Are your kids ready for school?
Babies are born ready to learn. It may seem premature to begin preparing your children for school in the midst of potty training, finding spoon-to-mouth coordination and managing playdates - but it isn't!
We often think of learning often as cognitive (school and preschool), but learning content doesn't happen very well unless a child first feels safe and secure and loved. Parents can begin providing that feeling of safety and security immediately at birth, or even during pregnancy.
Parents might be tempted to believe that their children will "really" start to learn once they walk and talk, but the brain develops at an astonishing pace in the first 18 months. It would be like paying attention to the quality of house construction after the foundation is built.
DID YOU KNOW...
- Children's academic success at ages 9 and 10 can be attributed to the about of words they hear from a caregiver from birth through age 3.
- For every dollar invested in early childhood programs, savings of $3.78 to $17.07 can be expected in future costs to the public.
- The relationship between a child and his caregiver is essential to the developing brain; these relationships are critical as the brain forms visual, language, motor and social-emotional connections essential for later literacy learning.
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Babies learn by connecting what they are seeing and experiencing with the words and names that caregivers give to them. Get down on their level, see and experience what they're seeing and give them the words to make sense of it all.
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