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Theme: Visual Thinking Summer: This month we are talking about Visual Thinking or Visual Processing.Summer: What is visual thinking and how is this skill important for school readiness?Heather: Our brains are wired to rapidly make sense of and remember visual input such as colors, shapes, symbols, drawings and pictures. Visual processing is a complex relationship between the eyes, brain and body. Learning environments are often rich with visual cues and material, and how children interpret these visual cues can impact their success in school.  At a most basic level, pictures help kids understand that words convey meaning - connecting the pictures in the book with the words on the page. Summer: How do picture books support visual thinking and reading skills?Heather: Picture books are often a baby’s first introduction to storytelling and bring tremendous benefits to kids who are in the early stages of developing their reading skills.Kids can check pictures on the page for background knowledge or contextual clues for vocabulary development. They can use the images to learn the names of new objects.Pictures can be used to remind the reader what happened throughout the story and support their ability to retell the sequence of key events.Books filled with pictures encourage kids to make predictions and infer what may happen next. Kids can pair the words with the expressions and setting shown in the pictures to make an informed guess about what comes next in the story.Pictures can encourage social emotional vocabulary, but depicting expressions or emotions - one image can convey many words.Summer: What activities besides the storytelling can care-givers do with children to increase visual thinking skills?Heather: For babies, mirrors, shape sorters, blocks and stacking toys can improve visual processing. Caregivers can encourage activities like “I Spy” to engage kids to look closely at the world around them, and use descriptive works (size, color, shape, ect.) to describe an object without naming the object. When children draw their own pictures or create visual art with a variety of materials, it increases their visual thinking skills by building their own visual story. Encourage kids to create a story about their art work and ask questions to encourage them to elaborate and provide more details. FAQ sections Summer: When should parents be worried?Heather: Babies learn to see over a period of time, much like they learn to walk and talk. They are not born with all the visual abilities they need in life. The ability to focus their eyes, move them accurately, and use them together as a team must be learned. Also, they need to learn how to use the visual information the eyes send to their brain in order to understand the world around them and interact with it appropriately. In the first 3 to 4 years of life, children develop color vision and visual acuity, depth perception and hand-eye coordination. Children should have their first eye exam at about age 1 and every year. If parents observe that their child struggles to grasp an item held out in front of them, crawl or walk to reach a toy, roll a ball back and forth on the floor, they should bring concerns to their pediatrician and make an appointment with an opthamologist. Other Resources: Developmental Milestones:  CDC Milestone Checklists: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/pdf/checklists/all_checklists.pdf  Zero to Three:

Join Summer (Pine River Library's Childrens Manager) and Heather Hawk (Director of Early Childhood Council of La Plata). Theme: Listening Summer: Why is listening important for school readiness? Heather: Listening skills are very important because they help children learn how to develop language skills, as listening requires children to understand, retain information and respond to it. Listening is one of a baby’s first ways to learn about language. As caregivers talk to a baby, the baby’s brain processes phonics, tone. Babies are also watching the way we communicate with them and with others. Listening becomes more difficult for children when they are in a group setting.  If you’ve ever tried to hold a conversation in a crowded restaurant with other conversations taking place, people moving around, sounds from the kitchen, dishes, and chairs moving across a floor; you know what it may feel like for a child to be in a classroom. Summer: What activities besides the listening walk can care-givers do with children to increase listening skills? Heather: First, parents can model active listening. This means providing full attention when a child is speaking, asking questions to solicit details and nodding when appropriate.  To increase listening skill caregivers can use books and storytelling.  Ask children to make simple predictions and comments about a story being read? Or encourage them to repeat a simple story back to you after hearing it? For young children, mimicking is an important part of language acquisition, such as animal noises (which are culturally specific), singing simple songs and rhymes. FAQ sections Summer: When should parents be worried? Heather: Language development is an ongoing process, however, there are milestones you should review with your pediatrician at your child’s wellness visits and questions you should ask if you are concerned that your child may have a language or auditory concern.  Does my baby respond to my voice by turning toward me? Does not baby startle when there are loud noises. Resources Your one stop shop for Colorado support programs like medical insurance for kids under 18! https://peak--coloradopeak.force.com/peak/s/peak-landing-page?language=en_US

Join Summer (Pine River Library's Childrens Manager) and Mary Gilden (Early Childhood Mental Health Expert with the Early Childhood Council). Theme: Social Emotional Readiness. Why is social emotional awareness important for kids to start school? In order to be successful at school they need to understand their emotions respectfully. It also teaches kids how to advocate for themselves. Once they can identify these emotions in themselves they can see these emotions in friends, teachers, and family members. This helps them read social cues and promoting development of compassion and empathy. What are other activities (beyond picking up the emotional playmats you can pick up from the library)? Reading books about feelings, commenting on the feelings we see around us on t.v are great ways to introduce the different emotions as well as the different ways people show emotions. Role playing different emotions and how to handle those emotions so children can identify how their body feels when they are afraid, sad, or angry.  It is also important for kids to see how adults can take care of themselves when their feelings become really big. Modeling for kids self-care, deep breathing and acceptance of your own feelings goes a long way.  Let’s talk about developmental milestones. What is the usual progression of emotional intelligence? And what does that look like? First remember kids learn verbally before internalizing impulse control. Often they go from hitting others, to hitting themselves to then being verbally aggressive and believe it or not that’s progress. What would we like to see before they enter K? Clear sense social norms(cloths on in class, do not throw food, hitting is wrong, good at telling on friends, can wait in line, listen to a story, can advocate for their needs (potty, missing family) When should parents be worried? Based on diagnostic criteria, when feelings interfere with daily activities in multiple environments. What that means when you are talking about a four year old, is someone who is angry or sad and this impacts school as well as extracurricular activities. Then another level of support is necessary. This support can be a consultation with a mental health professional or play therapy to help the child process the overwhelming feelings they are having.  Remember you can always reach out to the experts at the Early Childhood Council of La Plata. They have two Early Childhood Mental Health Specialists that work closely with childcare centers in La Plata and Archuleta Counties. You can contact Mary Gilden at 970-903-3288 or Sarah Kahn at 970-403-6708 Don't forget to pick up our social emotional play-mat kits from the Pine River Library or La Plata Family Center. They have laminated play-mats and play-dough for kids to model the facial expressions of kids that feel happy, sad, angry, surprised, disgusted, & fearful along with caregiver prompts to discuss emotions! This project is made possible by a grant from the Colorado State Library and collaborations with the Early Childhood Council of La Plata and The La Plata Family Center. 

Welcome to our inaugural episode of Growing Readers. Each month Summer Sanford, Childrens Manager at the Pine River Library, and Heather Hawk, Director of the Early Childhood Council, will talk about a domain of school readiness. This month we are digging into how talking prepares kids to read. This podcast is paired with a grab bag you can pick up at the library all month long to make your own puppets. One of the most important things you can do is talk, talk, talk! Studies show that kids who hear 21,000 words a day, in order to build a vocabulary. The more words they hear, them ore they will speak themselves, and when they start reading the more print words they will recognize That number can seem intimidating, but we have some hints to help everyone hit this goal. Talk about things you enjoy, and use everyday tasks like laundry or even watching TV. When you are talking with kids, regardless of age, it is important to leave space for them to have time to answer, even if it is babbling. Babies may not be able to form words, but they can listen, watch your mouth move, see the expressions your face makes, and understand the tone and quality of your voice. Beyond everyday activities, you can also get kids to tell you a story with a wordless picture book or let them make choices when appropriate- just try to keep it to two or three options that are acceptable. 

This week we are reading from the Grimm Fairy Tales: The Frog King & The Seven Ravens. 

Welcome to community storytelling. This is a project with the Pine River Library. If you would like to add to the story go to https://prlibrary.org/storytelling-podcast and record what you think happens next through SpeakPipe. 

Join us for our first storytelling podcast. Summer will be telling about the "Continued Adventures of Rapunzel" and an English tale "The Master of All Masters".