Exploring & Learning Outdoors

Here's a quote for the day from Reading Rockets:

"Fun outdoor activities...nurture a young child's interest in science — and develop skills like observing and predicting." Reading Rockets suggests a variety of fun ways to create fun outdoors with your child - all the while helping boost their early and pre-reading skills!
Read more here...

Our community has such wonderful places to explore outside, like the trails at Peavy Arboretum, the Jackson-Frazier Wetland, Willamette Park, Martin Luther King Jr. Park, Avery Park, and many more places throughout the county.

Find inspiration at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, too:

Outdoor Parents, Outdoor Kids: a Guide to Getting Your Kids Active in the Great Outdoors by Eugene Buchanan

Corvallis Trails: Exploring the Heart of the Valley by Margie C. Powell

Hug a Tree: and Other Things to Outdoors with Young Children by Robert E. Rockwell, Elizabeth A. Sherwood & Robert A. Williams

The Green Hour: Activities, Games, Crafts, Science Lessons, and Fun Facts the Whole Family Will Enjoy by Todd Christopher

Janice VanCleave's Play and Find Out about Nature: Easy Experiments for Young Children

Let's Go Outside: Outdoor Activities and Projects to Get You and Your Kids Closer to Nature by Jennifer Ward

Pond Year by Kathryn Lasky

Too Many Rabbits and Other Fingerplays about Animals, Nature, Weather, and the Universe by Kay Cooper

Raccoon on His Own by Jim Arnosky (see others by Jim Arnosky as well)

Nature Walk by Douglas Florian (good for the youngest listeners)

Reading Rockets: Reading & Brain Awareness

Are you curious about why some children struggle to learn to read, while others pick it up so easily? Henry Winkler (who suffered from his own difficulty learning to read) hosts the "Reading and the Brain Series" from Reading Rockets and PBS, which discusses how brain scientists are exploring this very issue. Watch the introduction to the program below, then head to: http://www.readingrockets.org/shows/launching/brain to watch the rest of the program.

Grocery Store Literacy from Reading Rockets.org

I saw this post from Reading Rockets earlier today: (see http://ow.ly/phLE) about "Grocery Store Literacy". Using everyday activities, like a trip to the grocery store or post office, can be a great opportunity to teach young children about letters, words, environmental print, and narrative skills. Reading Rockets has developed "take-along" activity sheets for you to download, print, and use to turn your routine errands into fun, learning times! These activity sheets feature some of the characters from PBS Kids.

Here's a screen shot of a sample activity sheet from the Reading Rockets website:

Toddling Toward Reading: Reading Rockets program airing on OPB

Toddling Toward Reading: Overview

"Reading Rockets: Launching Young Readers" Explores Early Literacy in "Toddling Toward Reading"

"Toddling Toward Reading," the 10th episode of the award-winning "Reading Rockets: Launching Young Readers" series, focuses on how to get children ready to start school.

Host Reba McEntire takes a look at outstanding programs across the country that are finding success in nurturing early literacy skills, including the national health project Reach Out and Read, Chicago's Parker Child-Parent Center, Georgia's Coralwood Diagnostic Center, and Dr. Rebecca Palacios' preschool program in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Reach Out and Read (ROR), a national organization that has folded literacy development into the practices of pediatricians across the country, encourages parents to read at least 30 minutes a day with their children. "Learning to read is much more than a set of skills you get in school. There is a whole foundation that gets built over the first years of life," says Dr. Robert Needlman with Reach Out and Read (Reading Rockets, 2008)

Oregon Public Broadcasting will be airing the program on KOPB on Saturday, October 4th, at 6:30 a.m.