HILLTOP EARLY CHILDHOOD SERVICES Helping Adults to Help Young Children
You don’t need a book to tell stories. Story telling happens in all cultures, and has been going on far longer than the written word. Any time you describe something that happened already, you are telling the story of what happened. The more you do...
Someone asked how to introduce loose parts in an early childhood center where the teachers were not familiar with them. It would have been better to introduce the idea at a staff meeting first. But it’s too late for that now. So I suggested what I did when...
Most often, children who make things, especially pictures, collages, block or rock or other structures, have no idea before-hand about a finished product. They just make things. Sometimes, after they are finished, they look at it and notice it looks like...
SAVE OUR CHILDREN! RAISE YOUR VOICE! Now is the time, when states are re-examining their education systems, for all early childhood advocates to make our voices heard, and loudly. We need to cite research that play and movement are critical to children’s...
When my children were small and medium sized, I was too often home with them during bouts of childhood illnesses. “Boring” was not a word I liked to hear. So I tried all sorts of silly things to keep them interested. One of their favorites was living room picnics. ...
Now that nearly all children are at home, there are hundreds of pages of worksheets for parents to download. Many are for teachers to assign. They do keep the kids busy for a while and it looks like the kids are learning something. But most of the...
When my 4 kids were young, there were weeks at a time when we were stuck in the house together because of various illnesses including chicken pox (What a horrid winter!) There was no internet then, and appropriate TV was very limited. So I learned new...
I have heard parents say, “He ALWAYS gets up early. Winter and summer, he’s up at 6 AM.” The same parents who say this in despair have successfully changed their child’s internal clock twice in the previous year. How do I know? Because twice a year, OUR...
I wrote this a few years ago. I’m proud to be presenting this year (2020) at the Region IV Head Start Association (Feb), the NYS AEYC conference (April), and the NAEYC Annual Conference (Nov). This content is still accurate. Check the Wizard Gallery...
Sometimes, I ask questions and get strange answers. In a recent workshop series I asked what I thought was a simple question. Some didn’t answer and others told me things that seemed unrelated to my question. The problem, as it usually is when the answer...
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