#Kinderchat

Kinderchat is a website that has five goals:

1. To facilitate discussions among Educators, Parents, Policy Makers and the Public about Best Practices in Early Childhood Education.

2. To create a collaborative space where Teachers, Administrators, Parents and Organizations can share both their knowledge and the challenges of the learning and teaching of Young Children.

3. To highlight, learn from and discuss different philosophies of teaching and learning with Young Children.

4. To promote real world and real life experiences of working daily with young children, always preserving the dignity and importance of the unique experiences of the Young Child and the critical nature of Educating within Developmentally Appropriate Practices.

5. To create a greater sense of community among those working with Young Children.

To sum this up, it is a website that brings together a variety of adults to participate in online discussions about the education of young children.

On November 11, 2013, there was a discussion about outdoor play and the risks that come with it. Many people made comments about how children are at risk just as much indoors as they are outdoors. Children can get hurt anywhere. It is a part of life. A lot of people shared projects that a class of young students could participate in when outdoors. Most of them were gardens or similar to this. One comment that really stood out to me was a man who said "There are more germs on the bathroom door at the mall than in a pond or garden." I could not agree more with this. Children need to get messy to gain knowledge about the outdoors. In relation to this, a woman shared something that one of her kindergarten students would say. "It's not a good day in K if you don't go home messy!" This is extremely true as well. We all need to get our hands a little dirty sometimes and it can actually be a good time. Learning can be fun and it is our job as teachers to make sure that children can have the experience of the outdoors just as much as the indoors.

Essential Early Literacy Teaching Strategies

Early literacy instruction for preschool children can be effective when teachers provide the children with developmentally appropriate settings, materials, experiences, and social support. In the article "The Essentials of Early Literacy Instruction", the authors discuss the eight essential teaching strategies for early literacy. These strategies are: rich teacher talk, storybook reading, phonological awareness activities, alphabet activities, support for emergent reading and writing, shared book experiences, and integrated content-focused activities. All of these strategies are necessary in order for children to acquire literacy.

Rich teacher talk should be used in large group, small group, and one-on-one situations. It is important to use new or unusual words, extend children's comments, discuss challenging content, and listen and respond to what children are saying. This can expand children's vocabulary and thinking skills. Teachers should read aloud to their students once or twice a day. Along with the storytelling, a teacher should have conversations and activities for before, during, and after reading. Teachers should provide activities that increase phonological awareness. Examples of these activities are playing games and listening to stories, poems, and songs. Alphabet activities should be used to engage children in the exploration of letters so that they are able to identify the letters of the alphabet. Using direct instruction to make a personal connection to a letter for a child helps with letter recognition.

Teachers should encourage children to read and write in any form. Children should have access to books and other types of print materials throughout the classroom. Children should also have access to a writing center that provides a variety of materials as well as play-related writing materials in other centers in the room. Shared book experiences use big books with enlarged text. Teachers should point to words while reading and draw children's attention to basic concepts. These may include: distinction between words and pictures, left-to-right and top-to-bottom sequences, and book concepts (cover, title, page, etc.).



The last strategy is the integrated, content-focused activities. Teachers should provide opportunities for children to explore subjects that interest them. The idea of this is to get children using oral language, writing, and reading to learn about the world. They can do this through listening to the teacher read a book about the topic, gathering data through observation, experiments, and interviews, writing to record information and observations, and engaging in dramatic play to express what they have learned. This strategy results in the advancement of children's language and literacy skills as well as gaining useful background knowledge.

Engaging Children in Reading

This week in class, we spent a great deal of time practicing ways that we can engage children while reading a story. One way to engage children is with the use of character puppets or bibs. During the story, children get to use these puppets or bibs to be the character and do what the character does. It gives the children a connection to the story as well as keeping them in tune with the book.

For example, these are "puppets" for the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle. Each puppet would be given to individual children and they might hold it up during their page or something along those lines. If there are not enough characters for every child in the class then they would read the story another time and different children would get to be the characters.

Another way to keep children engaged while reading a story is using a book with repetition or predictability. When a book is constantly a repeating a phrase, children will catch on and enjoy saying it with you. Children also like to guess what is going to happen next. These two strategies occur in the book A Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. This book incorporates counting and days of the week which children will be able to predict which number or day comes next. It also uses repetition of the phrase "...But he was still hungry"on each page. Children are able to join in with the reader when this phrase is read.

These strategies can be used with a variety of children's books in a classroom. I think they are beneficial and make children interested in reading. These are also not the only strategies that can be used either. There are a variety of strategies that can be used when reading a story to children.