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Summer’s here! Throughout the month of June, I’ll  have lots of ideas for how to boost your kids’ learning. But don’t worry! My tips are simple, inexpensive, and fun for the whole family – and guaranteed to help that little noggin grow. We’ll start out today with how to get your summer learning off to […]

By Joan Firestone, Ph.D. Spring has finally made it to my neighborhood.  And while parents are busy getting out the tricycles and patio furniture, they are also contemplating the perennial question of what to do with the kids when the school year ends. It might well be that the best answer is to enroll them […]

By Dr. Joan Lessen-Fireston, Ph.D. Kindergarten teachers often worry about inadequate fine motor skills exhibited by many of their students. Every year it seems that more children enter school unable to cut along a straight line, manipulate buttons and snaps, and comfortably hold and use a pencil. But in a time when we focus on […]

A study finds that young children who had more early reading knowledge were slightly better readers when they entered middle school, but preschoolers’ general knowledge of the world was found to be a much stronger predictor of their later success in reading.

By Pam Schiller, Ph.D. Many people think that talking with children is not important because there appears to be so much children don’t understand. This is a huge misunderstanding! Children understand our intonations and speech patterns almost from birth. If they are around talkative caretakers, they understand most of what is said to them by […]