About Early Bird Mama

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give to our children.
One of these is roots, the other is wings.

~ German author Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ~

Hello everyone. Welcome to Raising Early Birds.  I am blessed to be a mostly-stay-at-home mom with one little one at the moment.  Love Bug will be two in March.  My husband works more than full-time and is eager to jump into Daddy mode the moment he gets home.  Our little Love Bug is growing up way too fast, and keeping ahead of her developing mind with teaching tools and activities has been a challenge, but a joy.  Some days I feel so excited, knowing I have front row seats to the best show on earth – little minds in the making.  Some days I feel exhausted and overwhelmed - like I will never be able to provide enough of the “right stuff” to prepare her for the world.  “One day at a time,” my dad would calmly say if he was still here.  But, the days are flying by! 

Raising Early Birds is a blog about my journey as a mother.

My hope is to give Love Bug strong roots to support and nourish her as she grows and strong wings to carry her well when she is ready to fly.

My focus will be in the area of early literacy.  I want my little one to be fluent in language, reading and writing as early as she can so that reading becomes an avenue for joyful learning.  When the time comes for her to start school, I want her to hit the ground running for more.  As you will read in Start Here: Early Literacy 101, our little ones begin developing their literacy skills when they are still in their mother’s womb.  Join me as I explore the many ways we can promote early learning for our little ones.

My goal is to inspire and encourage others on this journey of raising children.  There is freedom here, to be who you are and use what you have to find a teaching style that brings peace and joy to your home.  Whether you are a work-out-of-home parent, a stay-home parent or a frequent caregiver, I believe you will find this blog helpful.  Every child is different and every parent is different.  What works for one, does not work for all.  I would love for you to come with your questions and ideas and we can together be the village it takes to raise our children.

My inspiration comes from two generations. First, a special woman who has spent her entire life and professional career of 40 years dedicated to teaching young children and teaching teachers in the field of early childhood education – my mom.  Second, a little girl who brings joy and enthusiasm wherever she goes, who does not give up, and who demands my attention like the best of them – my little Love Bug.  My mom, who we call Mimi, will play a unique role in this blog.  She blesses me with such wonderful, practical ideas and information, I asked her to spread her love and expertise to all of you as well.  You can email her questions at earlybirdmimi@gmail.com and she will answer as many questions as she can in her posts.  You can find more about Mimi here.

My favorite blogs:

To all of you bloggers who have inspired and encouraged me along the way - thank you!

TheHumbled Homemaker

ThePrairie Homestead

SmallNotebook

NourishingMinimalism

Mommypotamus

Keeperof the Home

My favorite Child-Development Resources:

http://www.zerotothree.org/  - I subscribed to their monthly age-appropriate emails when Love Bug was born and have found the information every month to be invaluable.

Start Here: Literacy 101

Before Birth:

When should we start promoting literacy? Because literacy begins with hearing, we should start promoting literacy as soon as our little ones can hear, which is when they are 5 months developed in the womb.  At first, she hears only low noises, then high-pitched noises and soon she can start distinguishing voices.  Research shows newborns can even recognize music they heard in the womb.  Pretty amazing!

How should we start promoting literacy? Because literacy begins with hearing, we should start promoting literacy by talking.  It’s that simple! Your voice, love and attention are your child’s strongest, earliest assets on this journey of literacy development.  Think out loud.  Talk as though someone is listening, because she is!

Newborn to 12 months:

Because literacy starts with hearing even before birth, then we should keep talking to them as soon as they are born.  This is when exposure to language really becomes important.  The building blocks for literacy begin with language.  Again, parents and caregivers are baby’s most important sources for language.  Talk to your little one as if she understands, because this is how it all starts.  She is starting to make connections immediately. 

Expose her to as much vocabulary as you can by reading books, singing songs, explaining what you are doing, gesturing, pointing… etc.  Now is a great time to introduce baby sign so she can start using signs to communicate her needs and wants.  It might feel silly at first because there is not an obvious response.  But look closely, make eye contact, engage at her level, and soon you will start to learn a new language too - baby talk.  Eye contact, body wiggles, head turning, dancing feet and hands, little smiles, giggles and babbles - these are all responses to you!  This is your baby’s way of saying, “YES, I’m listening! I love hearing your voice, keep talking to me.”

1 year to 18 months:

This is when language takes off!  Sometime in this period, your baby will most likely SAY her first word!  They are starting to understand more complex ideas as well.  “Go put your shoes away in the shoe basket.”  Off she trotted, down the hall, shoes in hand, to the shoe basket.  I was amazed.  The day she spilled watermelon juice on the floor and walked over to my bag of paper towels behind the washing machine, came back with a paper towel and wiped up the floor, was a revelation to me.  She had been watching EVERYTHING and learning simple tasks and processes - like cleaning up a mess.  WOW! It is the same with literacy development.  They learn what they hear.  The more they hear, the more they learn. 

Here is great site for tips on how to talk to your little one.

Your voice is the first tool you have to strongly build your child’s early literacy skills, but there is another equally important tool you have to offer - yourself.  Your attention, interest and effort to understand your child becomes the second strongest asset as she develops literacy skills and self-confidence.  We should not underestimate ourselves!

I am so grateful to the dad at the park several months back.  I asked him what one important thing he did early on in his daughter’s homeschooling that benefitted her learning.  He said, “We just tried to really listen to her.”  At the time, my little one was just starting to utter words, but as those little utterances became more elaborate melodies of babble and recognizable words, I kept hearing what that dad has said, and I stopped and really listened to her, grasping for context, following her gazes and gestures and soon I was able to discover how much she was communicating.  These young minds are like sponges, quickly absorbing everything they can.  Its our job to keep a flow of language for them to absorb. 

Here are some tips to supporting your child’s communication skills.

*A note on this: as Love Bug’s primary caregiver, I am able to recognize far more words of hers because I am with her all day everyday.  If you share this gift of caregiving with others on a regular basis, (family, friends, teachers) try to keep each other updated with new words and phrases each day or week, so that everyone can continue building her confidence and vocabulary by listening and understanding her attempts to verbally communicate.  For example:  Love Bug can see the street from her highchair, and one day she kept pointing and saying, “Buddy is walking!” I wracked my brain trying to think who we knew named Buddy, but then as she kept saying this as different people walked by, I realized she was saying “SOMEBODY is walking.”  So I made it a point to tell Daddy that night, so he would not get confused, and be able to keep up with her train of thought if I was not around.  This will all help with the frustration-factor of not being understood.  I think children tend to have more tantrums when they are not being understood - reasonably so.  The more effort we put into understanding them, the more harmony we can maintain and avoid these tantrums. 

18 months to 2 years:

This is the phase we are in now.  Love Bug’s vocabulary and sentence construction is taking off! Family and friends are having a blast discovering the complexities of her little mind as she is able to communicate what she sees, wants, does, thinks… it is so much fun!  In the next few weeks I will continue to immerse her in vocabulary and more complex ideas and explanations by asking questions and conversing with her, but I will also focus on bringing more written words into our learning.  I will share many of the ways I do this, so keep coming back and join me!

Check out my post on Building a Teaching Toolbox for a few ideas on helpful things to have on hand.

(The truth is, children develop at their own rate, and some have extenuating conditions that alter their development.  For more on this, check out this post.)

Help them talk early: Baby Sign Language

Sign Language for Baby

Starting baby sign early with Love Bug was a really great way to give her the ability to start communicating to me what she wanted before she could actually form the words.  

I prioritized just 5 basic signs:

1. MORE - Tap fingers together. 

2. ALL DONE - Shake hands.

3. PLEASE - Trace in circle on chest.

4. THANK YOU - Start at chin and pull away from chin. 

5. WATER - Move finger tips back and forth at chin. 

These are the basics, but there are obviously many more.  This is my favorite American SignLanguage baby chart.

My theory is the more tools we give them to express themselves the more they will be, and thus feel, understood.  This can bring a lot of harmony to a home.  It also helps when you are trying to enjoy a meal out at a restaurant with a toddler.  All of these little steps are working toward achieving a big goal – teaching your child that what they think, they can say, and eventually what they say they can write and they write they can read – this is the cycle of literacy. 

How I Taught Sign to my Love Bug

As we went about our day I would reinforce my words with signs.  If she was eating and would make her grunt or gestures like the she wanted more, I would look at her and ask, “Do you want more?” and do the sign for more as I repeated “More?”  Sometimes I would physically help her make the sign with her hands.  I found repetition and follow through to be important.  After a while I started asking her to make the sign and not give her what she wanted until she made an attempt.  She picked it up pretty quickly. 

About Early Bird Mimi, MS Ed.

As a young girl I found the mystery of letter sounds making words just fascinating.  When I was 9 I taught my 4 year old sister to read just so I could watch the process closely and marvel at her proficiency.  From there I set my goals on studying Early Childhood Education in my undergraduate and graduate work with a second major of Literacy in graduate school.  All along the way I have kept in mind a quote I read about how, from birth, all humans have the goal of communicating with their loved ones.  What a wonderful goal-so challenging for some, so rewarding for most!

In my work- a career of 40+ years of educating generations of preschool children or educating their teachers and parents, I have never once ceased to marvel as I watched children master language.  My work started in 1970 when I started a nursery school in my home with my two young toddler sons in tow and continued until I retired in 2013 after a career of teaching children in early education centers, working in administration in early ed programs for 25 years, with teaching adults effective strategies for teaching young children for many of those years and ending my career where I started- teaching toddlers for several years before retiring.  I have learned so much along the way and am eager to share!  If you have any questions about early education, feel free to email me at earlybirdmimi@gmail.com.   I look forward to being part of this blog community.