The Ins and Outs of Baby Sign Language

August 2, 2021

Working with infants can involve a lot of guess work! Babies cry, make sounds and facial expressions, and use body movements to express their needs and wants, but still, it’s not always clear how to assist them. Babies typically start talking between 9 and 14 months. Until then their mental vocabularies are forming and are much more advanced than we realize. Though babies cannot speak, they understand quite a bit. While talking to children regularly and narrating their play will support language acquisition, you can help them express their needs, wants, and emotions by introducing baby sign language.

Charlie’s Cues: Using Your Learning Center/Early Learning Materials

July 26, 2021

What would you think if I told you that a single teaching tool could help you teach math, fine motor, social-emotional, cognitive, and language concepts to young children—a tool that could be used in both directed or independent play? Each month we offer just that in our Fireflies and Buttercups kits!

Learning Through Infant Care Routines: Naps

July 20, 2021

Infants have daily needs that need to be met for them to learn, develop positive attachment to primary caregivers, and know they will be loved and taken care of. Most of these needs revolve around basic care routines. The FunShine Express Buttercups Babies kits were designed to incorporate activity ideas into these care routines to create meaningful interactions each day.

Learning Through Infant Care Routines: Feeding

June 24, 2021

Infants have daily needs that need to be met for them to learn, develop positive attachment to primary caregivers, and know they will be loved and taken care of. Most of these needs revolve around basic care routines. The FunShine Express Buttercups Babies kits were designed to incorporate activity ideas into these care routines to create meaningful interactions each day.

Charlie’s Cues: Using Your Word Wall

June 22, 2021

The words children are exposed to regularly become a part of their everyday vocabulary. Creating a space where children can refer to, observe, listen to, and repeat familiar, new, or theme-related words is the basis of good auditory, linguistic, and communication development. One way to do this is to create a word wall in your preschool classroom.