Ready for Kindergarten Ready for College

Laying the foundation for your infant and toddler is critical to their success in pre-kindergarten and beyond. One kindergarten teacher shared with us how she spends a great deal of her time working on cognitive and social skills, she feels her class is somewhat like a toddler class. You may be asking why? Well the reason is the parents did not know what to do with their infant/toddler before they got to school... developing their fine motor skills among the other skills that serve as the foundation.

Monday, February 4 was child advocacy day in Albany. Daseta and I went up there to lobby for the campaign Ready for Kindergarten Ready for College, part of the initiative put forward by Governor Cuomo during his State of the State address in which he spoke about setting aside $25 million dollars for full day pre-k. 

They realize that when you invest in children early in their life it helps our workforce later.

We also had an opportunity to speak with the Chair of the Children and Families Committee about the importance of investing in the infants and toddlers.

Yesterday helped to reinforce what Daseta and I are doing sharing with stakeholders the importance of investing in our infants and toddlers.

One speaker from Monday's event shared a little story about purchasing a house, he told the developer the color paint he wanted, color carpet, number of bedrooms and bathrooms.
  The developer tried to switch the conversation to how the basement will look, the client continued to change the subject back to the layout for the rest of the house.  The developer then turned to him and said, "If you don't have a solid foundation it doesn't matter how many bathrooms and bedrooms you have. The house will crumble".

Same applies for our infants/toddlers... if we don't build their foundation they will have challenges as they get older.

How are you building the foundation?  What type of cognitive and social activities are you doing with your little one?