Articles

Co-authored with Joye Newman in “Exchange: The Early Childhood Leaders’ Magazine Since 1978,” Vol. 34, Issue 1, No. 203, January/February

It’s 50 degrees and raining outside. The playground is all mud and puddles. The morning has just begun, and the preschoolers are full of energy. You, like most early childhood educators, want to give your young students a leg up and a head start in reading and other academic endeavors. So, how do you use this time? Do you:

1. Set up your four-year-olds at the computers to play the latest ‘educational’ video games?
2. Conduct a longer-than-usual Circle Time?
3. Bring out the flashcards and try to entice the kids to call out quick answers?
4. Take your children outside to splash in the puddles?

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Published in S.I. Focus, Summer issue

Imagine coming to one of my “Getting Kids in Sync” presentations. You are here to learn new strategies for supporting children with SPD. At the door, you receive a warm welcome, a hefty handout, and two paper plates.

Get a cup of coffee and snack, but please, do not put food on the plates. We’ll use them in many different ways — just not for bagels and berries!

During our synergetic day, one activity is drawing on a paper plate.

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Published August 8, on The Visionhelp Blog: Retrain the Visual Brain

Vision is acknowledged to be our most important sense for learning, so it would be logical to think that optometric vision therapy has a significant role to play in the field. We know that to be the case from research and clinical practice, but what do other knowledgeable and informed professionals have to say? One of the best-selling books about children’s development and learning in recent years has been Carol Kranowitz’s The Out of Sync Child. Since the book was published, we suggested to parents that they take a close look at it. It paints a very positive and well-balanced look at Optometry and Vision Therapy from the view of an authority in education and human development.

Now there is another source for parents to consult that takes the Out-of-Sync Child concept to a new level. Browsing the shelves of the Special Needs section at Barnes & Noble, I came across Growing an In-Sync Child …

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Published in Sensations, Volume 3, Issue 2, September, a newsletter for the benefactors and friends of The KID Foundation (now STAR Institute for Sensory Processing Disorder)

 
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and kids gotta climb, jump, and balance. While dangling from banisters, scooting under turnstiles, teetering on curbs, and jumping into puddles may dismay grown-ups, children persist with good reason.

How do kids learn to think and relate to the world around them? By scanning their surroundings; touching wooden, metal, rubber, or concrete surfaces; grasping and releasing handholds; changing body positions; maintaining equilibrium; and experimenting with different movement patterns. Furthermore, they are having fun, and “fun,” Dr. Ayres wrote, “is the child’s word for sensory integration.”

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Posted on Child.com, September

A mother tells me how excited she is about her toddler’s “educational” computer game. Just click the mouse and presto – one, two, three oranges bound into a bucket. Click again, and they reappear, one, two, three. Isn’t that a fabulous way to learn counting? What is my opinion, as a preschool teacher?

“How about giving him a bucket and three oranges?” I ask. “Then he can touch and hold them, smell them, toss them, and enjoy a real experience.”

“That seems so old-fashioned!” she says.

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