BUILDING CURIOSITY |SEPTEMBER EDITION

Building a Curious Mind

Content from Bright by Three Curiosity is an attribute we must cultivate in our children. Early discoveries, trial and error, and tactile explorations are actually the building blocks of science, technology, engineering and math - STEM for short. The world needs more creative people and believe it or not, there are ways to aid your child in developing these valuable skills before they can even walk! The vast majority of brain development takes place during the first three years of life, so why not pave the way for your baby to become a biochemist while you're at it. The video below shows ways to help infants and toddlers learn to count. To encourage your child’s STEM capabilities in their early years...read on!

The first year presents tremendous opportunity to get your child thinking critically in their unique way. Have conversations with your newborn and respond by mimicking her sounds and facial expressions. Describe her actions out loud as often as possible. Count your little one’s body parts, such as fingers and toes, to start associating numbers that represent objects in her environment. Rolling, crawling and moving around are all trial and error for your baby so make sure he has room to move. Your soon-to-be toddler is learning science! Toddler tips - building tech-savvy skills with less reliance on screens and TV! According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), even educational programs on TV aren’t as enriching as real life, such as figuring out how a toy works, playing games, or singing songs and dancing with you. That doesn’t mean that technology doesn’t serve a purpose. Learn how to leverage screen time to build your relationship with your child and help her gain skills. Children are curious and they want to use all their senses to explore the environment. Go out in nature and find shapes and textures in your child’s environment. Offer three-dimensional shapes for her to explore and sort. Purchase or make your own toys that let children create patterns, build, count and sort. Focus on toys that develop children’s physical, cognitive, academic, musical and artistic skills. Select puzzles with pictures that can probe deeper thinking and question development. Help your preschooler understand basic science principles with these activities and concepts! Estimating how much a container can hold then measuring to find out teaches children basic skills that apply in math and in science. Hands on activities like this help children understand underlying concepts such as volume and mass. Learning to assign one number to each object as you count is an important concept for children to grasp. Using children's age as the basis for counting helps them develop this skill as they grow.. Learning about speed helps children understand their world. This PBS video shows how six different animals move slow, medium or fast. You can also demonstrate speed by playing a game like Simon Says with your child. Demonstrate slow, medium and fast movements when Simon says.

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Kindergarten Vaccination Information

The school year is underway and getting vaccinated is an important part of keeping your child healthy. Vaccinations keep children from catching and spreading diseases that can make them sick.  If there is a disease outbreak or case in a child's school and they have not received the vaccine for that disease, they may be excluded from school until it's safe for them to return. That could mean lost learning time for them and lost work and wages for parents and caregivers.  Help spread the word about the importance of getting vaccinated. Learn more and/or share this letter to parents of kindergarten students .

Click here to learn more about the flu vaccine and the 2019-2020 flu season. Ideally, children should be vaccinated before the end of October.

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