Dilly Days with Beth and Joellyn: Authors of The InvestiGator Club™ for Robert-Leslie Publishing

Here is a fun back-to-school activity to help young children understand the concept of personal space.

Have children blow an imaginary bubble over their space on the floor. Have them climb into the bubble and sit down. Tell them: The space on the floor inside your imaginary bubble is your space, and no one else can share it. Stay inside your space as I give you some directions. Listen carefully. Then give directions such as the following: put your hands on your head; clap three times; put your hands on your hips and twist, etc.

Our Program Introduction, Let’s Investigate!, is full of fun back-to-school lessons. To learn more about our curriculum, go to www.investigatorclub.com.

What is your best preschool back-to-school activity? Let us know and we’ll post it to share!

The Jonesboro Sun newspaper did a story on The InvestiGator Club!

I will be leading three presentations at this week’s National Head Start Training Conference in Nashville. They are all tomorrow, the 22nd. Whew!

• 8:00 to 9:30 am: Using a Core Curriculum that Emphasizes the Needs of Children with Diverse Abilities
• 10:00 to 11:30 am: Building Relationships Between Schools and Families
• 12:00 to 1:30 pm: A Fully Intertwined Approach to Science and Literacy

I’ll also be in exhibition booth #331 for Robert-Leslie Publishing on the 23rd and 24th.

Here’s a fun Dramatic Play Learning Center activity from The InvestiGator Club Prekindergarten Learning System that you can complete with your children.
 

The National Association for the Education of Young Children is holding their 2007 Conference and Expo in Chicago this year. Come visit Beth and Joellyn at The InvestiGator Club/Robert-Leslie Publishing booth #226! They’ll be doing book signings on November 8 and 9 at 1:00. Come by anytime to pick up your free Learning Center Poster.

Joellyn and I are proud that our Adaptive Learning Kit includes tools, manipulatives, and teaching aids that facilitate participation in classroom activities for prekindergarten children with exceptionalities. Some of these include:

• ABC Game Cards (with Sign Language)
• Braille ABC Cards
• Vocabulary cards (in English and Spanish)
• Dilly and Friends Stick Puppets
• Finger Paintbrushes
• Easi-Grip™ Scissors
• Trade Books
• Singing Sounds CD
• Outdoor Play Cards
• Teaching Young Children with Autism professional handbook

As one of the authors for The Investigator Club Prekindergarten Learning System, I travel to classrooms across the county. I frequently hear and see first hand the frustrations that preschool educators experience as they strive to create a learning environment in which all children, including those with special needs, are successful.

In response to this, we have developed The Investigator Club Adaptive Learning Kit with the tools to help you differentiate instruction and meet the needs of every child, no matter where he or she is on the developmental spectrum. The Resource Guide has essential information in an easy-to read format. It covers topics such as:

• “People First” language
• Preparing for all learners
• Working as a team
• The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

The kit also provides specific modifications, adaptations, and accommodations to differentiate instruction for all children.

It’s summer, and my neighborhood is buzzing with “eight and unders” manning lemonade stands, creating sidewalk chalk masterpieces, and chasing each other through sprinklers. Summer is magic. Yesterday’s magic was especially interesting though. Gathered on my front porch were no fewer than eight preschoolers and kindergarteners sampling music from a variety of CDs. Their CD player had a built-in microphone that was used as a karaoke prop for only the best of songs. And as I listened to the children give commentary, I noticed something quite interesting. These children knew what they liked—and they knew why! In their own way, these little ones articulated ideas about rhythm, beat, lyrical quality, and melody.

Being an author of a preschool curriculum that offers music, I was curious how our music would be perceived by the children on my porch (excluding my son who will be entering first grade and who knows all the songs by heart). Of the 16 tracks, the following songs were voted as the top three: “Gone Investigating,” “Over in the Meadow,” and “Bad Weather Blues.” There was even a tussle for the microphone about halfway through the blues song. Now that’s an endorsement!

Summer is finally here. Now, teachers and parents alike have to contend with the specters of learning regression and readiness for the next grade.

That’s why Beth and I developed a brand new program called Get Ready for Kindergarten. It’s not even in the Robert-Leslie catalog or on The InvestiGator Club’s website yet. We created this program to work in both school and home environments.

The children get to visit “Camp InvestiGator” and have fun learning as they pretend to go camping. The class even meets around an imaginary campfire to open and close every day! Here you see beautiful hand-print sandcastles made with a mixture of tan paint and real sand. Doesn’t Camp InvestiGator look like fun?