Supporting Early Literacy Development in Young Autistic Children
February 21, 2025
Emergent literacy skills are the building blocks of learning to read and write. These early skills are essential for all children to learn. For young autistic children, it's important to consider their individual strengths and interests when deciding how best to support their emergent literacy skills.
Using Explanations with Charlie & Mouse Are Magic
February 20, 2025
Your child may understand what is happening in a book, but what about why it’s happening? Talking about the reasons things happen in a story helps your child make important cause-and-effect connections, which deepens their story understanding. Here are some tips to help!
School Readiness Tips February 2025
February 13, 2025
When you expose children to more advanced vocabulary in your day-to-day conversations, you prepare them to learn subjects like science, history and geography. Here are some fun ways to include unusual words throughout your day.
Evaluating the Story with The Most Magnificent Thing
January 17, 2025
An effective way to deepen your child’s understanding of a story is to encourage them to make judgments and form opinions about the events that take place. Here are some tips to help your child evaluate a story with the fun book, The most Magnificent Thing.
School Readiness Tips January 2025
January 15, 2025
Children’s vocabulary grows when they participate in conversations and hear new words. To help a child understand a new word, use strategies to highlight the word – e.g., say the word a bit slower and louder, pair it with a gesture and explain what it means. Here are some fun things to try in everyday situations.
School Readiness Tips December 2024
December 18, 2024
Help build children’s language by adding words and ideas to what they say. When you respond to what a child says by making their sentence more complete, or by adding a new idea, you model more advanced language that they can learn from. Here are some fun things to try.
Building Print Knowledge with This Book is on FIRE
November 28, 2024
Learning about print doesn’t come naturally to children. They need our support to understand what print is for and how it works – a key early literacy skill called print knowledge. Read on for some tips to build your child’s print knowledge with the fun children’s book, This Book Is on Fire!
School Readiness Tips November 2024
November 05, 2024
When children participate in interactions that go back-and-forth many times, they have more opportunities to hear and practice language. Children learn the most from talking about their ideas, so let the child take the first turn to start an interesting conversation. Then, follow the child’s lead to keep the interaction going! Here are some fun ways to build back-and-forth conversations.
Introducing Rare Vocabulary with Big Words for Little Paleontologists
October 21, 2024
Use the Hanen strategy, “Shoot for the SSTaRS” to help your child learn the kinds of higher-level words that prepare them for school success.