.
Janelle Weldin-Frisch, MA, was the vice president for training at Start Early during her twenty-seven year tenure. She continues in a consulting capacity to facilitate a national community of practice for professional development in home visiting, cultivate strategic partnerships and provide state and regional leaders with technical assistance in the use of The Essentials of Home Visiting.
Start Early has long believed that a child’s first and most important teacher is their parent. That is why we have been an early champion of recognizing home visiting as a key component of early childhood systems of care and education.
Our very own Nick Wechsler, director for program development at Start Early, has been influencing the home visiting field in Illinois for 30 years and was recently honored as the recipient of the Home Visiting Leadership Award at the Annual Prevent Child Abuse Illinois Statewide Conference.
A Passion for Building Relationships
Nick, who holds a master’s degree in Infant Studies, started his career in the early 1970s, working as a community mental health worker in Chicago, providing therapy to communities in need under the supervision of licensed clinicians. Nick credits his experiences as a stay-at-home dad and as a family day care provider for preparing him for what ultimately became Start Early’s home visiting approach: relationship-based work.
Home Visiting – Helping Parents Through a Life-Changing Transition
Nick’s personal and professional experiences with new parenthood ultimately showed him that home visiting services can considerably support both children and parents.
The days and weeks following the birth of a child can be a time of great joy and excitement for all parents. Developmental science tells us that these first interactions between parents and newborns lay the foundation for a child’s healthy development in school and life. This can also can be a time of extreme stress for parents, exacerbated by exhaustion during a period of physical, hormonal and emotional vulnerability.
Home visitors can provide much-needed support to help ease new parents’ anxieties and provide them with the tools and knowledge to develop the secure attachments that allow children to thrive. By helping parents engage in meaningful play and learning interactions with their children, home visitors influence the development of nurturing relationships that support a child’s ability to grow and learn.
Home Visiting – The Early Years
Today, early childhood home visiting is an established part of national policy and is a publicly subsidized practice here in the U.S. and in many countries around the globe. But it wasn’t always so, Nick reminds us.
Public policy and subsidized center-based care for very young children was limited until 1995, when Early Head Start (EHS) was established. EHS extended home visiting into the Head Start model and added group care as an option for children from birth to age 3.
In the early years, Nick says, childcare professionals didn’t have what we now know as evidence-based models for home visiting. In the 1990s, home visitors drew on the theories of emerging brain science to inform what simply made good sense in supporting parenting: that a child’s early experiences and secure attachments with parents and caregivers lay the emotional, social and cognitive foundation for healthy development and learning.
Nick’s work speaks for itself. But, it is his passionate advocacy for stronger parent-child relationships, as well as his own character, that leaves a legacy in the field.
Kelly Woodlock, Vice President of National Home Visiting
Championing Home Visiting in Illinois and Beyond
“When I started working at Start Early,” Nick remembers, “we were primarily focused on providing home visiting to teenage parents. In fact, we were the only publicly-funded statewide network for home visiting.”
Throughout his first decade at Start Early, Nick trained and supported home visitors, helping them expand their base of knowledge and enhance skills and practice. He credits this early period for laying the foundation for Start Early’s own approach to home visiting. As early pioneers in the field, Start Early ultimately became a leader in innovating service approaches and advocating for better access to home visiting across Illinois.
The landscape is much different today – home visiting has become more professionalized and is evaluated with the highest level of scientific rigor. The federal government has created guidelines and funds home visiting services through Early Head Start programs. New legislation made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act allowed for $351 million to be appropriated annually to support approximately 150,000 parents and children through almost 1 million home visits a year as part of the federal government’s Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) programs.
Reaching More Children and Families
Over the last three decades, the scope of Start Early’s home visiting work has expanded, and Nick’s work has been key to this development. Under his purview, work that was limited to teenage parents at the beginning has grown in its depth and breadth.
Start Early designs, delivers, trains and supports home visitors who work in under-resourced communities, including home visiting for mothers experiencing homelessness, as well as those in the criminal justice system. Nick and Start Early have also been working with state advocates and local communities to establish a new approach to this work – universal newborn supportive services – which offers all parents home visiting in the first weeks after birth.
“Nick has dedicated years of professional service to support and promote healthy interactions between babies and the people in their lives they count on most to nurture, teach, love and protect them. He exudes a reflective mindset that has shaped many of us as professionals, and he is a trusted and highly valued thought partner, mentor and colleague,” Kelly Woodlock, vice president of national home visiting, says.
Start Early congratulates Nick for this great recognition and we thank him for his commitment to serving children and families!
“The recognition is a bit awkward, yet it also fills me with great gratification and joy. It truly makes my career’s work visible. Knowing that ideas and labor that came from within me have become useful tools for home visitors, that my creations reach into homes and become meaningful in the lives of children and parents during home visits throughout Illinois – this is a personal and professional treasure,” says Nick.
