Learning Path Stones

Vocabulary

Vocabulary
While infants and toddlers learn vocabulary by memory, older children use word structure and context to help understand the meaning of a word. They identify synonyms and antonyms. They use prefixes, suffixes and base words to build their own vocabulary.

Phonics Skills

Phonics Skills
Before they can read independently, children must learn the relationship of letters to their sounds and be able to distinguish individual sounds, or phonemes, within words. Phonics skills help children sounds out new words (If I can read "pot", then I can read "hot" and "spot").

Phonological Awareness

Phonological Awareness
Along with learning language and letters, phonological awareness - the ability to pick out and play with sounds in words (such as syllables and rhymes)- is essential for learning to read.

The Alphabet

The Alphabet
Knowing the letters of the alphabet is one of the first steps toward learning to read and write. Introducing letters to young children helps them learn to recognize the different shapes and names - an early indicator for reading achievement.

Spanish Vocabulary

Spanish Vocabulary
Exposure to foreign languages at a young age can help children understand their own language better. Studies show that children who are bilingual or who study foreign languages enjoy increased academic achievement and perform better on standardized tests.

Matching

Matching
Matching develops early logic and reasoning skills and is a component of early math and literacy.Children match like objects, shapes, patterns, pictures and stories, letters to sounds and pictures to words.

Memory Skills

Memory Skills
Memory skills are essential for learning. It is fairly easy to help your child train their memory using memory games, poems and particular memory strategies.

Recognizing Patterns

Recognizing Patterns
The ability to extend, complete and duplicate patterns by determining the specific attributes of those patterns is a logical reasoning skill that forms a basis for future work in math. Recognizing patterns is also important for learning to read. Many high frequency words have similiar components (the sound "an" is in can, and hand). Recognizing these patterns helps children work out a new word faster.

Sorting and Classifying

Sorting and Classifying
Children actively arrange their blocks, cars and dolls, using visual discrimination to sort objects around them. Essential for math and science, classification is the logical reasoning ability to identify and group objects by attributes such as color, size, number, function, length, volume, weight, area, time and other familiar characteristics.

Time Concepts

Time Concepts
Babies quickly get in to a routine of milk, play sleep before they learn that clocks measure time and that there is a pattern to the days of the week. Concepts of time (now, soon, yesterday, next week, this summer) and times of day (morning, night) allow children to describe the past, present and future.

Shapes

Shapes
Identifying and manipulating shapes lays the groundwork for geometry by giving children concrete experience with angles, symmetry and relative sizes.

Number Recognition

Number Recognition
To begin their study of math, children must distinguish numerals from letters and shapes and understand that numbers are symbols for amounts.

Sequencing

Sequencing
Even toddlers can often recite number names in order, but the ability to compare and order numbers in sequence indicates a practical application of number concepts.

Basic science concepts

Basic science concepts
The study of science begins with something that children have in abundance: curiosity. Children observe, investigate and draw conclusions as they make discoveries about the world around them.

Animal Facts

Animal Facts
Young children are naturally intrigued by animals and animal facts. Very early on children begin to categorize animals by species and learn interesting facts about them. This early interest in animals provides the motivation for later work in life sciences.

Awards

• 2004 iParenting Media Award