Incorporate Literacy into Your Holiday Count Down

 While parents may not associate holiday preparations with building literacy skills, the season offers a variety of fun, easy and educational ways to help get your child ready for school.  Here are just a few great ideas.

1.  Letters to Santa/Holiday cards: Have your child practice writing skills by creating a wish list or letter to Santa.  You could also use this time to learn how to properly address an envelope!  You could also have young children practice writing their name by letting them help sign all those holiday cards.

2. Sing some Holiday Songs:  Many traditional songs incorporate numbers, letters and rhymes, all critical elements of early literacy! 

3. Homemade Gift Wrap: Why not turn those scribbles and drawings into something more useful.  Buy a large roll of butcher paper and get out the markers.  Use your kid creations to wrap gifts for family and friends. While you are at it, have them write the gift tags.

4. Get Cooking:  From cookies to dinners, the holidays are usually a busy time in the kitchen.  Make this an opportunity to teach your kids family traditions, how to read a recipe and work on the measuring/math skills needed to cook!

5. Share a Good Book: There are dozens of fabulous holiday books, from traditional to brand new.  Head to your local library or book store to find a new story to share.  You could also start a new tradition:  Have a book to open Christmas morning, or send a book to your children with a return address of the North Pole! 

Create a Thanksgiving Tradition.......

Why not make this the year that you start a cherished family tradition?!?!  Here are 5 great ideas to think about adapting to your families annual Turkey Day!

Sit down with your family and reminisce about your childhood celebrations

What do you remember most about Thanksgiving and the days that follow? Thanksgiving traditions can be much more than just food and recipes. In what ways did your childhood traditions symbolize particular values, such as abundance, generosity, the importance of family? What would you like to do that's the same? What would you do like to do differently?

Make a small booklet or a mini scrapbook album

Write "Five Things I Love About My Family and Friends" and keep it out on the table during your Thanksgiving celebration. Each guest can come and record thoughts and insights. Other themes to try: "Five Things I'm Thankful For" or "Five Wishes for my Family and Friends." An even simpler approach would be to put one sheet of cardstock out for each year - and combine them together over the years in a Thanksgiving Gratitude Scrapbook.

Keep a family gratitude journal throughout the year

Each night, a family member can share something that they are grateful for. Share the highlights of this family tradition at the dinner table on Thanksgiving Day.

Make a gratitude circle

Before the Thanksgiving meal, everyone stands and holds hands in a circle. Guests each take a turn sharing what they are grateful for. Or - if your guests are on the shy side - ask everyone to write down their blessings on a piece of paper, which you can read before or after dinner.

Designate a particular tablecloth for your family Thanksgiving celebrations

Provide fabric markers where guests can record their "gratitudes" or special prayers for the year ahead. Ask your guests to sign and date each message, as you'll be using the same tablecloth year after year.

Start Making a Reader Today

Want to help your child get ready to read?!?!?!  Reading for All, in partnership with McMinnville public Library and the Oregon Community Foundation, produced this video to demonstrate real early literacy interactions between children and parents. The video features physicians, librarians, and parents discussing early literacy activities and why they are important. This video is available streaming online English and Spanish.



http://reading4all.com/entries/view/547


For more resources on early literacy, reading with young children, and selecting books for young children, don’t forget the Reading for Healthy Families website:

http://www.oregon.gov/osl/LD/Pages/youthsvcs/rfhf.home.aspx. 

Ideas of Thanks

The beginning of the month is the perfect time to get your kids to start thinking about what they are thankful for!    The following craft ideas are fun, easy and a way to get your kids excited about giving thanks!

1. Create a I'm Thankful For........book using paper bags, construction paper and pasta!

 

2. Thankful Tree: Gather some fall twigs, cut out some paper leaves and have family members write 1 think they are thankful for each day leading up to Thanksgiving.

 

3. Thankful Turkey: Even the smallest of kids can help make this cute Turkey!  With household items (toilet paper roll, paper plate, paper) and some writing help, your toddler or preschooler could make this year's centerpiece!

 

Show Some Faith

One of the biggest mistakes some parents and teachers make, when they decide to do Positive Discipline, is becoming too permissive because they don’t want to be punitive. Some mistakenly believe they are being kind when they rescue their children, and protect them from all disappointment. This is not being kind; it is being permissive. Being kind means to be respectful of the child and of yourself. It is not respectful to pamper children. It is not respectful to rescue them from every disappointment so they don’t have the opportunity to develop their disappointment muscles. It is respectful to validate their feelings, "I can see that you are disappointed (or angry, or upset, etc.)." Then it is respectful to have faith in children that they can survive disappointment and develop a sense of capability in the process.