The Baby’s Room

Expecting moms, is your baby’s room ready?

One of the greatest support systems for your child’s early education is an environment that is conducive to learning. The ideal baby’s room that fosters learning is one that is print-rich. The print-rich concept is simply print on the walls that one can learn from. Studies have shown that print-rich classrooms serve as teaching tools for students’ wandering eyes. For example, a teacher stands before a class introducing one of the parts of speech and a student who happens to be bored with the verbal introduction diverts his attention elsewhere – he is not getting the lesson. However, the teacher has the eight parts of speech on the wall in colorful posterboard which the student’s eyes fall on. The student reads them and acquires the lesson afterall. This same concept can be used in the baby’s room.

When I was a younger mom with two children, two years apart, I decorated their bedroom using the Pooh Bear theme. But the highlight of their room was the alphabet in primary colors (red, yellow and blue) lining the perimeter of the room, high up, near the ceiling. And I also included words that were familiar to them in large, colorful print (they were about 2 and 4 at the time and they learned to read quickly).

So treat your little one to a headstart on education by decorating the baby’s room appropriately. You can begin by posting colorful letters of the alphabet around the room (a different color for every letter or create it in a pattern). Also, point these out to your baby identifying each one and the sounds they make. You could also post short vowel, single syllable words like cat, dog, mop, hop and pictures along with them.

Be a teacher at home and the formal classroom will not be foreign to your little one.

Antoinette Clinton, M.Ed.

Mom as Teacher

Do you know that moms are the best educators for their young children in preparation for the school system? Education level (to a certain degree) is irrelevant. Upon the knowledge of conception, that imperative and intimate relationship between mother and child is established and serves as the catalyst for that child’s academic success.

Research tells us that the unborn child has the ability to hear all that is around the mother and experiences everything that the mother experiences. Furthermore, the underdeveloped brain of the unborn child requires positive interaction for proper development. When the brain of an individual undergoes too frequent negative circumstances, that individual withdraws from society and builds a defense mechanism. Moreover, research has discovered that the simplest things aid in proper brain development such as talking and reading to your unborn infant. Singing songs are encouraged and playing music. Each time this young individual is introduced to something new, new neurons in the brain are developed for a well, functioning brain and cognition.

It is also imperative to continue such activities well after birth to ensure academic success in school. Research supports the idea that simply reading to a child aids in language acquisition because of the use of facial expressions and voice inflections during story telling. It is also good to incorporate writing and drawing at an early age (Mommy can give her two to three year old baby a crayon and a sheet of paper and teach her baby how to draw a circle as well as other shapes, for example).

So how does all of this promote future academic success for the child? First and foremost it teaches baby quiet and learning time – how it is necessary to sit down on occasion. Second, it serves as a kind of warm-up for what baby can expect later on, in the classroom – instruction provided by a classroom teacher will not be foreign to the child when it has been received at home. Third, the child will be more apt to learning to read at a much faster rate. If families do not promote literacy, our children will continue to fail.

So, what can you do for your unborn child? You can: hold conversations with your baby, read stories, sing, play music and dance around the room. What can you do for your baby after birth? You can continue to hold conversations, read stories, sing, play music, dance and incorporate showing baby how to draw various shapes and write the letters of the alphabet. As your child learns the letters of the alphabet, begin to teach the sounds that each letter makes.

Antoinette Clinton, M.Ed.

Advanced Literacy Instruction

Hello world!

Welcome to ClassroomMom, a newly established blog directed primarily toward young moms who are interested in helping their child to gain a headstart in education.