Swap and share activities you have done with your preschooler, toddler, or infant that you found helped his or her interest in learning new words, rhyming, story telling, or reading aloud. Along the way, the Children’s Librarians will share web sites and activities that will hopefully motivate your children to become enthusiastics talkers, learners, and readers.

Gift Ideas for Kids: EdutainingKids has reviews of toys, books, videos and software for kids from babies through the early teens

Excellent article in New York Times on simple ways to boost early language skills.

Reading Is Fundamental– nonprofit organization dedicated to literacy.  A great resource to pick up tips on motiviating children to read and instilling the value of books and reading to youngsters of all ages.

Wakefield Adult Mentors (WAM) provides support for children in grades K-12.  Although the Early Literacy Blog addresses a younger audience, this dedicated group reaches out to kids struggling in school and provides positive mentoring within the school building, but outside the classroom.

ABC Fast Phonics Online games that underscore rhyming, sounds, letter recognition, and other early literacy skills.  This site is recommended by the Association of Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association.

The Magazine section of the Boston Globe Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009, had a fascinating article on preschool children and smart phones such as the IPhone.  Neil Swidey makes several points about the phones and preschoolers.

Parents give preschoolers their phones to hold for a variety of reasons, usually involved with amusing the child in a public place such as the airport, a restaurant or the  grocery check-out line.  Preschoolers naturally explore this new device the correct way,  they push every button and touch every screen to see what it does.   Because smart phones have small keys and are operated by touching the screen instead of using a keyboard or mouse they are quickly mastered by small children.

Mobile phones promote spontaneous opportunities for learning anywhere and anytime.  Parents can share a selection from childrenslibrary.org, the largest collection of free digitized children’s books at the doctor’s office, a restaurant or while waiting in line.

The industry knows that kids have their hands on their parent’s phones.  Games for preschoolers make up 60% of the top sellers in the education section of the iTunes App Store.

Categories: Help for Parents