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“Parents belong at the center of a young child’s education.
The single best way to improve elementary
education is to strengthen parents’ role in it.
Not all teachers are parents, but all parents are teachers.”
W.J. Bennet
- feel safe and respected
- learn ways to keep themselves healthy, including nourishment, sleep, and physical activity
- feel confidence in and control of their bodies
- enjoy being and choose to be physically active
- understand and follow routines
- feel a sense of security, self-respect, and self-regulation
- express a sense of personal well-being
- recognize, accept, and express a wide range of emotions, thoughts, and views
- adapt to and enjoy experiences of change, surprise, and uncertainty
- feel valued and explore their own strategies for learning
- build healthy relationships with both adults and children
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- engaging in informal conversations
- playing
- responding to photographs, pictures, stories, experiences
- dramatic play
- making constructions to represent a person or an object in a story, song or play
- performing or watching puppet plays
- chanting, choral reading, singing
- sharing work
- listening to instructions
- listening to stories
- looking at books
- role play reading
- reading environmental print
- painting, drawing, plasticine models
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We know from research that students who begin grade one with strong print awareness skills have a strong advantage in learning to read. The two predictors of reading success are:
- the ease and fluency with which they are able to recognize and name letters
- the ability to make sense of how sounds and letters operate in print
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- singing counting songs and rhymes
- beating drums in a pattern
- building with blocks
- finding things larger than . . .
- lining up by size
- organizing train cars
- measuring cups of water
- eating jellybeans by colour
- manipulating number cards
- stacking objects
- doing shape puzzles
- dividing apples
- counting pumpkin seeds
- playing games with spinners
- sorting buttons
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A developmentally appropriate curriculum encourages the explorations of a wide variety of mathematical ideas in such a way that children retain their enjoyment of, and curiosity about, mathematics.
Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, 1989
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Combining play with developmentally appropriate practice helps your child gain:
- a positive sense of self
- problem solving and reasoning skills
- confidence through social interaction
- creative expression through music, art, movement
- motor skills and physical awareness through indoor and outdoor activities
- strong communication skills
- beginning literacy and math skills
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