Preschooler Week 52

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Inside Outside Upside Down

Your child’s language development has been growing at a rapid pace for the last few years.  Remember when your child was saying the words “more” and “up,” and perhaps a few of your family members’ names? It sure seems like yesterday, but then you also find yourself barely able to keep up with the amount of words he or she already knows now! You never know what your child would say next! And this is what’s most exciting about conversations with four-year-olds!

Although they are on a roll, your four-year-olds may still find it difficult to understand the meaning of words they encounter the first few times. Prepositions such as around, in front of, at the back of, between, next to, close to, far away from, on top, below, under, and above are not straightforward to understand. From time to time, you may find your child using those words but mixing up their meaning. But with constant practice and a healthy dose of encouragement from you, your child will be able to master these words’ meanings in no time!

When my four-year-old daughter was in Kindergarten, she would bring home from school a puppet turtle she made in school. The turtle was interactive: its head would pop in and out of its shell when prodded. Along with the turtle came a note card from her teacher with prepositions written on it.

According to her teacher, we would have to use the turtle to illustrate position to our child. We would also have to use prepositions to do this. My daughter had been excited to play this game. She would talk to the turtle and make the turtle respond to her too. It was a fun, imaginative play moment for our child! I then pulled the note card saying “in between,” after which my daughter started devising a way for her to place the turtle “in between” two things. She eventually placed the turtle between her stuffed shark and stuffed bear. The next thing I knew, she was having the turtle blurt out, “Oh no, a shark! I am going to hide in my shell so I don’t get eaten!”

This puppet turtle went on to became one of my daughter’s well-loved toys. It grew battered from all the vocabulary exercises my daughter would do, but it was all worth it! She enjoyed learning all those lessons on preposition because she was doing it with something she loved!

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