vocabulary

word a day: creating word conscious, word happy kids

June 27, 2011

Our very first day of the Smart Summer Challenge found us lazying around at home because Owen returned from swim and dive feeling really under the weather. So while he caught up on some telly and gave his body a rest, Maddy, Cora, and I did some reading, puzzles, and organizing. But before our plans [...]

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learning during read-alouds: word consciousness

May 3, 2011

We shouldn’t try to fill every second of our children’s lives with learning and lessons; our kiddos really do need time for free play indoors or out in the fresh air every single day. However, it never hurts to sneak in a little-teeny lesson during read-alouds, especially since many of us read to our children [...]

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pow! bam! wow! print referencing and onomatopoeia

March 28, 2011

I’ve said time and time again that read-alouds are an absolutely perfect time for sneaking in some learning with our kiddos, I believe there the sky’s the limit as far as what concepts, terms, and ideas we can teach our little ones during these times. My kiddos love to learn ‘big’ words, so when I [...]

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creating word-conscious kids

July 28, 2010

A portion of this article was originally posted by me on ABC & 123 on 5/17/10. Just the way that some people will notice a kite in the sky, a new bird in the backyard, or a pattern of numbers on a sign, others have an ear for words. We can–and should–help our children to [...]

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the skinny on important early literacy terms

May 10, 2010

Originally posted on ABC & 123, 4/05/10: We, as parents and our children’s very first teachers, can begin to support early literacy development as soon as our kiddos are born. Many of us do this already and don’t even realize how much we are helping to build a solid foundation of learning for our children. [...]

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our easy and exciting backyard fragrance experiment

April 7, 2010

It’s been impossible to ignore that springtime (or is it summer?) has arrived in full-force, so for the last few days, we’ve been enjoying our own backyard, our brand-new pup, and talking about our five senses.  Today, we focused our attention on our sense of smell and conducted a very simple–but very exciting–backyard flower fragrance [...]

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farm-full of rich vocabulary words

February 25, 2010

I always cringe when I hear parents talking in baby voices and using baby words when interacting with their not-so-babyish children. Or other people’s not-so-babyish children, especially once those kiddos are out of Baby Bjorns and are walking, jumping, feeding themselves, and hanging up their own coats at preschool. I usually bite my tongue, but [...]

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asking the heart questions

January 13, 2010

This morning at breakfast, before we even had a chance to check out Maddy’s kindergarten calendar or talk about the weather, an article in The Kids Post had us practicing another super-easy (but incredibly important) reading comprehension strategy before we even knew it. We practiced questioning. The article lent itself to questioning, and my three [...]

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