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“One… two… three…” you say as you count your baby’s toys for them. Even though your baby can’t solve equations, let alone speak, they are building early math and language skills with each number they hear.
And you don’t need to stop at numbers — there are many early math concepts that you can introduce to your young child, simply through language, play and reading books.
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To celebrate Pi Day, an annual celebration of the mathematical sign pi, here are some activity ideas to help introduce early math concepts to your child:
Through simple language and play, young children will start to learn essential early math and STEM skills. And remember, especially for babies and toddlers, just hearing these words early and often helps plant the seed for your future mathematician.
As a parent, you want to ensure that your child is being compassionate and empathetic towards the people around them. However, according to research, children in preschool and kindergarten are still developing the cognitive skills to understand empathy.
In order for children to grasp the concept of “empathy”, they must first be able to recognize their own emotions. Understanding what we are feeling and why will give children the tools they need to talk about deeper concepts of feeling and emotion as they grow.
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While the idea of “history” may be outside the understanding of a very young child, we can still celebrate Women’s History Month with them by reading books together that celebrate the potential and achievements of girls and women.
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Young children are constantly learning about the world and what is possible for them. Themed history months offer a wonderful opportunity to take stock of your home or classroom library and ask yourself: am I presenting a rich view of the world? Am I offering children ideas and possibilities? Am I fostering a strong sense of self, and an openness towards difference? Books are windows and mirrors, they can reflect children’s own lives, and they can offer glimpses into the lives of others. Women’s History Month presents us with a wonderful opportunity to explore the infinite paths a child might choose to pursue, regardless of gender.
When you select a new book to read with your child, choose something you think you will also enjoy. Your enthusiasm will be catching! Look for books with features that appeal to young children’s imaginations—not too many words on each page, rhythmic or rhyming text and illustrations that invite wonder. The books below are chosen for their appealing texts, rich illustrations and simple—but not simplistic—concepts. While the titles are sorted by age, all the books for the youngest readers will work with preschool-aged children also, and some, (like I Am Enough,) are books you might want to read even without a small child at your side! A high-quality picture-book with beautiful illustrations works for every age, (including adults!) because images are texts that foster meaning-making.
Whether your child is a toddler, in pre-K or on their way to kindergarten, here are some great book recommendations from Anne-Marie Akin, our Educare Chicago librarian to read during this month and beyond:
Books recommended for infants:
Books recommended for toddlers:
Books recommended for children in pre-K or kindergarten:
The earlier that we can start to help our children understand their emotions, the better the outcome in raising kind, empathetic children. Brain scientists, educators, economists and public health experts all agree that building a good foundation for healthy relationships begins at birth. The earlier that your child can adapt and develop key social-emotional skills—like attentiveness, persistence and impulse control—the sooner they can begin engaging in healthy social interactions with peers.
Young children aren’t necessarily born with the skills to engage in healthy relationships; they are born with the potential to develop them. With young children, it’s important that parents teach empathy by being the example. Show empathy daily to your children, family, and others in your community during your day. When empathy is shown by the parent, talk that through with your child by being attentive to their feelings. Use language like “I know that was hard for you, you seemed sad but you’re safe and loved.” This language will help children to be aware of their own emotions and feelings, in turn helping them be empathic to others.
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You as a parent play an important role along with your child’s teachers in laying a strong foundation for social-emotional skills that will help your child to form healthy relationships. It is important for the adults in your child’s life to model positive behaviors and set clear rules.
Here are 2 activities that you can do at home with your little one to help teach them about empathy:
The Kindness Tree is a symbolic way to record kind and helpful actions. Family members place leaves or notes on the tree to represent kind and helpful acts. Parents can notice these acts by saying, “You __(describe the action)__ so __(describe how it impacted others)__. That was helpful/kind!” For example, “Shubert helped Sophie get dressed so we would be on time for our library playdate. That was helpful!”
The Kindness Tree can also grow with families who have children of mixed ages. Initially, young children simply put a leaf on the tree to represent kind and helpful acts. As children grow and learn to write, the ritual evolves to include writing the kind acts down on leaves or sticky notes. Start your own Kindness Tree with this template.
Families with older children can simply use a Kindness Notebook to record kind acts and read them aloud daily or weekly.
The We Care Center provides a way for family members to express caring and empathy for others. Fill your We Care Center with supplies like minor first aid items (Band-Aids, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, scented lotion), card-making supplies (preprinted cards, paper, crayons, sentence starters), and a tiny stuffed animal for cuddling.
When a friend or family member is ill, hurt, or having a hard time, your family can go to the We Care Basket to find a way to show that person they care. At first, parents might need to suggest how and when to use the We Care Center, but your children will quickly understand the intent. In this way, the We Care Center encourages the development of empathy by providing a means for children to offer caring and thoughtfulness to others every day.
This content was cross-promoted on our partner’s website, Big Heart World. Check out Big Heart World for additional social-emotional resources for parents and educators.
At Start Early, we are committed to cultivating an environment built on the values of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. The opening remarks were provided by Chandra Ewell, DEIB team lead.
February is Black History Month, a time to celebrate the achievements, culture and legacy of Black Americans who have made contributions and played a critical role in shaping our country. We take the month of February to center Black voices and honor Black stories as we lift up the past, recognize the present and share hopes for the future.
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It’s never too early to start sharing positive reflections by sharing diverse stories with your children. It is important for children not only to see themselves, but others represented in the books we read to them. Reading books with your little one is a fun and easy way to help introduce them to new cultures, experiences and events in history.
Literature transforms the human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation.
"Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass Doors" by Rudine Sims Bishop
Whether your child is a toddler, in pre-K or on their way to kindergarten, here are some great book recommendations from Anne-Marie Akin, our Educare Chicago librarian to read during this month and beyond:
Books recommended for infants:
Books recommended for toddlers:
Books recommended for children in pre-K or kindergarten:
Home visiting is about finding strengths in human connection, building trusting relationships – and all the messy stuff in between.
After a remarkable three decades of shaping the home visiting landscape, Quen Zorrah – Lead Facilitator and Co-Developer of NEAR@Home – is retiring.
Start Early Washington shares our collective love, respect and appreciation for Quen Zorrah and her lifetime of work supporting human connection and relationship building between children and their caregivers. Her expertise in supporting families has shaped how programs work with families to promote strong relationships.
Prior to her time with Start Early Washington, Quen was a public health nurse and one of the first nurses in the nation to provide home visiting services to families through Nurse-Family Partnership. Her work has integrated infant mental health and Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACEs, and Resilience (NEAR) science into home visiting through teaching, coaching and reflective supervision. As the Lead Facilitator and Co-Developer of NEAR@Home, Quen has developed trauma-informed practices for building resilience and uniquely positions home visitors to safely and effectively talk with families during a critical period of development – the earliest years of a child’s life.
“I was fortunate enough to work with Quen for 20 years, as a teacher, supervisor, consultant, co-author and an esteemed colleague. I’ve never known anyone who got what reflective listening was, or who was freer of professional pretense, than Quen. She is so unpretentious that it would be easy to underestimate her real genius for this work.” — Dr. Marian Birch, DMH, Psychologist
Like many staff on Start Early Washington’s home visiting team, Quen’s firsthand experiences as a mother led her to pursue a lifelong career devoted to children and their families.
At the age of 19, Quen distinctly remembers the first day she met a home visitor. “My child was only two days old when a woman from King County Public Health knocked on my door. She was so humble and respectful, but as persistent as a boot wedged in my doorway! Somehow, she knew how much I needed to hear words of compassion.” Seemingly, Quen’s home visitor intuitively knew that Quen was in need of positive reinforcement and support as a young, first-time parent.
Quen admired the compassion and hopefulness home visitors brought to her life, but she was still apprehensive at the thought of home visiting with her second child. “I wasn’t as put together and I was worried about what they would think of me, my mess and my reality.” Unsurprisingly, her home visitors lauded her efforts and bolstered her confidence, helping her tackle the many challenges of parenting. With each visit, Quen’s self-talk started to shift substantially, “College is achievable!” “My voice matters!” “I can do this!”
Quen’s home visitors changed the course of her life. “Not only my life but my kids’ lives as well. We take for granted the power of finding strengths and being human with each other.” After witnessing the power of home visiting support, Quen was determined to make a difference to others just as her home visitors did for her; she was determined to be a catalyst for change.
Quen completed her GED and carried her remarkable determination and fortitude as a young parent with her to nursing school at Seattle Central Community College. Upon graduation, Quen worked as a nurse for renowned medical centers and rural based community hospitals in remote mountain towns, before joining Nurse-Family Partnership, where she flourished for the next 20 years, supporting families with young children, pregnant women, grandparents, foster parents and fathers as primary caregivers.
Quen’s passion and perseverance to provide comfort, compassion and support led her to the creation of the highly successful, nationally acclaimed NEAR@Home toolkit, a tool providing home visitors with information and skills to talk about trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) during home visits, while building trust and hope.
“Quen reminds me that I do not always have to fix things; my presence alone can bring value to any given situation.” — Amy Houser, Consultant
Home visitors often face their own challenges with trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). These lived experiences bring motivation and strengths to the field of home visiting, but they also add another level of strain. The exposure to challenges and trauma of others can contribute to burnout and poor mental and physical well-being. Quen notes gardening as her antidote to secondary traumatic stress or “compassion fatigue” inherent to those supporting families directly.
Quen appreciates the balance that gardening brings to the intensity of her work. Influenced by her great-grandmother, Quen cherishes time outside to slowly walk around her garden and admire each of her plants. “Gardening is a wonderful balance to all seriousness. It’s creative and offers exercise and most importantly, if I mess something up in my garden, I just compost it. But of course, it’s not that simple with humans. With plants, the worst that will happen is a compost pile.”
“Quen’s thoughtfulness, reflectiveness, kind, calm and peaceful way of being, is something I strive to incorporate into my work and personal life.” — Amanda Costello, Director of National Home Visiting, Start Early
Home visiting stories of success and triumph were also a grounding element for Quen. She recalled all the knowledge accumulated over the years: “That’s what kept me going for so long. When working long hours or flustered with bureaucracy, budgets and funding, I’d think about the stories we accumulated. My hope for home visitors is that they will share stories for inspiration and as a guide to move past challenges together.”
“Quen has shown me how to focus on people and building relationships before focusing on the work.” — Valisa Smith, Executive Director, Start Early Washington
While Quen may no longer be part of the thick of home visiting life, her profound impact has left a lasting legacy, disrupting the way we interact with each other by offering tools that will transform how we build and foster relationships for generations to come.
I’m hoping some of our systems are at a pivot point and we reach a balance where we can value community voice, recognizing that parents know exactly what they need, as much as we value data.
— Quen Zorrah
Start Early Washington is proud to be part of Quen Zorrah’s story. Her ability to reach parents and children at an intrinsic human level is immeasurable. We are honored to continue to share NEAR@Home with the world – a toolkit designed to allow users to rediscover hope and strive toward healing, fostering strong and healthy relationships.
We thank Quen for her incredible contribution to the field, honor her on all she has accomplished in her professional and personal life, and congratulate her on retirement and her future endeavors.
Raising a child is one of life’s most pivotal roles. Parents often turn to each other for support during the critical stages of their child’s development, but not all parents have access to the resources they need.
For Alex, home visiting helped bridge the missing pieces of her Native heritage and supported her in reclaiming family traditions stripped from her through her great-grandfather’s U.S. Native boarding school experience.
Alex received home visiting services for the first time when she was pregnant with her oldest son, Mateo. But growing up, home visiting was already a part of her life as her mother was a tribal home visitor and a passionate advocate for early learning. Inspired by her mother, Alex felt she was destined to work in early learning, yet it wasn’t until motherhood that she intimately understood the precious rewards of home visiting support.
“Learning about the growth and development of my baby from my home visitor was fascinating! And that feeling like I’m succeeding as a first-time parent took me a long way.” Alex experienced a substantial shift in knowledge and confidence through her relationship with a home visitor; she was determined to support families in a similar way.
The concept of home visiting is not new to Native families; Alex shared that home visiting is one of the most traditional things a Native family can do. Its critical process passes down knowledge and skills to preserve generational culture and heritage. In addition, home visiting creates a strong sense of community where the intrinsic needs of a child – during a foundational time in life – are addressed through trusted partnerships and shared goals.
Through home visiting, Alex established a special connection with local tribes as well as her own. Alex is an enrolled member of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska but lives and works in Washington state. Connecting with other members of the Haida Tribe and creating a sense of community was not easy so far away from Alaska. However, her home visitor was able to help connect her to local resources and inspire her to the place where she is now — celebrating her cultural heritage and reclaiming family traditions lost through her great-grandfather’s boarding school experience.
Native children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in government operated boarding schools between 1869 and the 1960s. The schools used “systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies,” to force white assimilation. They changed children’s names, cut long hair, and prohibited any use of Native languages and cultural practices — or else they faced brutal punishment. – “All the hurt and the rage: Elders recall trauma of Native boarding schools.”
Alex’s great-grandfather had 17 siblings. He was displaced from his family when he was taken to a boarding school – never to be reunited. As a result, her family lost a great deal of their cultural heritage and traditions; Alex knows very little about her native language, songs, dances, or traditional medicines because her great-grandfather was deprived of his cultural identity.
Instead of a rich sense of cultural identity, the historical trauma of Alex’s great-grandfather’s experiences were passed down through her aunts, uncles and mother. For Alex, home visiting support provided a way to heal from this generational pain by offering resources to traditional activities and connection to a shared community. Home visiting helped Alex find a new sense of hope and resiliency. In realizing that she was experiencing the collective intergenerational trauma of losing language, culture and identity, Alex now has a path forward for her family and tools to support other families experiencing generational trauma.
Alex’s great-grandfather, George Nix, was Alaska’s first professional football player (1926)
Near@Home is a great resource to help home visitors have difficult conversations, particularly when reflecting on times of trauma. When home visitors are equipped with tools to tackle difficult conversations, they can safely, respectfully and effectively discuss ACES (adverse childhood experiences), trauma, and other hard topics with parents by focusing on hope, respect and resilience.
Communities of practice are another support Start Early Washington facilitates for home visiting professionals. Our community of practice, “Supporting Native Families,” aims to provide opportunities for professionals to understand tribal communities better and walk away with strategies and ideas to better serve Native families in Washington.
Washington state is home to 29 federally recognized tribes. Each tribal nation is uniquely different, including the size of the reservation, number of citizens and financial resources. Similarly, they each have unique cultural identifiers and shared experiences.
With this in mind, there’s a lot for home visitors to learn when engaging with Native families. Families feel more connected and appreciate when home visitors make the time to understand family culture and dynamics.
“I think all home visitors want to achieve that goal — to understand each member of the family. But when families know that someone wants to learn about their culture and identity, when someone takes an interest in what’s important to the family and genuinely supports the caregiver and child — that’s empowering.” – Alex
Visit our page to learn more about home visiting work in Washington and supports provided by Start Early Washington’s home visiting team.
Playing pretend with your child might seem silly at times, but it’s actually pretty serious business when it comes to learning. Whether you’re new to playing dress up or having a pretend concert in your kitchen, or you are looking for more ways to spark your child’s imagination, we have tips for you!
We asked our Start Early experts for advice for parents and caregivers on the best ways to support your child’s learning and development through imaginative play, and they delivered.
Check out what Melissa Spivey, Teacher Assistant at Educare Chicago, a program of Start Early shared when it comes to making imaginative play a fun part of your everyday routine.
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What is Imaginative Play?
Imaginative play is playing pretend. Imaginative play is important for young children, as it not only builds character, but also helps adults understand children’s perspective and how they view and take in the world around them. When caregivers understand a child’s perspective, caregivers can be a better resources for them.
Why is Imaginative Play Important?
Many times, adults thinks that imaginative play is just for the children, when in fact it is for everyone. During imaginative play, you get to be anyone, anything, be any place and experience life outside of reality. During imaginative play you get to be free.
Through imaginative play children learn critical thinking skills, how to follow simple directions, build expressive and receptive language, increase social skills and learn how manage their emotions.
While children can handle exploring imaginative play alone with their thoughts and experiences, caregivers can play a key role in helping scaffold a child’s development. For example, imaginative play might begin with you and your child and just a baby doll. The caregiver plays the role in adding words or actions to the play such as do you think your baby is hungry? That will prompt the child to feed the baby. Now we have a baby and food. Next, the caregiver might say, the baby made a mess with the food, what do you think we should do? This question prompts the child to think whether to clean the baby by washing the baby or just changing the baby’s clothes. Another example, the caregiver can say, “I think I smell something, could it be your baby?” This will prompt the child to smell the baby and change. Now we, have a baby, food and a diaper.
How to Incorporate Imaginative Play at Home?
Incorporating imaginative play into your routine at home helps promote the parent-child relationship. Since bath time is already a routine for children, caregivers can add imaginative play to bath time. Adding imaginative play to bath time can be done by simply adding items such as a baby doll, small cars or cups from the kitchen. Washing the baby can help children identify different body parts and understand the difference between clean and dirty, while adding vocabulary words such as wash, soap, towel, water, clean, dirty. The same as washing the cars, children get a sense of how cars are changing from dirty to clean. For the cups, children can experience filling and dumping the water in and out of the cup. Adding vocabulary words such as filling, dumping, full, and empty. Remember imaginative play can be planned or spontaneous.
When it comes to celebrating Halloween, children have the opportunity to live out their imaginative play fantasy by dressing up and becoming their favorite tv character. When picking costumes this holiday season, caregivers should become knowledge of the character that their children pick so that they can ask questions to keep the playing and learning going.
If you are going treat or treat, remember before leaving the house to give your child rules that they must follow while out in the public so that they can play safely. Giving your child the rules before leaving shows you are trusting them to be responsible. For example, caregivers can use character as the example on how following rules is important. For example, “I am expecting you to be a responsible superhero.” Or when the child is doing something outside of the rules, caregivers could say, “I wonder what will Spiderman do if his mother saw him doing that?
If the weather is too hot/cold/rainy for Trick or Treating this Halloween, you can still incorporate dressing up and imaginative play in other ways to still enjoy Halloween:
Home visiting supports have meaningful impacts on the lives of children and families. Start Early Washington supports new and existing home visiting programs with coaching, consultation, training and professional learning to ensure the highest quality home visiting services for families.
Our staff includes professionals whose expertise is enriched by lived experiences and practical knowledge. As one of our proudest achievements, Start Early Washington staff hold over 165 years of combined home visiting experience!
This blog post introduces our senior home visiting manager, Cassie Morley, who draws from nearly three decades of home visiting experience to oversee a talented team that supports 63 home visiting programs statewide.
Cassie swinging with her 5-month-old granddaughter, Loveday (2021)
Cassie discovered her passion for home visiting as a college student preparing for a theater production of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” As part of the pre-production process, the director organized a workshop with the renowned childbirth educator and author Penny Simkin to help students perform their roles authentically. The director’s Saturday workshop might otherwise have been a footnote in Cassie’s career, but instead, it sparked inspiration and changed her life’s course. Cassie was captivated to learn about the multifaceted roles doulas and midwives play and how meaningful it felt to support the birthing process during such a transformative time in people’s lives.
Cassie pursued a career in midwifery as soon as she graduated college.
After completing her training as a midwife and practicing as a doula, Cassie furthered her passion for working with families as a home visitor with Parents as Teachers, and spending many years as a family resources coordinator, supporting the parents of infants and toddlers with disabilities and developmental delays.
Cassie’s career continued to flourish as a Parents as Teacher home visitor working with tribal families across the South Sound region. Her love for partnering with tribal families deepened her insight into the essential roles that language, culture and community norms play in early childhood development. Connecting with families in this capacity was a life-changing experience and led to many years of collaboration and support for tribal nations in Washington state.
Cassie noted how the support from a home visitor, trusting relationships, and access to resources are instrumental for new parents in making those first few years more manageable. “People with new babies are busy trying to survive and reinvent themselves; it can be hard to advocate for yourself. The demands of being a parent are constantly changing, personal growth is hard work and having someone there to support you along the way is critical.” As a single parent raising a child diagnosed with epilepsy and intellectual disabilities, Cassie experienced firsthand how incredibly challenging and complex it can be to care for a young child.
Cassie holding her 2-month-old daughter, Ash (2001)
While Cassie’s firsthand experiences as a parent and home visitor fueled her passion for removing barriers for parents, years of evidence of the impact of home visiting solidified her belief in its role in positively influencing lifelong outcomes for children and their families.
“Change is a constant in home visiting work. Infants and toddlers grow and change rapidly; parents have to stretch and grow to support their ever-changing children. Home visitors are continually learning new skills, making adjustments and fine-tuning their support of families. In turn, home visiting supervisors are continuously striving to change and improve the quality of support provided to the families they serve.”
Cassie’s accomplished career supporting families includes doula, home visitor, home visiting program supervisor, Parents as Teachers state lead — and her current role at the systems-level, where she influences meaningful outcomes for children and their families across Washington state.
Because of these experiences, she has a unique ability to understand the implications and effects of program and policy change, allowing her to advocate for children and families alongside partners at multiple levels.
Visit our main page to learn more about Washington’s home visiting team.
Advances in brain research show that children are born learning, and that their first three years of life in particular are important indicators for the success they can have later in school and in life. Early experiences that are language-rich and nurturing promote healthy brain development. So finding a high-quality early learning setting is essential for parents who work and seek child care.
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Once you’ve found a quality setting—from a center-based program to home child care to a relative’s house—here’s some advice from our expert Teresa Bennett a family support specialist at Educare Chicago, a program of Start Early, on how you can prepare your child for their first day of day care.
Support Start Early’s back-to-school efforts and give a gift that will ensure that teachers have the classroom resources to help children thrive.
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