Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SLEEP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eight Sleep Tips for Every Child
By Elizabeth Pantley, author of The No-Cry Sleep Solution
Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.
~ Kate DiCamillo
PAT Events
Items of Interest
Items of Interest
TOY & BOOK GIFT GUIDE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Toys for Toddlers
Language
Board books, pop-up books, picture books
Intellectual
Blocks and other construction toys
Games for matching or sorting shapes, colors, letters,
and numbers
Alphabet blocks and magnetic letters
Nesting or stacking toys, and shape sorters
Musical instruments
CDs or digital music players
Social Emotional
Trains, cars, and trucks
Dolls or stuffed animals that can be bathed, fed, and
diapered
Hand and finger puppets
Kitchen sets, workshops, grocery stores, baby-care
stations, doctor sets or pop-up tents
Dress-up clothes and accessories
Push toys
Play versions of real home objects (phones, vacuum,
etc.)
Play scenes like a farm, zoo, or airport
Fine Motor
Peg boards with large pegs an magnetic boards
Large beads and strings with stiffened tips
Play dough
Paints, fingerpaints, paint brushes, crayons, markers
Different types and sizes of paper
Chalk and sidewalk chalk
Toys for water play or sand play
Gross Motor
Push and pull toys
Foot-powered riding toys
Doll strollers wagons and rocking horses
Climbing structures, slides, foam mats, and tunnels
Large balls, all sizes and textures, made of foam or
other soft materials
Social Emotional
Dolls with accessories
Sock, mitten, or finger puppets
Role-play materials like dress-up costumes,
telephone, camera, doctor kit, cash register, large
mirror
Play scenes with realistic and working parts (doll
house, garage, farm, airport, outer space, zoo,
playground, school, etc.)
Toy cars with roads and signs, trucks with cargo,
trains with tracks
Fine Motor
Matching, sorting, and counting toys
Art supplies, stamps and ink, and stickers
Sand and water toys and tools, swimming toys with
wind-up motors, and bath activity centers
Preschool scissors
Gross Motor
Push and pull toys adults might use, like a shopping
cart, lawnmower and stroller
Pedal-powered riding toys and tricycles
Outdoor climbers and slides
Choosing Books
Babys First Year
Washable or plastic books
Board books
Touch-and-feel books
Books with simple large pictures of everyday objects
Toddlers
Board books & paper books
Lift-the-flap books
Books that play music
Books with illustrations
Books about:
Families, children, and familiar characters
Simple concepts like the alphabet, numbers,
colors, and shapes
Predictable books with repeated words, phrases,
questions, or rhymes
Simple action stories about day-to-day
experiences
Descriptions of how things work, what workers do
Preschoolers
Books about shapes, letters, numbers, and colors
Books with rhyming words, songs, and nursery
rhymes
Books with predictable patterns and repeated lines
I Spy hunt-and-find, scratch-and-sniff, and pop-up
interactive books
Books about children or young animals
Stories with a clear beginning, middle, and end
Books about your familys culture and about other
cultures
Find titles your child will love by asking friends and relatives,
bookstore clerks, and library story time readers for recommendations.
You can also check online sites like scholastic.com,
readingrockets.org, and reachoutandread.org. The web site parentschoice.org lists award-winning books and magazines for
preschoolers. Inexpensive places to buy books include kids resale
shops, library sales, and garage sales.
Items of Interest
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Raising Kind Children
Adapted by Kim Leon, Ph.D., former State Specialist, Human
Development and Family Studies, University of Missouri Extension
HEALTH ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cold or Flu?
Robert Thomas, former Information Specialist, Cooperative
Media Group, University of Missouri Extension
Nominees:
Activities
INTELLECTUAL ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Making Inferences and Drawing Conclusions
Families can create opportunities to practice inferential thinking. Below are a few ways to help familiarize your child
with this way of thinking and learning:
Explain to your child that we make conclusions about things and draw inferences all the time. Draw a conclusion
together and then talk about what clues were used to come to that conclusion. For example, Erin played outside today.
How can we tell? Muddy shoes, jump rope on front porch, water bottle out. Dad seems tired tonight. How can we tell?
He's rubbing his eyes, he's on the couch, he was yawning at the dinner table.
Paper bag mystery person: Put a few items into a brown paper bag. Tell your child the bag belongs to a certain type
of person. Their job is to tell you something about the person. Then, take out each item one by one and talk about it.
Example #1: goggles, a swim cap, a swim ribbon, a stop watch
Example #2: a bookmark, a library card, a stuffed animal, a book
Wordless picture books provide your child with practice using clues to create meaning. There are no wrong stories
with wordless picture books, only variations based on what the "reader" sees and puts together. Rosie's
Walk (Hutchins), Good Dog, Carl (Day), and Beaver Is Lost (Cooper) are all interesting and fun wordless picture books
to explore.
Play twenty questions! This familiar word game helps build inference skills. As your child develops skill with the game,
encourage him to avoid asking direct questions like, "Is it a dog?" Rather, encourage him to ask broader questions,
"Does it walk on four feet?" Then, when your child figures it out, ask him to tell you the clues that lead to the right
answer.
Create scenarios in which your child must use what they already know to predict an outcome. For example, growing
seeds. Present your child with various scenarios (a seed will be given water and sunlight, a seed will get no water, a
seed will be in a dark room). Ask your child to predict whether the seed will grow. Help your child become aware that
she used information she knew about growing seeds, combined with new information, to fill in information about the
seeds.
~Reading Rockets