How to Reach Your Young Child Through 4 Sense Keys | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

How to Reach Your Young Child Through 4 Sense Keys | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

Love Equips & Encourages Learning & Reading

Love is caring and being aware of needs. Love of self sheds light on our own needs; love of others sheds light on others needs. One of our greatest needs as humans is to care for another. That's why solitary people are encouraged to have a pet.

For those of us who have children, or are relatives or neighbors of children, we can love them enough to look at their needs. Service is love in action. Many of us relate to being of service, such as Rotary Clubs, Woman's Clubs, and the best intentions of Chambers of Commerce. More groups and individuals are becoming aware of the unmet needs of a very high percentage of at-risk children.

The first time these children tend to show up in statistics is kindergarten assessments. State of Minnesota Department of Education runs an annual survey of kindergartners who are at-risk to fail, not at age proficiency in literacy developmental skills. In 2007 it was 53%; in 2008 it was 56% of kindergartners at-risk to fail.

Southern Early Childhood Association estimates 3 million children in 14 SE states are in this at-risk to fail demographic. It works out to 12 million nationally.For the state of Virginia the estimate is 250,000 kindergartners are at-risk to fail in the area of literacy development.

There is one factor that these children have in common. No books in their homes suitable for children. Also studies have shown their parents don't read to them. What if I told you there is an action plan with books and materials identified that can equip and encourage these parents interest in reading to their toddlers to 4 year olds?

Often these parents were not read to themselves, when they were young children. They probably had some difficulties in school because of that and the whole subject of literacy is not their favorite. Many of them lack confidence that they can be their child's first teacher. Many don't think they know how to start their child off with an understanding of books. Many are of poverty level or low income level with paying the rent and getting food for their family leaving them tired , stressed and overwhelmed.

Literacy for Tykes a solution based non profit organization equips, encourages and empowers parents to bring literacy to their early children's development.

With loving awareness of parents caught between lack of early literacy experiences themselves and high stress of hard economic times, LFT makes available an engaging picture book Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures, with step-by-step parent guidelines to share learning points of pictures with their early child.

"Enjoy Books With Children" is also a parent tip sheet that we supply to our many educational and human service partners to encourage the parents they serve. Practical insights help parents understand how little time and effort it takes to meet the visual literacy first-step needs of their little ones. How to enjoy picture book reading for increasing minutes a day is mapped out. The step of eliminating distractions in the room such as TV, music, computers, cell phones and other activities is explained. Simple techniques of meeting their child at their interest and attention level are given.

Our results reports for parents using Literacy for Tykes books and materials are very encouraging, that our loving concern for parents is helping them gain confidence and interest that they can read to their child of ages 1-5years. These parents report that their children are showing interest in reading these picture books. Minutes spent reading together is increasing even beyond our success metrics for this stage of the home-reading program.

Literacy for Tykes is also gratified that local community groups are showing concerned interest as they hear our presentations and become aware of the early child literacy need in their communities. Several such service groups are carefully looking at how they can support this outreach of love for our little ones and their parents.

Out of love and concern, Literacy for Tykes' president Nancy Cloyd is asking friends to rally together and give donations at www.LiteracyForTykes.com in honor of her upcoming April 64th birthday. Please be part of this birthday wish for love to manifest as support, to equip and encourage learning and reading for the most needy.

These birthday candles could brighten the future of many at-risk children, for many years to come. Give support and light another candle of Love.

See link on right side of this page: Literacy for Tykes Main Website

Special Needs Toddlers Results Report

Literacy for Tykes is delighted to receive Partner Results Reports from Infant and Toddler Connections with whom we partner on our Early Child Literacy Program. This partner is dedicated to serving children with special needs from birth through age 3 years. The specific special needs are related to developmental delays, autism, hearing loss, speech delays, and Down Syndrome.

The assistant director said,"Parents appear to be spending more time reading with their children. They are using the 'Parent Points' (from Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures and Enjoy Books with Children) even when reading other books, making reading time more involved and having positive interaction."

Four months into our Early Child Literacy Program parents are reading more frequently and for longer time periods with their children with special needs. 80% state they appreciate Literacy for Tykes book and materials. and have expressed how helpful the "Parent Points" have been in making reading time more interactive. These step-by-step parent guidelines are offered throughout Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures giving specific applications of 'Enjoy Books with Children" concepts, reaching the children through sight, sound, touch and action.

Parents gained confidence that they could read more successfully to their children with special needs. These parents have gained more interest in reading with their children and stated, "It was helpful to use the 'Parent Points' while reading with their child. Also 75% of parents came to understand and comply with making the reading area quiet, with minimum distractions, as suggested in "Enjoy Books with Children", our parent tip sheet.

Infant & Toddler Connection reported the children all increased in ability to relate to a book, appropriate to their age and developmental positioning. We are very gratified to receive this report with such positive results of equipping and encouraging parents for their more successful and more enjoyable interaction with their precious babies and toddlers.

We salute the dedication of the staff of Infant & Toddler Connection associated with Longwood (University) Center for Language, Literacy and Communication (LCLLC), and are proud to join them in their efforts to encourage parents and strengthen family ties to brighten their children's early years and future potential.

To support this and other Literacy for Tykes programs and make a difference in empowering parents to bring positive literacy progress to meet the needs of the early children,
see Literacy for Tykes Main Website Link on the right side of this page or go to www.LiteracyForTykes.com

4 Keys to Prep Your Toddler for K & Life Success

How can you most effectively reach your toddler-to-four-year-old to prepare for Kindergarten and life success? Be aware of how a young child learns everything about life. The senses are the keys to unlock your ability to reach your child's developing mind.

The most basic senses of taste, sucking, feeding and getting his physical comfort met are always present and need to be satisfied first. Then we need to focus on the 4 sense keys of Sight, Sound, Touch, Doing.

Before inviting your child into a desirable learning activity, see that all distractions are eliminated or minimized in the area of sight, sound, touch and doing (or activity). Turn off the TV, Radio, Music, Computer. Find a place with enough light but not too much, enough heat but not too much, and without other activities.

Sharing a picture book is a fun and very important activity for preparing your child for Kindergarten. Choose a book that has clear and engaging images without distracting backgrounds, so that you and your child may focus easily on one image per page. See Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures sample pages on amazon.com. Also, you could cut images out of a magazine and paste them on a blank piece of paper, one image per page, to create such an image without distracting background.

When you invite your child to participate in an activity with you, like reading a picture book together, focus on the 4 key areas again:
Sight= Your Facial Expression. Children watch your facial expression to know your attitude toward them and toward what you are doing. Be positive. Smile.
Sound=Your Tone of Voice. Children hear your tone of voice to know how you feel about them and what you are doing. Be enthusiastic. Have fun. " Let's read this book together.
Touch=Your Touch. Children are comforted calmed and brought to full receptivity by your cuddly loving touch. Learning neural pathways are opened to receive who you are, what you have to say, and what you show them, especially if you are their mom or a consistent care provider. You've established a trusted place in their awareness. Be loving. This is your together moment.
Doing=Your Actions Bring your child to your lap. You have their attention. Your child wants to learn everything you do. Show the book cover and read the title to them.

In the reading process, again use the 4 key areas to reach your child:
Sight=What You Are Showing Your Child Your child may think you are "reading the pictures". That's ok. They are actively trying to make sense out of what you are showing them on this flat page.
Sound=Speak Clearly With a Smile in Your Voice. Use simple words to name the object on the page. Make the sound associated with it (if any). Your child is correlating the sound you make consistently with the image you show them. If you repeat this sound /picture experience 20 days they will learn to say the sound with the picture, as is appropriate to there age and stage of development. If the picture is of a cat, say"cat", and say"meow".
Touch=Hold Your Child on Your Lap. Your child is most comfortable and aware of what you are showing him or her when touching your body. Have him cuddle next to you if not in your lap.
Doing=Help Your Child Point at the Parts You are Describing. If the picture is of a cat, say "ear" and help your child point to the cat's ear in the picture. Bring the action back to your child's natural sense realm and point to child's ear and say "ear". I also like to have a reward at the end of shared book time together. The last picture to be shared in my book Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures is of a cup, and I suggest to have a cup of something your child likes ready to give at the end , as you say,"You've done such a good job reading.Would you like your cup?" The reward also ties the pictured cup back into the child's sense realm of their own cup.

By using these 4 keys you can have an enjoyable time with your child and bring the world of books to life for them. By doing this fun activity, as close to daily as possible, you are getting your child off to a great start toward Kindergarten readiness, with more confidence and learning skills that will benefit them for lifelong success.

(Note: if your child does not relate to 4 keys interaction by age 3 years seek advise of your pediatrician. Also, see www.firstsigns.org )

These are part of the reading techniques we use successfully with our home-reading program.
see "Literacy For Tykes Main Website" link on the right of this page to see more about our work.

Literacy for Tykes is a 501(c)(3)
Nonprofit Public Charity.
All donations are tax-deductible.

Early Child Literacy Partnership Results Report

Partners of our Early Child Literacy program who started families they serve in our home reading program in 2009 are now reporting results of their at-risk families.

These parents are poverty-low income level, usually with low interest in literacy. Their children are the demographic that becomes at-risk to fail in Kindergarten, stay 2 years behind age mates throughout school and are 3 to 4 times more likely to drop out of school before graduation.
After only 4 months following the parent tips given in "Enjoy Books with Children" presented by their home visitors to them, there has been a transformation.

These parents have children from Infant through five years old. "Some parents were very hesitant about reading in the beginning but once they started they began to realize that they could read with their child. Mothers began to see the interest shown by their children and found it a great source of parent/child activity.", the director of a family service shared.

Starting at age 1 year old parents reading Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures with their child saw an increase in the child's ability to relate to a book. This study group had children ranging up to 5 years old, with the largest age concentration 2-4years old.

Most of these parents now read 5 times a week, for an average of 9-12 minutes a day, which exceeds the success metrics for four months into the program. 85% liked reading this book with their child with at least 90% using the "Parents Points" step-by-step guidelines.

This program continues with a second results report at 8 months into the program. Literacy for Tykes hopes these new reading habits will become a welcome part of everyday life for these families. At the end of our year-long program, we encourage parents to get library cards at regional libraries to continue their exploration of the wonderful world of books.

We are delighted with the results of this study group which exceeds our expectations. The first long-range goal of Early Child Literacy Partnership is to create confidence and interest in parents that reading daily to their child for 20 minutes a day is do-able and beneficial and FUN. The second long-range goal is that this parent/child interaction will nurture visual literacy skills and lifelong learning skills, as well as social skills that will better prepare each child for kindergarten and life success.

Based on these successful results we would like to expand this Early Child Literacy Program to nine counties at the 4 year old level for other at-risk poverty-low income level families in rural Virginia, as well as continue to supply books and materials to current partners. Literacy is a perennial issue in this region. We believe this program is repeatable with most at-risk populations.

To support this program please use Literacy for Tykes Main Website Link on the right side of this page which will take you to our Paypal button on www.LiteracyForTykes.com

Beyond Equality: Unlock Your Personal Power

Current parents have inherited the drive to find equality from their parents. A long-standing foment of women's rights upset the status-quo significantly some fifty years ago. Though women had long since gained the right to vote, bra-burning Women's Liberation movement wanted a complete overhaul of gender role definition.
I was a 18 yrs old at the time, and have observed and lived through much of the aftermath of the gender revolution.
The basic problem with the stance of gender revolt is you start with the idea "I am not being treated as equal to others (men)." The question became "What do I have to do to be treated equally?" The answer that many women chose in the late 60's early 70's was to leave the primary place of homemaker and get a job. This was not always a well thought out process. Oftentimes the jobs available for the training a woman had then were low-paying. The children she had at home still needed to be cared for, and frequently after the free relatives got burnt out, the cost of a babysitter used up what was left after expense of work clothes, lunches and transportation to job.

Yet many women felt driven to prove their equality to men, in the work place. That said, childcare was not even an industry yet. Who took care of the children was based on availability and affordability; not ability and accountability. The thinking of the time was nurturing children was something any woman could do naturally, and was second-rate to the imagined status a woman could attain in the "promised land" of the work world. Little thought was given to the quality of care the children received: "Park them with someone who was willing to watch them".

As a result, many children then did not receive some of the basic early child education that we look for today. The irony is that those same children of yesteryear are the parents of today's children. Some of these many parents are frustrated, caught between today's research that demands their parenting interaction and the deficits they may still face because they had not received that level of parental interaction themselves.

A specific example is early child reading (literacy) : Today it is well-understood through years of educational research, that where many dropouts were neglected comes back to their early years. No books in the home is one thing they have in common. This implies that their parents had little interest in reading also. This can be traced back to the previous generation of parents who spent little time reading to them when they were children, and babysitters who did not see themselves as educators either. If they did not have the recommended lap-reading before kindergarten, these parents of today may have struggled themselves with literacy when they were in school. As a result, reading would not be their favorite thing. They would not feel confident that they knew enough about reading to introduce it to their child. They would disconnect from literacy as important. Somehow they "made it" without all that, so would their Aston or Tiffany.

Another look at early child research can give a key to unlock this trap, that even parents who don't regard themselves as educators do have the power to help their babies and toddlers develop lifelong learning skills for a brighter future. Though they may have had to struggle through school when they were younger themselves, they would be surprised how easy it is to share a picture book with their child. Research shows that as little as 20 minutes a day, sharing the characteristics of pictures in a book with a child, in a cuddly happy way, can give that child many kinds of preparation and nurture needed.

See Teddy Bear's Favorite Pictures by Nancy Cloyd on amazon.com/books/children for simple guidelines (for parents with tired brains) as how to share a pleasant nurturing quality time with toddlers and up. On that website, you can sample the pages of the book to see this simple method. When followed in a loving happy way, "reading pictures" with their child 20 minutes a day is the key. Recommend it to any reluctant-to- read parents you know to get them started. They can unlock their personal power to make life better for their child.

Plea to Decision Makers: At Least Maintain Early Child Ed We Now Have!

Our country is feeling the trickle-down impact of extended financial recession. In the last week, we are told by President on down to states and local school systems that the only thing they know for sure is we have less money to fund everything. Our school superintendents use generalizations and categories to vaguely describe where cuts must be made. "We will work out the shortfalls of Fiscal Year 2010 and reduced budget of Fiscal Year 2011 together" said our local Superintendent. Was he trying to make the local board feel better because he is a team player?

Administrators administrate. Its consoling in a broad way to see in the newspaper that a team of administrators with various points of view, various takes on what works and what helps the teachers teach and the kids learn will be having long debates before deciding the fate of public education.

Teachers will have to comply with their decisions, with some losing their jobs. Beyond them, we are the public; our children or our neighbor's children will be the ultimate recipients of the administrators discernment. What will we still have for our kids? What will we lose?? It is a critical hour in the history of public education.

What do I want to say about public education's impact on early child education?
Headstart is a much beleaguered attempt to bring some education to the poorest children in our land. The theory of Headstart is solid. It has been suffering from inconsistent funding from on high, especially from 2000-2008. The theories of getting the parents involved as active partners in their 4 yr old's preparation for kindergarten is important. The directors and teachers of Headstarts often have found their good theories and excellent strategies thwarted by lack of funds in the past. We hear much about increasing support of them in the past year. But what now?

In many states there are State-Funded Pre-Kindergartens. These were established in response to the number of children who either exceeded the number of places in mandated Headstart class sizes, or whose families slightly exceeded the mandated income limit. These low income families also cannot afford any private educational helps for their children, but they come to pre-screen hoping that they will get into State-Funded Pre-K if not Headstart. They have not given their child the beginning education at home that they would like their child to have to prepare for kindergarten.

The directors and head teachers of these classes also know that parents need to be encouraged to be partners in their child's preparation for lifelong learning. They all know that learning is best started in the home. Yet even these well-meaning teachers best ideas and strategies have been limited by funding shortfalls in the past.

These publicly funded early child educators have been fighting the good fight to bring attention to the needs of our youngest citizens. They have been doing their best with funds that are made available to them. They have established contact with most of the low-income parents aware enough to seek help for their little ones. I believe they are one vital connection, to relieve the early literacy crisis that looms across our land, that we cannot afford to cutback.

Literacy for Tykes' work has been through various human service and educational services who have identified at-risk children. Headstarts and State-Funded Pre-Kindergartens have been two of the partner organizations who by their nature identify such needy families /children. The beauty of working with parents who have come to these groups is that the parents' interest self-selects them as caring enough to possibly follow through with books given them for home reading. Our fund raising has made available an excellent home-reading program to these educational groups that nicely complements what they are able to do with their funding. Our books and materials are completely in keeping with their philosophies of parent involvement.

We all know that home-language development and home-reading need to be the first learning experiences dictated by the way children really learn. For those parents who have not started home reading of pictures books on their own, these educational groups have been able to encourage them to do so. Our materials have found a workable distribution and continued use through the enthusiastic response of these educators and our other partners.

In summary, I am saying to all decision makers, please continue to fund both Headstarts and State-Funded Pre-Kindergartens. Look elsewhere to cut expenses. See my many other blogs to understand the whole picture of how vital it is to give every possible child the best start toward a life of learning and making a good life for themselves in the future. We all benefit.