I specifically held out on trying the PBSKids SuperWHY resources until Li'l Boo was done with preschool for the year so we could do the activities when we had nothing scheduled for these summer days. It turned out be a brilliant idea considering how much rain we've gotten in New Jersey this past month, and I was relieved to have guided educational activities to do with him while we were stuck inside for most of this past month.
I mentioned before that PBS has a wealth of resources and ideas available for not only kids, but for parents to use to assist with educating our children. What I was most impressed with was the depth of the information. There’s an entire section on www.pbs.org/parents called the Child Development Tracker which outlines the skills most children in a given age-range (ages one - eight years old) develop at that time. This section includes examples of the skills, and tips on how to build those skills in several different areas of growth and development including:
Approaches to Learning,
Creative Arts,
Literacy,
Mathematics,
Science,
Physical Health,
Language,
and Social and Emotional Growth.
There’s also a section on the PBS Parents site, “Mornings on PBS,” that highlights the preschool theme of the day. Here you’ll find suggested activities and books to reinforce and explore the theme of the day. For example, one day the theme was "All About Me," or "Space Day." In case you were wondering what shows to introduce at what age, there are lists of shows appropriate for each age and development level too. It’s like having a teaching plan at my fingertips!
What I’ve mentioned so far are features of just ONE of the PBS sub-sites - have you discovered and fully explored all of these sites yet?
PBS Kids
Come play with all of your favorite preschool characters
PBS Kids Go!
Get ready to GO in their place for big kids
PBS Parents
Find games, activities and advice for raising your PBS Kid
PBS Kids Play!
Their fun new way for kids to learn through play
PBS Kids Island
A national literacy campaign, and part of the Ready To Learn initiative, focused on building reading skills at home, at school, in child care, and in the community
PBS Teachers
Resources for teaching and learning
Now back to our first day of SuperWHY resource experimentation. If you want to participate and try out the materials on your own li'l ones, these are the SuperWHY assessment documents to complete before you begin the trial to establish a baseline of literacy knowledge. I used these to assess Li'l Boo's literacy development level.
When I asked him if he knew the story of the Three Little Pigs, he said:
“Yes, it's about pigs who run away from the wolf and hide in a friend pigs brick house and then nothing else bad happens.”
Li’l Boo correctly identified the letters W-O-L-F on the next sheet. Then, on the –all sheet, he knew “Wall,” thought “Fall” was “Fox,” and when I pointed out the –all in Wall, and asked him again what “Fall” spelled, he corrected himself with “Fall.” He said “Ball” on his own before I even pointed and asked the third word!
When asking him the opposite of “big,” he said “tiny.” For the opposite of “bad,” he said “glad.” (Must have been the rhymes on the sheet before that led him to this, but it kind of works on a simplistic level. ;-))
On the last sheet, he correctly pointed to “good,” then pointed to and said correctly “red,” and “small.” So it appears that he's showing signs of pre-reading! Wondering how much advancing will take place these next five days. . .