The Smarter Preschooler Blog

I just read a book, Some of My Best Friends are Books by Judith Wynn Halstead. I discovered the book as I looked at the list of Moms Choice Award winners. Our book, The Smarter Preschooler: Unlocking Your Child’s Intellectual Potential just received the gold award, and I was curious to see whose company we shared. I saw Some of My Best Friends are Books and found an older edition of the book at my local libary.

What a great book! The focus is on how parents and teachers can help gifted readers. So many points the author makes are so helpful in working with gifted readers. But why can’t all parents apply the principles outlined in the book to all kids? Maybe by encouraging higher expectations we can steer kids to become gifted readers or to at least become a better reader.

Parents need to give kids access to books. They need regular library visits and should check out both fiction and non-fiction books. And while parents should allow kids to pick out favorite topics they should also steer kids toward new material.

Parents need to get books that are slightly more advanced than the child’s current level. This challenges the child to learn new vocabulary and improve comprehension.

Parents should also read aloud chapter books even to preschoolers. They can understand much more than you realize. This exposes children to higher quality books, higher vocabulary, more complex plots, and more varied sentence structure. Your child can even draw or play quietly while you read. They are still absorbing the information.

When reading, parents should read interactively. This means that they should ask questions about the story. Concrete questions, like who is that?, where is he going?, what is he doing?, should be asked of your child. Then, parents can progress to more abstract questions such as what would you do? or what are some other solutions? By reading interactively parents can check comprehension and develop problem solving skills.

Will all kids be gifted in reading? Maybe not, but parents can direct kids to love reading and improve reading ablility. And the earlier you start with books the better.

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A new study found that preschooler obesity can be reduced by 40% when families followed certain routines in their home. First, families needed to eat together at least five times a week. Children should also get 10 hours of sleep a night. And television viewing should be no more than 2 hours per day on the weekdays.

To review, eating together as a family, it makes sense that when families eat together, they are more likely to be homemade meals which are typically less in calories. Eating individually can typically mean more eating on the run fast food or eating in front of the televison which contributes to mindless eating. Additionally, eating together as a family contributes to good feelings about eating where members can share and enjoy the company of one another. Parents can also model healthy eating behaviors. And as mentioned in our book, families who eat together are less like to do drugs and do better academically.

Preschoolers need 10 hours of sleep. They feel better and are less cranky. When, kids get less sleep they are more likely to crave sugary and high fat foods for energy.

The tv watching is fairly obvious. Sitting behind a tv for long hours burns little calories. What could your child do with those hours instead? Playing outside, going to the park, riding a bike, taking a gymastics class, participating in a sport like soccer. The possibilities are endless for healthy alternatives to mindless hours of screen time.
http://www.ushour.com/health/excessive-tv-viewing-lack-of-sleep-and-low-frequency-of-family-meals-increases-risk-of-childhood-obesity/

The Smarter Preschooler: Unlocking Your Child’s Intellectual Potential, just got selected for the Mom’s Choice Award – gold recipient.
http://www.momschoiceawards.com/celebrate09.php#Parenting