“Are you making a zoo?” Rosalie asks Gabriel. “I am making families, but we could make a zoo!" Gabriel answers. "Want to help me?” Research shows that animal figures score higher than any other type of toy for stimulating creativity, imagination, social interaction, and verbalization in young children. This holds true for girls and boys, […]
"Sally, look! My rock turned purple!" Three-year-old Eleanor can't contain her excitement as she changes the color of a rock with a swipe of her paintbrush. Ah, the joy of painting rocks with water. Yes, water! If there's one kind of painting I love—it's painting outdoors with water. If you struggle with the mess that […]
"Look! The people blocks are in a line and they crash at the bottom, just like when we play on the slide!" says Evelyn as she flicks the first block and watches the whole line of people blocks fall, one figure after another. Evelyn is having a lightbulb moment as she transfers knowledge gleaned from […]
This week, the children in our early childhood program are engaging in a time-honored tradition: building rock cairns! Have you ever happened upon a pile of rocks on a hiking trail and wondered what it was? It's a cairn, which means "heap of stones" in Gaelic! But there's a lot more to a cairn than […]
"Hey guys, look over here!" Harrison summons us over to observe his experiment. "My magnet sticks to the bike!" With a wave of their magnetic wands, the children have embarked on a STEM learning adventure! Opportunities like this allow children to learn independently as they explore and then share their discoveries with their fellow magnetic […]
After a neighborhood nature walk, my early learners can't wait to play with the treasures they've collected. Kindergarten readiness develops as children play with the objects that they find in their environments. Today, that play involves patterning. Learning about patterns is a fundamental skill for all learning. Pattern play helps children develop their critical thinking, […]
Cooking gives preschoolers a strong foundation in science, math, language, art and even reading. When we invite our children to create in the kitchen, we provide learning opportunities in many academic subjects. Recipe ingredients introduce opportunities for counting, adding, measuring, dividing and estimating. As children see how certain ingredients combine, react and change as they cook, […]
Hello, Hallo, Hej Hej, Hola, Ciao . . . well, you get the idea! To expand our reach to families and early childhood educators around the globe, we've added a translation option to our Ready Child website. With this new functionality, our readers can now translate The Ready Child into more than 100 languages. Breaking […]
"Five green and speckled frogs . . . sat on a speckled log . . . eating some delicious bugs. Yum yum!" When we sing counting songs such as “Five Green and Speckled Frogs” or “This Old Man,” we introduce counting and numbers and math concepts such as adding or removing one from a group. The repetition and rhythm in these songs […]
Do you avoid playing board games because your children cry every time they lose? Competitive games often create conflict between young children—who don't yet have the maturity or perspective to take losing in stride. The competition and the desire to “be the winner” can take the fun out of playing. We've all had those days when […]