In your work, you see children who have experienced hard things. Childhood trauma is something that we, as early childhood professionals, need to be aware of, sensitive to and informed about. The pandemic has had serious implications for some children who have experienced family loss, isolation and social setbacks. In this podcast episode, I talk to early […]
I’ve discovered an amazing website that I want to share with you! The National Institute for Play (NIT) has resources that help you understand the importance of play in children’s brain development, mental health, and learning. There’s also plenty in there about how YOUR play in everyday life supports your mental health. I hope you’ll check it out. […]
Do you like to DIY? I sure do! Especially when it involves the kitchen and kiddos. When I was a toddler teacher, we had a tray with all the ingredients for making playdough, measuring cups and spoons, and an old saucepan with a tattered recipe card in it. Whenever the time seemed right, we’d pull […]
Worry. It seems to come with the territory of parenting. We worry about… … whether we can break the unhealthy patterns from our own childhood.… if the isolation of a pandemic will affect our child.… how the uncertainty of today’s world will affect our child’s future. In today’s podcast episode, bestselling author Holly Elissa Bruno […]
I love how predictable child development is. From learning to walk, talk, play with others, build with blocks, even the marks made on a page, we can predict what children will do next, as they grow towards autonomy and independence. In this video, I help you decipher what you see in children’s artwork, outlining the […]
What’s the favorite activity in your class? I’m guessing it might be blocks! Block play… seems like it’s just stacking and knocking over, with a little pretend sprinkled in. But actually there are developmental stages in block play. How toddlers play with blocks is different from preschoolers, which is different from school-agers. There’s lots of math, science, cognitive and […]
Is your child at that tantrum age? How do you feel when they’re in the thick of one? Bewildered, impatient, overwhelmed, helpless? Or perhaps ready to throw in the towel on this whole parenting thing. Tantrums are a completely normal part of childhood, but with a little insight into what your toddler is thinking, perhaps […]
You’ve probably seen it – kids who put on a costume and instantly become the character, talking and acting like them as they enter the world of fantasy. A look at this years’ top selling costumes gives us an inside peek at how children love to pretend. Here are the top 10: 1) Princess, 2) […]
Babies pick up on our emotions at an amazingly young age. Researchers have found that babies as young as 4 months of age can detect positive and negative emotions in our facial expressions and tone of voice.