Between the ages of three and five years, a child makes tremendous strides toward independence. He still requires lots of reassurance and support from his parents, and even more frequent guidance and instruction, but what he learns during the preschool period helps a child bridge the gap between the emotional neediness of toddlerhood and the relative self-reliance he'll have to draw upon when he begins school.
Most of the experiences that bombard the preschooler during these important months are a function of his learning style. As was true during infancy and toddlerhood, from ages three to five, a child's inborn sensory preference can cause his perceptions to be quite different from those of his peers and playmates. This is because preschool-aged Lookers, Listeners, and Movers continue to be drawn to and responsive to very different types of stimulation, even when their surroundings are the same.
This chapter introduces you to a Looker, a Listener, and a Mover at the start of the preschool period. Comparisons of each learner's development from age three to age five are also provided to demonstrate the impact of learning style on a child's different skill areas.
Preschool programs and their accompanying social experiences can play a big part in a three- or four-year-old's development. This chapter explains how to make your preschooler's learning style a factor in your selection of his school, in your reinforcement of the learning he does there, and in your discussions with his teacher. The chapter concludes with lists of easy-to-implement ideas, grouped according to learning style, for building up your preschooler's weaker skills while providing him with plenty of opportunities to play at the activities he loves best. A Learning Style QuickCheck for Preschoolers is included to help you determine your child's learning-style preference (see page 87).
The child who enters the preschool phase of life may still seem very much a toddler. But, by the end of this phase, both feet are firmly planted in childhood. Have fun with your preschooler as he travels the meandering path that will lead him to the social and academic challenges of kindergarten.
Elena, Rachel, and William are all three years of age. Each child has caring and involved parents, a middle-class home life, and a school- aged sibling. All three children are veterans of baby gym, story time, and parent-child activity groups; and all will attend preschool next fall. But, as you will see, similar backgrounds do not necessarily yield like children. Because our three preschoolers have different learning styles, from the very first, the children have responded to, absorbed, and processed the information from their surroundings in diverse ways and at varied speeds. As a specialist in communication disorders, I see many children who exhibit combinations of learning styles—Looker-Listeners, for instance, or Looker-Movers—but, for the sake of clarity, you will see that each of our case studies demonstrates characteristics of a single learning style. Let's look at our three learners.
Meet Elena. Looker Elena is a quiet but contented child. Her speech and vocabulary are within normal range for her age, but Elena keeps to herself, just as she did throughout babyhood. Working alone, she produces tremendous quantities of artwork, which she displays all over the house. Elena can draw or paint a person, a tree, a flower, a house, and a variety of animal-type creatures, all in detail. She also loves cutting and pasting and working with clay. Unfortunately, Elena's dexterity doesn't carry over into gross motor areas. Her climbing, hopping, and other full-body efforts are still hesitant and somewhat clumsy.
Elena has recently discovered fashion dolls. She delights in matching the little outfits, and does more dressing and undressing of the dolls than actual pretend play. Elena is also a great fan of her library's children's room, which has a separate magazine and puzzle area, papier-mache replicas of various storybook characters strung from the ceiling, and a rug modeled after a giant game board. Every visit she makes is a visual treat.
Just as she always has, Elena learns best by observing. She is quick to
say "Show me" or "Let me see" when she doesn't understand something, and gets many play ideas by watching other children. In a Looker's typically reserved fashion, though, Elena waits till that child is elsewhere before trying the activity herself. She can recognize and read the logos on various delivery trucks, can spot words like "library," "school," and "deli," and can spell out her name with magnetic letters. At age three, Elena is the very picture of a preschool Looker: visually oriented, good with her hands, and somewhat below the norm in gross motor and social skills.
Meet Rachel. Rachel, a Listener, is just four days younger than Elena. She, too, avoids gross motor activities when she can, well aware that they're not her strong suit; in fact, Rachel has begun to volunteer her services as "judge" or "audience," depending on which part assumes the most sedentary role in the activity at hand. This satisfies Rachel's need to socialize without demanding too much running around on her part. Rachel's fine motor coordination is on a similar level, so she frequently asks for help with the eye-hand portion of activities, requesting, for instance, that her parents "Draw some characters for my story" or "Build a block house for my circus animals."
Rachel's verbal skills are quite advanced for a child of three. She knows scores of rhymes, chants, and jingles, and she sings—on key—to almost every activity. She can also recite her street address and phone number, as well as the names of family members. Rachel is fascinated by words; in fact, when she hears something new, she'll ask for a single repetition and then immediately assimilate it into her vocabulary.
When it comes to play, Rachel's current favorite pastimes include joke- and storytelling, playing "Mommy" or "school," and listening to all types of music. Because children her age find her somewhat bossy, and because older playmates provide conversation better suited to her sophisticated tastes, Rachel often trails after her big sister's friends. But the lagging fine and gross motor skills that are so typical of a young Listener keep Rachel from really enjoying either age group's games and fun.
Meet William. Like Rachel and Elena, Mover William is three years of age. However, gross motor activities pose no problem for him. He loves to run, climb, wrestle, and play "karate." In fact, William is so given to full-body movement that he simply cannot sit still for table play or stories. Within minutes, he's rolling or crawling around on the floor, instead.
At play time, William ignores puzzles, games, paper and crayons, and
small toys in favor of his fleet of construction trucks, his bicycle, and his growing collection of sports equipment. He manages to turn even his sister's playthings into Mover props: her purse becomes his mailbag; her dolls, his victims or "bad guys"; her doll stroller, his snowplow; and so on. Although he's too restless to sit for very long, William still enjoys an occasional stroller ride himself. He is patently uninterested in drawing, bead stringing, or any other activity involving eye-hand coordination, for these pose quite a problem for him. At night, he spurns books and stories in favor of a back rub and lots of hugs.
At three years of age, William still speaks in two- and three-word sentences. He thinks hard before uttering all but the simplest words, yet still mispronounces many of them. William becomes understandably upset when he can't express himself, crying, stomping, and shrieking in frustration. Tantrums, which have been part of his behavioral repertoire for almost two years now, still occur daily. The give-and-take of ordinary conversation is much too fast for William, and he loses interest almost as quickly as he tunes out instructions, lectures, and even the briefest of monologues. This little Mover will soon be entering preschool with excellent full-body coordination, but with verbal and fine motor skills that lag far behind those of most of his classmates.
Does your preschooler seem most tuned in to visual stimuli, like Looker Elena? Does he react to and learn from sounds, like Listener Rachel? Or is he most like Mover William—highly sensitive and in perpetual motion? The Learning Style QuickCheck for Preschoolers on page 87 will tell you how your child learns. Simply check off the characteristics that best describe your child, and then total each of the three columns: Looker, Listener, and Mover. The column with the most checks is the category into which your little learner fits.
You've seen that their diverse learning styles have led Elena, Rachel, and William to become strikingly different three-year-olds. The way these children absorb, process, and respond to environmental information is still determined by the sensory preference each possessed at birth. As you follow our three learners throughout the preschool period, you'll see that the developmental differences that exist at age three only become more marked with the passage of time.
Three-and-a-Half to Five Years of Age
Elena. As she moves through the preschool period, Looker Elena continues to express herself in short, unelaborated sentences. Even at home, she rarely volunteers information, and must be coaxed to provide details about school and play dates. Elena plays regularly with one neighboring child; when several are present, she usually retreats to the sidelines to watch for a while before joining in their games. Elena's gross motor skills are now acceptable for her age, though she's far better at swatting or bouncing a ball than at activities like running or hopping, which involve full-body coordination.
Since so many gross motor activities call for either socializing or getting dirty—neither of which thrills her—Elena gravitates toward art projects and solo play. She enjoys board games and puzzles, and has taken to building projects—high-rises, bridges, and castles—from a variety of blocks. Elena takes pride in her precise coloring and skillful cutting and pasting, and presents each masterpiece to her mother for display.
Elena has a carton of "favorite" picture books and has begun to sight-read words that crop up with any frequency—mom, dad, yes, no, dog, cat, and the like. She also employs her memory when reading whatever street and traffic signs she passes. Lately, Elena has become fascinated by the details on automobiles, and she can now discriminate between different makes and models by their trunk and hood ornamentation, wheel covers, or taillight configuration. In fact, one of her favorite games is to "match" passing cars to those of people she knows. "There's a car like Grandma's, only blue!", she may shout. Or, "David's mom has that same car, only her lights aren't broken."
At preschool, Elena never commands the limelight. Here, as at home, she is attentive but quiet, busying herself with solitary games and projects. Her sophisticated artwork stands out from that of her classmates, and she is one of the few preschoolers who can print the entire alphabet—neatly—from memory. By her fifth birthday, Elena can print the names of all her classmates, and about a dozen other words, as well. As her very rewarding preschool experience ends, Elena looks ahead with excitement to the challenges of kindergarten.
Rachel. Listener Rachel is as much a chatterbox as Elena is reserved. She uses elaborate sentences and multisyllabic words, and astounds her teachers and classmates daily with such vocabulary gems as "binoculars," "wigwam," and "diagonal." When she's not taking the lead in
home or school discussions, Rachel can usually be found relating every detail of a story or reciting some rhyme or song—verbatim.
It comes as no surprise that Rachel delights in group activities and considers almost everyone her friend. Because her advanced verbal skills make her a natural organizer and ringleader, Rachel's earlier tendency toward bossiness flourishes during her preschool years. Accustomed to assigning roles and detailing instructions, she is quick to "tell" on friends or classmates who don't follow the rules.
Rachel still shows little interest in arts and crafts or intricate toys. She cannot yet print, and when asked to draw, dashes off a simple picture and then dresses it up with an accompanying story. She seems to view painting, drawing, and cutting and pasting activities as opportunities for socializing, and is more concerned with the nitty-gritty of conversation than with completing the project at hand. Rachel has come to enjoy time spent on the playground because of the opportunities for interacting with friends. As she does at home, Rachel attempts to control her group's play verbally, as in, "Let's pretend we're the three bears walking back to our home, which is here, under the slide. You be the mother, you be the father, and I'll be the little baby bear." If the game takes a more physical turn, with the "bears" chasing one another or careening
down the slide, Rachel usually makes her way indoors—just as she does
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when the weather happens to turn a bit too hot, cold, damp, or windy to suit her.
At preschool, Rachel separates easily from her parents. She is helpful, personable, knowledgeable, and so eager to read that she grabs every opportunity to ask what labels, posters, and notes "say." Of course, Rachel consistently receives glowing reports from her teachers. Like Looker Elena, Rachel will enter kindergarten with confidence and eager anticipation bom of a positive preschool experience.
William. Unlike talkative Rachel, Mover William's more rudimentary speech is labored and difficult to understand. He mispronounces sounds, misinterprets some of what is said, fails to grasp common expressions, and has trouble recalling spoken instructions or details. Even at five, William still relies on body language to communicate, grabbing, hitting, and pushing before it occurs to him to express his needs in words. Still, he is a sensitive child, easily hurt himself, and alert to, if not always considerate of, the feelings of others. Just as he has since babyhood, William constantly seeks out body contact with family, friends, and teachers; in fact, he is often reprimanded for his habit of bestowing overexuberant bear hugs upon his peers.
William is extremely well coordinated. The training wheels on his bicycle are long gone, and he can climb a pole, kick a football, and swing a racket as well as boys two years older. Brave and daring, William takes the lead during most outdoor play, with the habitual disarray of his clothing serving as testimony to his activity level. William has become more interested in art projects of late, but likes to work "big." Easel and mural projects are much more to his liking than cutting and pasting, partly due to the fact that he has yet to designate a dominant hand. William has already abandoned any attempts at neatness; in fact, the messier the activity, the better he likes it. You can count on this little Mover to throw down his fist- clutched crayons when the finger paints appear. Few of his creations make it to the refrigerator door, though. Usually, they're dropped, torn, or forgotten.
Preschool presents a problem for William because he simply doesn't have the patience for the sit-down activities that constitute so much of the curriculum. Class discussions, story time, work sheets, sing-alongs, and many art projects exact a heavy toll on a child who would prefer to be running about. Since he lacks the visual and auditory skills needed to print a number, learn a song, or recite the alphabet, William quickly turns his attention to diversionary activities—making animal noises, throwing paper, or tickling his classmates. Not a morning has passed during which William hasn't required discipline of some sort, and his teachers have grave reservations about his preparedness for kindergarten.
A generation ago, preschool was somewhat of a luxury; today, most parents view it as an important step in a child's progression toward school readiness. A year or two spent in the company of qualified adults and a roomful of busy three- or four-year-olds teaches a child a great deal about separating from his parents, responding to different authority figures, focusing on and completing tasks, and functioning as part of a group.
With luck, the school you select for your preschooler will exercise all of his developmental areas—physical, social, emotional, and intellectual—rather than focusing on the more formal class work he'll face as a kindergartener. Since most children aren't really ready to read or write until they're past the age of five, any preacademic work that's covered
should be presented in the spirit of play. Of course, the bottom line is that preschool will have to be fun if your child is to enjoy going there!
Assuming that your community offers a choice of schools, what else should you look for? Now that you've pinpointed your own child's learning style with the Learning Style QuickCheck for Preschoolers (see page 87), you'll be able to make a more informed choice. These general guidelines may help you.
During the preschool years, the quiet, visually oriented Looker learns by first observing and then imitating what he sees. He's perfectly suited to classrooms in which there are different learning centers—science and math tables, a reading corner, a dress-up center, a block area, and the like—from which he can choose. Naturally, he'll gravitate toward puzzles, games, building sets, and other forms of solitary play every chance he gets, so it will be helpful if classes are small and there's an extra adult or two on hand to note his habits and occasionally steer him toward group activities. A preschool setting that emphasizes cooperation and offers daily exposure to music, as well as provisions for outdoor and other full-body play, will stimulate a Looker's less-favored senses of hearing and touch and, as a result, help him gradually strengthen his Listener and Mover skills.
The sociable, talkative Listener learns by putting what he hears to work. He'll flourish in any classroom with materials for dramatics—a puppet theater, a housekeeping comer, a mock store, or a make-believe post office. And, for a Listener, a piano, rhythm instruments, and cassette player should be viewed as necessities rather than frills.
A Listener preschooler rarely accepts things at face value, and he'll feel most free to ask the questions, rattle off the instructions, and offer the explanations so characteristic of his learning style in a permissive classroom atmosphere in which individuality and independence are highly regarded. Since he's likely to ignore the chalk, stamp pads, blocks, trucks, and Tinkertoys that are provided during free play time, the Listener will benefit from daily gym and crafts periods or from other teacher-directed opportunities to exercise his large and small muscles.
The Mover preschooler learns best what he experiences with his whole body. For him, the school facilities are an important consideration, for more than anything else, the Mover needs space—floor space, a gym, and a play yard in which to roam free. He'll find only frustration with a teacher who heavily emphasizes paper-and-pencil tasks or sit-and-lis- ten activities. More than either of the other learners, the Mover needs a setting in which different ability levels are expected, accepted, and used as a basis for personalized activities. It's wise to remember that the Mover's awareness of his lagging skills is usually keen. The smaller the pupil-teacher ratio in his preschool, the more much-needed support and attention he'll receive.
Though he should feel free to be messy until his maturing fine motor abilities permit neater work, the Mover still needs encouragement in the use of his small muscles. Simple crafts that emphasize free expression rather than duplication of a teacher's prototype can gradually stretch a Mover's eye-hand capabilities, as can almost any free-time activity that's made into a game—piling checkers into a tower, for example. Moreover, the Mover stands to benefit from a classroom atmosphere in which cooperation, assistance, appropriate conversation, and other social skills are painstakingly taught and rewarded.
Once your child is enrolled in a preschool setting that's well suited to his learning style, it's important to enlighten the teachers about how he best learns, plays, and socializes. From the beginning, parents can mention that their child seems to be a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner. If the teacher is familiar with the learning-styles theory, the terms "Looker," "Listener," and "Mover" will crop up on their own, and parents can freely discuss the specifics of their child's learning preference. If not, parents can simply describe the child's learning strengths and weaknesses and then mention a tactic or two with which they've had success at home. For instance, you might say to the teacher, "Kerry remembers everything she sees, but she seems hesitant to talk, and doesn't enunciate her words as well as the other children do. Recently, we began a homemade 'word book,' in which we paste photographs of new vocabulary words. Now, Kerry seems more interested in using new words."
No doubt, conclusions about your child's learning needs would eventually be reached by the preschool staff, anyway. But early commu-
nication may spare a Looker child from weeks of being overlooked, or prevent a Mover child from initially being coerced into sit-down activities that he's simply not equipped to handle. Happiness and well- rounded development should be the goal of every preschooler's parents and teachers, and this goal is most likely to be attained when adults share the following information.
Learning New Skills
How does your child learn best? If he's a Looker, like Elena, he will learn best when provided with demonstrations or illustrations that he can copy. If he's a Listener, like Rachel, he may need detailed spoken instructions and verbal reinforcement. A Mover, like William, generally requires the most assistance. Because of the Mover's inability to pay attention within a group and to process information spoken across a room, teacher and child or parent and child often have to perform the new skill together.
Correcting Behavior
What approach seems best when correcting your child's behavior? Often, a warning glance is all that's required to set a Looker preschooler back on track. Listeners, of course, respond best to explanations and to such verbal validations of their own protests as, "I'm sorry you're tired. Maybe you'd like to take a rest after you pick up the toys." Movers, who thrive on action, often need to have their inappropriate behavior redirected to some acceptable action. Karate kicks of a block tower can be redirected toward a Bop Bag; the need to lie on a table can be refocused to a beanbag chair. Movers also need more touching—more hugs, more lap time, more by-the-shoulders steering—than other learners.
Kinds of Play
How does your child like to play? At school, he probably gravitates toward the same types of toys and games that he chooses at home. It's also likely that these activities and playthings are a clear reflection of his learning style. Lookers, for example, often love building sets, while Movers prefer riding toys. You may wish to exchange suggestions with
your child's teachers about games, activities, and techniques that have been used successfully to strengthen your child's weaker skills.
Observations About Development
Are there aspects of your child's development that warrant attention? Does he sufficiently communicate his needs? Are his fine and gross motor skills significantly behind those of his classmates? Does he have the ability to listen and pay attention for short periods of time? You might wish to exchange observations about your child's development with his teachers and compare notes periodically about his progress in these areas.
Support Services
Are speech, hearing, and vision screening available at your child's school? If so, it would be a good idea to take advantage of these services. And, should further evaluation be recommended, it would be best to follow up immediately rather than delay and, thus, risk a widening of the gaps in your child's skills.
As the preschool-aged child becomes more independent of his parents, grows comfortable with the preschool staff, and acquaints himself with his classmates, he becomes part of a world of rapidly expanding horizons. Between time spent playing alone and time spent with parents and teachers, a child is—with luck—treated to sensory experiences that are both constant and varied. And, when a preschooler's learning style becomes a consideration in the planning of his daily activities, he receives healthy measures of both the stimulation he craves and that which he needs to bring weaker skills up to par.
The sections that follow describe the benefits of developing those skills that are part of the three learning styles: looking, listening, and moving. In the case of each style, this is followed by a list of toys and techniques meant to strengthen the skills of children who show a preference for that style. Then, suggestions are presented for developing
a similar sensory awareness in children who possess one of the other two learning styles.
The ideas for learning-style affirmation include toys and games that tax a learner's strengths. The suggestions for developing lagging skills have been selected because they are multisensory. That is, they employ two or more senses simultaneously—one of which, in this case, is the sense your child needs to develop. Those multisensory activities and materials that involve your child's preferred sense are, of course, the ones that will work best for him.
As you peruse the lists, looking for ideas suited to your child, remember that fun should be your main criterion. Please enjoy yourselves, whether the activities you choose are for your child's use alone or for the two of you to try as a team.
Children rely on their Looker skills when they observe, memorize, and recreate. These are the skills that give certain children the edge when it comes to reading readiness, artwork, and paper-and-pencil tasks. While
good eye-hand coordination and the willingness to persevere at a task
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both come naturally to the Looker child, they can also be developed in other learners when the right play experiences are provided. Of course, preschool-aged Lookers will be the most receptive to activities involving visual stimulation; after all, these children are naturally inclined to use their eyes and hands. Listeners, who much prefer socializing to solitary play, but can certainly use some fine motor development, may find their interest piqued by toys and games built around conversation. Movers, who also need help with visual and eye-hand skills, will be happiest about those Looker activities that are the least restrictive. The following ideas should help you strengthen your child's visual abilities.
ENHANCING A PRESCHOOLER'S EXISTING LOOKER SKILLS
■ Provide a fishing set with a pole and line containing a magnet or hook that your child can use to catch brightly colored toy fish.
■ PlaySkool's classic Tinker toys is a building system with colorful, diverse pieces and illustrated instructions for assembling various creations.
■ Little, Brown, and Company's Find Waldo Now (Boston, 1990), as
well as other books in Martin Handford's Waldo series, has Waldo and other unusual characters waiting to be found somewhere in each illustration—on a busy street, in outer space, in a prehistoric scene, and the like.
■ Take your child for a walk around the block. When you return, ask him to "palm" (to learn how, see page 55) and, while his eyes are closed, answer questions about what he saw, like, "What color was the big moving truck?" or "Was the mail carrier wearing a hat?"
■ Lego Basic , a building set by Lego, contains doors, windows, wheels, and hundreds of primary-colored interlocking pieces.
■ Provide different-colored and different-sized beads and cord for your child to use in creating bracelets and necklaces.
■ Keep a variety of simple board games on hand. By all means, play the games with your child, but also permit him to use them by himself in his own imaginative fashion.
■ Teach your child to recognize various geometric shapes—hexagons, ovals, trapezoids, and the like—by playing with a puzzle-like shape- sorter toy. PlaySkool's Form Fitter and L'il Hands' Shape Sorter Bucket are two examples.
■ Big Bird's Match Game by Sesame Street uses a windowed game board to sharpen memory and matching skills. Players must remember what is behind each window as they try to find characters that are alike. Different theme cards can be slipped behind the windows to add variety to your child's play.
■ Offer your child a collection of small objects, and make a game of sorting them according to color, shape, or size.
■ Provide a View-Master viewer, which has reels of television and movie characters appearing in 3-D. The pictures change with the flick of a lever.
■ PlaySkool's classic Mr. Potato Head has plastic bodies with holes for the insertion of brightly colored facial features and accessories.
■ Play-Doh by Kenner makes a variety of different play sets—a bakery, a fast-food store, a diner, and a "fun factory," for instance—that enable
the child to press, roll, and slice colored modeling dough into diverse forms.
■ Besides providing color-matching practice, Gazoobo Shape and Sort Key House by Chicco can be used as a puzzle, a shape sorter, or a series of keys and locks.
■ The Glo-Doodler Fun Slate by Color Forms allows a child to draw with a special pen and create pictures that glow.
ENCOURAGING THE DEVELOPMENT OF LOOKER SKILLS IN LISTENER AND MOVER PRESCHOOLERS
■ Allow your child to dial numbers on the telephone. As you call out a number, he can hold the receiver and either dial or push the corresponding button.
■ Provide a brush, a cup of water, and a paint-with-water book. Since the colors appear as soon as water touches the page, your youngster's finished picture will look great every time.
■ To encourage coloring, cutting, and pasting, provide a child-sized table and chair at which your preschooler can work.
■ Large, soft sidewalk chalk is perfect for drawing and scribbling on driveways or cement. Your child's creations will last until the next rainfall.
■ Duplo blocks by Lego are the big brothers of the classic Lego blocks. The pieces snap together and come in a variety of forms and sizes, without being so small that they frustrate children with an unsteady hand.
■ A chalkboard affixed to the wall at your child's height will encourage drawing, particularly when you leave him daily picture messages and encourage him to do the same for you.
■ Finger painting on large sheets of paper gets the eyes and hands working together, and allows your child to be as messy as he wants.
■ Little Tikes' Wee Waffle Town and other waffle-block sets encourage less-adept fingers to build and create. The sets come with people, cars, trees, doors, windows, and primary-colored snap-together squares.
■ Trainer scissors, with two sets of finger holes, enable an adult hand to guide a child's hand as it makes those first scissors cuts.
■ Invent lots of "pretend" scenarios to encourage visualization. Your child can be the gas station attendant, the postal worker, the waiter, or the shopkeeper, and you can be the customer. Few props are needed as you act out your parts together.
■ Place several small toys in a bag. Ask your child to slip his hand into the bag and identify the toys by touch. Once he guesses, he can remove the toy to see if he was right.
■ Jumbo-sized crayons, which are much easier to manipulate without breakage than their standard-sized counterparts, are available in most variety and toy stores.
■ To encourage drawing, provide "fun" writing implements like glitter pens, scented markers, neon-colored pencils, four-color pens, and character pencil toppers.
■ Make a game of scribbling on blank paper and then examining the results for hidden "pictures." Take turns pointing out what you see in each other's creations.
■ Make it a habit to pore over photo albums together, recounting the stories behind your child's favorite snapshots.
Because socialization is so important to a preschool-aged child. Lookers, Listeners, and Movers can all benefit from building those skills that facilitate conversation and social behavior. At the same time, encouraging a child's self-expression and reliance upon auditory memory helps him vent frustrations and prepare for the academic work that awaits him in kindergarten. Offering a Listener child a toy or activity that taxes his verbal skills is a simple matter, of course. You won't find the going as easy if he's a Looker or Mover; but, chances are he'll be most receptive to Listener games and playthings that also call his favored sense into play. Here are some skill-developing suggestions for all three types of learners.
ENHANCING A PRESCHOOLER'S EXISTING LISTENER SKILLS
■ Continue the practice of regularly scheduled story times. Encourage your child to relate part of the story or to fill in a blank as you tell it, as
in, "When Goldilocks sat in Baby Bear's chair,-." Pause long
enough for your child to explain what happens next.
■ Sesame Street Inter-Com Telephone Set by Ideal contains two plastic phones linked together by thirty feet of cord. This toy enables children to enjoy "long-distance" conversation.
■ Make it a practice to attend children's concerts and storytelling festivals. The combination of music and words is very stimulating to Listeners.
■ Listening Lotto, distributed by Lakeshore (through catalogue only), offers playing boards of pictures that correspond to sounds on a tape. If, for example, your child hears a baby's cry, he covers the picture of the baby on his card. The tape contains forty-eight sounds altogether.
■ The Fisher-Price Tape Recorder has excellent sound reproduction and easy-to-push buttons. Your child can listen to prerecorded tapes or make tapes of his own.
■ Most public libraries schedule story hours for preschoolers. This opportunity to hear a tale and sing a few songs—all in the company of other young children—will delight Listeners.
■ Several companies—Sony, Panansonic, and Sanyo among them— make an inexpensive headphone radio. This all-in-one listening device is perfect for preschoolers.
■ Just for fun, make it a practice to make up poems and rhymes as you travel in the car or work at a task together.
■ Familiarize your preschooler with the world of poetry by borrowing and reading aloud collections from your library's children's section.
■ Look through magazines together, and take turns making up stories about the people in the various pictures.
■ The Fisher-Price Wireless Microphone is a battery-operated toy that transmits your child's voice over FM radio.
■ Start a tradition of family sing-alongs, during which you can teach your child words to songs from your own school days.
■ Video Technology's Electronic Junior Jammer is a cassette player that plays ten nursery-rhyme melodies and comes with a "DJ's Manual."
■ Teach your child how to select and borrow records and cassettes from the library. Doing so will provide him with the largest and most varied selection of songs and stories possible.
■ PlaySkooTs Alphie II Computer Learning Toy "talks" to the child as it sharpens his prereading skills.
ENCOURAGING THE DEVELOPMENT OF LISTENER SKILLS IN LOOKER AND MOVER PRESCHOOLERS
■ Mattel's See 'N Say and PlaySkooTs Sounds Around have dials to spin and levers to press to start the toys "talking." Several varieties of each are available, covering everything from nursery rhymes to ABC's.
■ The game cards in Milton Bradley's Sesame Street Light and Learn contain printed instructions that you can read aloud to your child. As he selects a game card and then moves Big Bird around the battery-operated board in search of number, shape, or letter matches, you can name and count the pictures together.
■ Read picture books to your child about things that move—trains, planes, construction vehicles, and fire trucks. He'll love stories with built-in action.
■ Keep hats, badges, toy tools, and other dress-up accessories on hand, and encourage both conversation and the assumption of various roles as you and your child stage a bank robbery, perform a highway repair, attend a birthday party, or go on a big-game hunt.
■ What's Wrong?, distributed by Lakeshore (through catalogue only), is a set of picture cards with such obvious mistakes as a telephone with a banana for a receiver, or a man bathing in his clothes. As your preschooler points out what's funny about each picture, you can ask him to describe or explain what he sees.
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How to Maximize Your Child's Learning Ability
■ Your child will get practice recognizing colors, shapes, and numbers with Western Publishing's Golden Big Bird Beep Book (Racine, WI, 1989). Questions are asked, such as, "Can you find the yellow flower?" or "How many carrots are there?" The child touches an electronic wand to his chosen response and waits for an answering beep.
■ When your preschooler accompanies you on an errand, bend the rules and, when appropriate, allow him to explore, touch, and taste the things you encounter en route. The more involved he is in the outing, the more likely he'll be to respond to your questions and conversation with dialogue of his own.
■ Use a table top as a puppet theater, and encourage your child to speak for the characters in the shows you create together.
■ Teddy Ruxpin by Worlds of Wonder is an easy-to-operate cassetteplaying stuffed bear with a moving mouth and eyes. Each of the story cassettes is accompanied by a colorful picture book.
■ Look for books that have accompanying animals or other props that your child can hold or use to act out the story. Paddington Bear and The Velveteen Rabbit, both distributed by Troll Learn & Play, are examples of book-and-animal sets.
■ Treat your child to a new vocabulary word each day. You can start by presenting, defining, and acting out the day's word, and then attach a related picture to the refrigerator or your child's lunch bag. Be sure to use the word in conversation as many times as possible.
■ Try embellishing nursery rhymes with movement. As you chant "Jack and Jill," for example, you can clutch a pretend bucket, skip about, and then tumble down. During "Little Miss Muffet," you can encourage your child to sit, use an imaginary bowl and spoon, and then leap up in fright.
■ Milton Bradley's Candyland and Chutes and Ladders are classic beginner board games that involve counting and color matching, as well as use of the hands and the imagination. As you play these games with your preschooler, be sure to count aloud and discuss where the playing pieces are headed.
■ Sit with your child during a broadcast of Sesame Street. The fast-moving skits are great fodder for laughter, singing, conversation, and number and letter practice.
■ Join your child in pretend play with a farm, an airport, or a marina play set. Encourage him to make up a story and provide the voice of one or two of its characters as you set up the scenery and play with the various pieces.