Encouraging Children's Language Development

Parents and carers can use a range of strategies to encourage children's language development. We thought of the following:

Talking to the child - even before a child can speak it is important for the adults and children around him to talk to him, for instance, by explaining what you are doing together ('It's time for Adam's lunch, isn't it?'), or what is happening ('It's lovely and sunny out here', 'Mummy will be here soon'). Remember to leave pauses so the child has chance to respond.

Using facial expression to convey meaning - children may not understand the words but they will usually understand the meaning if clear expression is used. For instance, if a child picks up a piece of soil in the garden and is about to eat it you might take it off him saying 'yuck' or 'nasty'. He may not know what 'yuck' or 'nasty' mean. If, at the same time, you also scrunch up your face and stick out your tongue to indicate a horrible taste, the child will understand your meaning quite clearly. Most adults do this quite naturally when speaking to young children.

Encouraging Children's Language Development

Reading and story-telling.

Social interaction. Including the child in experiences that give him the opportunity to hear conversations and meet new people.

Language and Other Areas of Development

The child's ability to communicate and use language effectively is of key importance to many other areas of their development.

Language has particularly close links with intellectual development and is the main tool by which we are able to develop our thought processes. For example, we use words to help us store and recall memories and other information.

Think about the word 'sunshine' - what memories and thoughts does this bring up for you?

Everyone's memories and thoughts will be a little bit different. When we asked a group of students this question, their answers included:

warmth light my holiday in Cyprus summer a t-shirt I have with a sun motif flowers.

This is a good example of the way in which words act as tools to help us organise and recall our thoughts and memories.

We also tend to use words mentally to direct and plan our actions, for example: "I'll drop these off at the library first and then call into the supermarket."

It follows that children whose communication skills are impaired in some way, or who have limited vocabularies, may also find it more difficult to develop reasoning skills and acquire new concepts.

Communication skills are essential if children are to express themselves clearly and understand others. It follows that there are close links between language and communication skills and the development of social skills. Poor communicators tend to find social situations difficult, and also find it more difficult to build relationships with other people.

Becoming a Communicator

Effective use of language involves far more than simply learning words - the child also needs to learn a whole range of skills around speech and communication, such as understanding how a conversation works. These are known as pragmatic skills.

Pragmatic skills begin to develop in the early weeks of life, with tiny babies 'turn taking', initiating communicative interchanges, and 'talking' non-verbally to their carers.

Pragmatic skills include:

knowing that you have to answer when a question has been asked; being able to participate in a conversation by taking it in turns with the other speaker; the ability to notice and respond to the non-verbal aspects of language; awareness that you have to introduce a topic of conversation in order for the listener to fully understand; knowing which words or what sort of sentence-type to use when initiating a conversation or responding to something someone has said; the ability to maintain a topic; the ability to maintain appropriate eye-contact (not too much staring, and not too much looking away) during a conversation; the ability to distinguish how to talk and behave towards different people and in different situations.

Many everyday activities can be used to encourage children's language development, for example during mealtimes or group work. Parents and carers should look for opportunities to help children develop their language. This would include opportunities to:

use questions listen learn new vocabulary speak.
Handling Mistakes

Young children make many mistakes in their speech. They often use grammar incorrectly and they may mispronounce words because they have difficulty in making the correct sounds. They substitute the difficult sound for an easier one, for instance 'th' for 's', as in 'yeth' for 'yes'. Such difficulties usually resolve themselves by 5 or 6 years of age.

It is very important to tackle such errors in a positive way if you are to boost the child's confidence. Avoid direct correction of errors. Show the child that you have understood what he is trying to tell you and also teach him how to say the word correctly. For example:

Child: 'mook.'

It is better to respond with 'Yes! Book, book.' than 'No, not mook, book.'

With older children too, it often helps to echo back mistakes correctly. They get the message but they do not feel criticised. This can be the key to good communication between the two of you.

Child: 'I have to do vis homework for tomorrow.'

Adult: 'You have to do this for tomorrow? OK.'

Some children are so keen to get the words out, or have so much to say, that they stumble over their words. Parents may worry that the child is beginning to develop a stutter but this is just a temporary stage that many children go through. It is not a true stutter. It is only likely to become a problem if parents or carers make a fuss and try to correct the child's speech. The child then becomes self-conscious and a real stutter may develop, at which stage the help of a speech therapist may be required.

Delayed Language Development

Children may be slow in learning to talk for several reasons, including:

genetics - it may be that the child's parents were late talkers too. he or she may have been concentrating on other aspects of development, such as learning to walk. not enough individual attention from adults - children learn to talk from adults rather than children. This can be a problem in large families or where there are twins or young children who are very close in age. lack of encouragement. deafness - A child cannot learn to speak if he or she cannot hear the words spoken by other people. They also needs to able to hear themselves so that they can improve their own attempts at words. Interestingly, during the first year, profoundly deaf babies often babble at the same time as other babies, but they stop after a few months. This may be because they cannot hear themselves and so can't reinforce their babbling.

It is extremely important to recognise deafness in children at an early age, as the earlier the child receives treatment the better the outcome. Parents and carers are ideally placed to notice that something is wrong with a child's hearing. Such problems are also often picked up at the routine developmental checks carried out by health visitors during the first year or so.

Encouraging Children's Language Development
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Linda Pollitt, Director of Studies, Learning Curve

http://www.learningcurve-uk.com

To try a free short child psychology course visit:

[http://www.onthecurve.co.uk]

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Coloring Therapy - How a Coloring Book and Crayons Can Help Dissolve Stress

Remember when you were a child, lying on your tummy on the floor, coloring book open, crayon in hand with the other crayons spilling out of the box? Can you remember the sense of peace and enjoyment you felt while you were coloring? Why not consider revisiting this favorite childhood pastime to help during those times when you find yourself feeling on edge.

Coloring is one of the best forms of meditation

For many of us, when we think of coloring, we connect to the innocence of childhood and a time when we weren't burdened by responsibility and expectation. Picking up a crayon once again can help us reconnect to a sense of simplicity we have temporarily lost.

Coloring Therapy - How a Coloring Book and Crayons Can Help Dissolve Stress

You could think of coloring as letting your inner child come out and have a fun time, or you could think of this activity as a form of meditation. Choosing colors and the gentle, repetitive motion of your hand as you bring color to paper helps quiet your mind--bringing your usual rapid-fire thoughts down to a much slower pace.

Now that you're an adult, there are no limits

Not only can you now give yourself permission to color outside the lines, you can keep your coloring as simple, or get as sophisticated, as you want.

For less than you can buy a jumbo coloring book and a box of Crayola crayons. There is nothing like the smell of new crayons and getting reacquainted with your favorite color as well as opening a fresh coloring book and looking through all the possibilities before choosing your first page to color.

(You can also search the Web for the many sites which offer free, printer-friendly coloring pages.)

You may find that you have outgrown crayons and want to color using something with a different texture and a different feel. Pencil crayons and felt pens are an affordable alternative. But you may want to spend a bit of extra money and try colored pencils, Conte Crayons, oil pastels, pastels or watercolor pencils.

These days, many coloring books are used to market and promote children's movies or TV cartoon characters. Finding books containing basic illustrations of flowers, food, animals, etc are a bit more difficult, but not impossible. Themed coloring books are often best sellers.

Also, if you feel the need to bring some intellectual stimulation to your coloring time, there are several coloring books containing illustrations of the anatomy. It is said, one of the most effective ways medical students learn about the intricacies of the human body is by coloring detailed illustrations of various body parts.

Want to get a little risqué? There are also adult-themed coloring books as well.

To make coloring a true meditative and spiritual experience seek out a pre-made mandala design or create your own to color. Mandalas are complex, symmetrical geometric designs which draw the eye toward the center. Many religions use mandalas as a means of connecting the self to a higher power. Within Buddhism, mandalas are created as sacred places which, by their very presence, remind a viewer of the vastness of sanctity in the universe and its potential with in his or her own life. Creating a mandala is said to be a very powerful and sacred experience.

Think of coloring as a creative quick-fix

We all love to create. However, for some of us, painting and/or drawing is not our forte. And for those who do enjoy painting and/or drawing, sometimes it's difficult to find the time to begin a project. Coloring is the perfect creative quick-fix for anyone. It's a time to experiment with color and to express your moods with color in an effortless, convenient and affordable way.

Coloring alongside children can be inspiring. How about inviting a friend or two over for tea and some coloring time? And for any artists who are feeling a bit burnt out working in their usual medium, why not use coloring as a way to rejuvenate your creativity?

More than just as a stress reliever

Coloring is being used in formal therapeutic settings such as eye-hand coordination development and to help heal victims of trauma. Regardless of your needs, there is so much to be gained by spending some time coloring.

Coloring Therapy - How a Coloring Book and Crayons Can Help Dissolve Stress
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Wendy Wallace is an intuitive counselor offering sessions which combine psychic reading, life coaching and counseling--all to help heal your mind, body, and spirit. Visit her Web site to download a set of free coloring pages, find more information on color therapy and sign up for a chance to win a free session. Gain the insight you need. What changes might you make in life if you could know what the future holds? http://www.ifyoucouldknow.com

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3 Good Christian Children's Books About Death

There are several appealing children's books on the market either helping parents to explain death to young children, or targeted directly at children for their reading pleasure, which incorporate an explanation of death. But surprisingly few of these are specifically Christian books. However, I am able to recommend three such books which are very engaging.

1) Water Bugs and Dragonflies by Doris Stickney was published by The Pilgrim Press in 1982. This is a very small, slim book, containing a story which starts below the surface of a quiet pond among a little colony of water bugs. The story finishes with the transformation of a water bug into a dragonfly and illustrates beautifully the fact that the dragonfly cannot return below the surface of the water to tell the water bugs what has happened to it, and what life is like in its new body. A prayer follows, which the child reader may use as a guide when praying for the person whose loss he or she is mourning. The book then gives notes for parents advising them on what they can say to a child about death, and backing this up with quotations from Matthew and Mark showing the way Jesus approached little children. The book ends with a prayer for parents. I think this is an ideal resource for parents who might be unsure and insecure about how to handle the subject.

2) Will I Live Forever? by Carolyn Nystrom illustrated by Jo-Anne Shilliam was published by Lion Hudson in 2006. Told in the first person through the viewpoint of the young child, it directly addresses the reader with a question about sad, scary thoughts, and then relates those questions to the child's world. The story encapsulates the Christian understanding of why we die, starting with the story of the Creation, and of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It goes on to incorporate quotations from the Gospels. It is also very honest and straightforward about the physical processes of death - the corruption of the body, the reason why it must be cremated or buried, etc. It goes on to reflect upon heaven - once again answering the kind of direct, logical questions a young child will demand to be answered. This is an excellent book, one you will wish you'd had access to when you were a young child.

3 Good Christian Children's Books About Death

3) Grandma's Party by Meg Harper, illustrated by Paul Nicholls, was brought out by The Bible Reading Fellowship in 2003. This is a delightful book centred around the funeral of a grandmother, and it offers practical ways to help children be part of the grieving process when a loved one dies. It includes a story and also creative craft ideas for how a child may become involved in preparing for a tea following the funeral; recipes; instructions on calligraphy to make place cards; and how to make picture frames, books of memories, and paper water-lilies. The book has a solid Christian base, explaining the resurrection from the dead, and finishing with prayers which may be read by a child at the funeral. This is a lovely, practical book, helping parents to understand how to involve and include children at every stage, so they may live out the truth that death is a part of life, not something alien and taboo and frightening, to be hidden behind a wall of silence and mystifying rituals.

3 Good Christian Children's Books About Death
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S.C.Skillman is the author of mystery romance novel "Mystical Circles" in which Juliet, concerned that her younger sister has fallen for the charismatic Craig, leader of a dubious New Age spiritual group, sets off for the Cotswolds to see the situation for herself. She arrives at Craig's community hoping to rescue Zoe. But intrigues, liaisons and relationships flare and flourish or fizzle out quickly within this close circle and, despite her reservations, Juliet is drawn into the Wheel of Love... with completely unforeseen consequences.

Mystical Circles is now available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle. You can find out more by visiting the author's blog at http://www.scskillman.com.

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Who Was the First Scientist?

We live in a scientific age. Millions of young people study science, thousands of universities teach it, and hundreds of publications chronicle it. We even have a cable channel devoted exclusively to its wonders. We are immersed in technology rooted in its discoveries. But what is science, and who was its first practitioner?

Science is the study of the physical world, but it is not just a topic, a subject, a field of interest. It is a discipline--a system of inquiry that adheres to a specific methodology--the scientific method. In its basic form, the scientific method consists of seven steps:

1) observation;

Who Was the First Scientist?

2) statement of a problem or question;

3) formulation of a hypothesis, or a possible answer to the problem or question;

4) testing of the hypothesis with an experiment;

5) analysis of the experiment's results;

6) interpretation of the data and formulation of a conclusion;

7) publication of the findings.

One can study phenomena without adhering to the scientific method, of course. The result, however, is not science. It is pseudoscience or junk science.

Throughout history, many people in many parts of the world have studied nature without using the scientific method. Some of the earliest people to do so were the ancient Greeks. Scholars such as Aristotle made many observations about natural phenomena, but they did not test their ideas with experiments. Instead they relied on logic to support their findings. As a result, they often arrived at erroneous conclusions. Centuries later the errors of the Greeks were exposed by scholars using the scientific method.

Perhaps the most famous debunking of Greek beliefs occurred in 1589 when Galileo Galilei challenged Aristotle's notions about falling bodies. Aristotle had asserted that heavy bodies fall at a faster rate than light bodies do. His contention was logical but unproven. Galileo decided to test Aristotle's hypothesis, legend says, by dropping cannon balls of different weights from a balcony of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He released the balls simultaneously and found that neither ball raced ahead of the other. Rather, they sped earthward together and hit the ground at the same time. Galileo also conducted experiments in which he rolled balls of different weights down inclines in an attempt to discover the truth about falling bodies. For these and other experiments, Galileo is considered by many to be the first scientist.

Galileo was not the first person to conduct experiments or to follow the scientific method, however. European scholars had been conducting experiments for three hundred years, ever since a British-born Franciscan monk named Roger Bacon advocated experimentation in the thirteenth century. One of Bacon's books, Perspectiva (Optics) challenges ancient Greek ideas about vision and includes several experiments with light that include all seven steps of the scientific method.

Bacon's Perspectiva is not an original work, however. It is a summary of a much longer work entitled De aspectibus (The Optics). Perspectiva follows the organization of De aspectibus and repeats its experiments step by step, sometimes even word for word. But De aspectibus is not an original work, either. It is the translation of a book written in Arabic entitled Kitāb al-Manāzir (Book of Optics). Written around 1021, Kitāb al-Manāzir predates Roger Bacon's summary of it by 250 years. The author of this groundbreaking book was a Muslim scholar named Abū 'Alī al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham.

Born in Basra (located in what is now Iraq) in 965, Ibn al-Haytham --known in the West as Alhazen or Alhacen--wrote more than 200 books and treatises on a wide range of subjects. He was the first person to apply algebra to geometry, founding the branch mathematics known as analytic geometry.

Ibn al-Haytham's use of experimentation was an outgrowth of his skeptical nature and his Muslim faith. He believed that human beings are flawed and only God is perfect. To discover the truth about nature, he reasoned, one had to allow the universe to speak for itself. "The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them," Ibn al-Haytham wrote in Doubts Concerning Ptolemy, "but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration."

To test his hypothesis that "lights and colors do not blend in the air," for example, Ibn al-Haytham devised the world's first camera obscura, observed what happened when light rays intersected at its aperture, and recorded the results. This is just one of dozens of "true demonstrations," or experiments, contained in Kitāb al-Manāzir.

By insisting on the use of verifiable experiments to test hypotheses, Ibn al-Haytham established a new system of inquiry--the scientific method--and earned a place in history as the first scientist.

Who Was the First Scientist?
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Bradley Steffens is the author of twenty-one books, coauthor of seven, and editor of the 2004 anthology, The Free Speech Movement. His Censorship was included in the 1997 edition of Best Books for Young Adult Readers and his Giants won the 2005 San Diego Book Award for Best Young Adult & Children's Nonfiction. His latest book is Ibn al-Haytham: First Scientist, the world's first biography of the eleventh-century Arab scholar known in the West as Alhazen.

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What are the Best Kinds of Books to Sell as an Online Bookseller?

Like any other business or investment, the objective is to buy low and sell high, so the best books to sell online are the ones you can get cheap and sell at much higher prices. This is much easier said than done, which is why some booksellers opt to specialize.

Because the assumed objective of all online booksellers is to turn a profit and find homes for books in need, a better question to ask might be, "Why do some booksellers specialize?" Of the booksellers that specialize, most do so because they know one type of book better than other types. A popular theme is children's books. If someone has children and knows which types of children's books are more valuable than other types, they may just feel more comfortable dealing exclusively in that category. Still others are very good at identifying and locating first editions. What does seem to be a central theme with booksellers that specialize in one category or another is more knowledge about their category of specialty.

Still, the predominance of online booksellers do not specialize, they simply find books that will resell at prices higher than what they have to pay for them. This does not mean they do not know anything about specialized categories, it simply means they are open to any category where there is a profit to be had. There is nothing wrong with taking this approach, as this is exactly what bookstores have done for years.

What are the Best Kinds of Books to Sell as an Online Bookseller?

Another logical question would be whether it is a good idea to exclude particular categories. There are probably as many arguments that support excluding categories as there are against doing so. Personally, unless I have time on my hands that I want to waste (maybe an hour each year) I avoid romance, cookbooks, book club editions, promotional books (Advance Reading Copies, principally because so many marketplaces prohibit the sale of this type of book) and popular novels. I am sure I have passed over some real gems in these categories, but my experiences in the past suggest I will be spending hours going through them only to find nothing of value. On the other hand, I know a few booksellers that make a nice living in these categories by finding valuable first editions and/or sets of books by a particular author that can be auctioned for considerable profit.

To be a successful online bookseller, you need only find a sufficient quantity of books that will sell online for a profit and to continue to add to your inventory more books than you sell. What value a book has to you is not really relevant if you want to sell it, the only thing that matters is its demand and what a customer is willing to pay for it. That said, I would encourage you to specialize if there is a category that you know well, but even then, if and only if you can find adequate inventory that will sell. It might be a lot of fun to specialize in a category of interest to you, but if you do not sell the books, you are not an online bookseller; you are a collector building a personal library.

What are the Best Kinds of Books to Sell as an Online Bookseller?
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Michael E. Mould is the author of "Online Bookselling: A Practical Guide with Detailed Explanations and Insightful Tips,", and developer of "Bookkeeping for Booksellers,", a 19 sheet linked and tabbed Excel Workbook designed to assist online booksellers with the calculation of their in-state retail sales tax obligations and the preparation of their Schedule C tax forms. "Bookkeeping for Booksellers" also provides 55 integrated graphs to visually show an online bookseller just how their business is performing.

"Bookkeeping for Booksellers" and "Online Bookselling" are both available for digital download here: http://www.e-junkie.com/cougarmountainbooks

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