What is STEM?

In Massachusetts and across the country, early childhood educators have come together to promote curriculum and learning in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

At Inch By Inch you will see over the coming months our efforts to include more math and science into our daily curriculum.

One resource that we will be using is

http://www.bedtimemathproblem.org/  - a blog dedicated to making math a part of everyday life. 

Summer Camp Bedford MA, Burlington, Lexington

For those in Bedford MA, Burlington, Lexington and surrounding areas that are interested in summer camp for their children please contact Inch By Inch Child Development Center at (781) 271-0800.  The summer camp is for children ages 5-10 and will begin on June 18th.  The summer program will include:

• Weekly field trips
• Swimming at Springs Brook Park in Bedford
• Arts & crafts
• Science experiments
• Weekly outings to local parks
• Nature Walks
• Ice cream and lots of FUN!!!

Please email us with any questions at info@inchbyinchchildcare.com

The Twenty-Five Words Every Toddler Needs to Know

This recent study provides a solid guideline for parents regarding their child’s language development.  “Mine”, “please” and “outside” are also common words for children of Toddler age. Parents should also consider how many words their child comprehends ex. can they point to body parts if named, or follow a direction such as “go get your coat”. For parents that are concerned with language development, the course of action that we recommend is to bring your concern to your pediatrician or contact Early Intervention directly.

A two-year-old's limited vocabulary may red flag hearing problems, autism, or dyslexia. Researchers from the Child Study Institute at Bryn Mawr College have identified a list of 25 words every toddler should be using by age two. Dr. Leslie Rescorla, the director of the institute, presented her findings at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The average toddler uses 75-225 words and is able to combine them into phrases. Twenty-five is considered the minimum for late talkers. In a previous study, Rescorla demonstrated that children with normal delayed speech tend to catch up by four or five. She adds that when helping late talkers build their language skills, it's a good idea to focus on basic vocabulary.

The 25 common words that should form the building blocks of a toddler's vocabulary:

-all gone                       -milk                            -mommy
-more                           -no                               -nose
-shoe                            -thank you                   -yes
-baby                           -ball                             -banana
-bath                            -bye bye                      -book
-car                              -cat                              -dog
-cookie                        -daddy                          -eye
-hat                              -hello/hi                         -hot
-juice                          

Rescorla says parents shouldn't panic if their toddler is using fewer words than average, but they should consider having them evaluated by an expert. Early intervention offers the best outcome.

More Fruit and Veggies Now, Better Arteries Later

Children Who Eat Plenty of Fruits and Vegetables Less Likely to Have Stiff Arteries as Adults

Here's a new reason to get children to eat their veggies.

Children who eat a lot of fruit and vegetables have healthier, less stiff arteries as young adults compared to children who don't load up on fruit and veggies, according to a new study.

Researchers say arterial stiffness is tied to atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries, which is a key factor in heart disease. When arteries become stiff, the heart has to work harder to pump blood effectively.

In the study, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, Finnish researchers compared childhood and adult lifestyle factors, including fruit and vegetable intake, alcohol use, and smoking with arterial stiffness in 1,622 Finns who were followed for 27 years from a baseline age of between 3 and 18.

Arterial stiffness was measured using pulse wave velocity.

“When the heart beats, the blood’s ejection causes a pulse wave, which travels along the wall of the arterial tree,” researcher Mika Kahonen, MD, PhD, professor and chief physician for the department of clinical physiology at Tampere University Hospital in Tampere, Finland, says in a news release. “The velocity of this pulse wave is dependent on the stiffness of the arterial wall; the stiffer the wall, the higher velocity. It is well known that the arterial stiffening process has a major role in the development of cardiovascular diseases."

The results showed that children who ate fewer vegetables tended to have a higher pulse wave velocity as adults, even after adjusting for other potential risk factors, such as cholesterol levels.

“These findings suggest that a lifetime pattern of low consumption of fruits and vegetables is related to arterial stiffness in young adulthood,” Kahonen says. “Parents and pediatricians have yet another reason to encourage children to consume high amounts of fruits and vegetables.”

If new scientific evidence about hardened arteries is a hard sell for your kids, the American Heart Association recommends the following tips to get children to eat more fruits and vegetables:

1.    Make fruit and vegetable shopping fun. Involve children in shopping and selecting ripe fruits and vegetables at your local green market or grocery store. Explain which fruits and vegetables are available each season and from which climates.

2.    Involve kids in meal preparation. Invite children to help you prepare a healthy dish. Younger kids can measure, crumble, hold, and hand some of the ingredients to you while older kids can help set the table. Offer lots of praise for what they've done.

3.    Be a role model. If your child sees you eating a wide range of fruits and vegetables, they'll be more likely to follow suit.

4.    Create fun snacks. Make healthy snacks a part of their routine. Kids love foods they can eat with their fingers; healthy options include cut-up fruit or vegetables arranged on a pretty plate with a small portion of low-fat salad dressing, hummus, or yogurt.

5.    Give kids healthy choices, within limits. Too many choices can overwhelm young children. Rather than asking, "What would you like for dinner?" Offer them healthy choices like strawberries or banana on their cereal or carrots or broccoli with dinner.

6.    Eat together as a family. Family dining time offers adults a chance to model healthy behaviors and attitudes about food.

7.    Expect resistance. Kids will be exposed to negative influences about food. Without making disparaging remarks about other families' habits, let your kids know that fruits and vegetables come first in your family.

8.    Grow it. Create a kitchen window garden and let your child plant tomatoes and herbs in window boxes. Or if you have space for a garden, help them cultivate their own vegetable patch with plants that grow quickly, like beans, cherry tomatoes, snow peas, and radishes.

9.    Resort to covert operations when necessary. If all else fails, sneak pureed or grated vegetables into pastas, pizza sauces, and casseroles.

10. Be patient. Changes in food preferences take time to happen. Many kids need to see and taste a new food a dozen times before they know whether they truly like it. Try putting a small amount of the new food on their plate every day for two weeks but don't make a big deal about it.

Nutrition: How to get little kids to eat more vegetables

Getting children to eat more fruits and vegetables is an age-old struggle.  Parents often ask our teachers for their advice on what to send for lunch and enlist their help in order to get their children to eat better.  We recently shared this article with our staff as a tool to help them encourage healthy eating.  Per the study’s suggestion, our teachers send uneaten portions home so parents can track how much their children are eating at school.

Feeding preschoolers smaller portions of the main dish at lunchtime means they'll eat more fruit and vegetables on the side and fewer total calories, according to a new study.

Researchers said the finding may give parents one extra strategy to encourage youngsters to eat more greens, as childhood obesity rates continue rising and research suggests that kids lag well behind guidelines for fruit and veggie consumption.

With main courses, "you need to be careful and use the age-appropriate serving," said Sara Sweitzer, a nutrition researcher from the University of Texas at Austin.

"If they fill up on the entrée, obviously the fruit and the vegetable are the last to get eaten," added Sweitzer, who wasn't involved in the new study.

Parents can make sure they're providing the right amount of food both by inspecting what's left in the lunch box when kids come home, and by talking to their kids about how much they eat.

“Go ahead and ask your child, ‘Do you want a whole sandwich or do you want just half a sandwich?'" she advised.

For the new study, researchers at a Pennsylvania preschool served 17 kids six different variations of the same meal, one day each week for lunch. The meals had anywhere from less than half a cup to more than a cup and a half of macaroni and cheese, the main dish.

That was presented along with plenty of green beans and unsweetened applesauce, plus a whole grain roll and milk.

Jennifer Savage of The Pennsylvania State University in University Park and her colleagues found that the bigger the entrée size, the more mac and cheese – and the less of the healthy side dishes – kids ate.

Preschoolers finished almost all of their smallest portion of mac and cheese, for an average of about 145 calories. But they still ate the majority of much bigger portions, and put away 390 calories worth of the main course when they started with the most on their plate.

When they were served the smallest entrée, kids ate almost half of their healthy side dishes, including fruits and veggies, compared to only a quarter when they were served the biggest mac and cheese portion, Savage's team reports in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Kids' total lunchtime calorie counts varied based on entrée size as well: they ate an average of 506 calories with the biggest portion, and 315 with the smallest.

Sweitzer said that packing too much of the main course for lunch is a problem she sees all the time with parents, in part because they're concerned they won't include enough food and their kids will be hungry.

"You will see parents pack the whole easy mac and cheese portion," she said. "That would be a huge amount – it would be adequate for an adult to eat as part of lunch, and they'll pack that whole thing for the child to eat."

And a four-year-old, she said, won't make balanced food choices on their own in that situation.

"If you give the child an option for a large portion of an entrée food that they really like, they will eat that more and they'll fill up. They'll reach their satiety point and they'll just stop eating," said Sweitzer.

She added that another strategy to encourage kids to eat their fruits and veggies is for parents and older siblings to set a good example by choosing those as healthy snacks and making sure they're loading up on their nutrient-packed side dishes at meals.

Childcare / Daycare Bedford, MA

Looking for a top quality child care / day care facility in the Bedford, MA area?

Inch By Inch is committed to providing high quality and educational childcare in a warm and nurturing environment. We welcome children between the ages of 8 weeks to 6 years old to our Group Day Care, and children from 5 to 11 years old to our School Age Program.

Inch By Inch is open Monday thru Friday from 7:00am to 6:00pm. Our center is a well maintained facility of over 8,500 square feet, licensed by the Massachusetts DEEC. We have 8 classrooms, a kitchen, and a large gross motor room for indoor play, as well as an outdoor space with toys, swings, climbing structures and a sandbox.

Call us at (781) 271-0800 to schedule a tour of our center, located at 19 Crosby Dr. in Bedford, MA.

Smartest Toys for Kids can be the Simplest

To a baby, blocks aren’t just toys. They’re appetizers.

Eight-month-old Anna Swanwink doesn’t just stack her soft cloth blocks. She chews them, inspects them, rolls them across the carpet. She shakes them, listening for the hidden rattle or jingle bell inside. Best of all, she coos with surprise and lifts both arms in the air, all smiles, when her mom uses a block to tickle her back.

At the holidays, many parents are tempted to empty their wallets on toys that are marketed as educational. But playing with simple blocks can teach kids far more than videos, mini-laptops and products that claim to turn babies into Einsteins, says Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Yet the number of high-tech toys keeps expanding. Several toymakers now sell tablet computers designed for toddlers — and even babies Anna’s age. The number of cellphone and iPad apps targeting kids numbers is in the thousands.

In some ways, the choice of toys — and how children are left to play with them — can shape how their young brains develop. A newborn’s brain triples in size in the first two years of life, Christakis says. A child’s intelligence, in terms of his or her IQ, is largely determined by age 4.

“The newborn brain and the preschool brain are very much a work in progress,” Christakis says. “For older kids, it’s more about skill-building and not about capacity.”

Christakis says he hoped this research would encourage the growth of high-quality preschools for kids. Instead, it has spawned a “build a brainier baby” industry.

Makers of educational toys say they aim to help parents take advantage of those crucial developmental windows. But marketers also “prey on your concern that your child is going to be behind, that they are missing some enrichment,” says Karen Coltrane, president and CEO of the Children’s Museum of Richmond, Va. “We know those first few years are critical. But that can make parents even more nervous.”

Though the claims on toy packages are seldom backed by real research, Christakis says, science does provide insights about toys that spark creativity and curiosity.

Christakis’ research has shown that babies who watch educational videos learn no extra vocabulary. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no TV or screen time for children under age 2, because there’s no evidence it benefits them and it may even harm their development.

Blocks, however, can build vocabulary. In a 2007 study, Christakis found that toddlers who played with blocks had more language skills than other kids, partly because of close interaction with parents.

“Blocks have been around for millennia,” he says. “Before kids had blocks, they probably stacked rocks.”

Christakis worries about kids losing out on real play as children and parents are seduced by technology. “Kids in the car used to pass the time by singing, talking, telling stories to keep themselves entertained. There is a real benefit to that,” he says. “We don’t know if there is a benefit to apps.”

Even blocks are changing, says Susan Niebur, an astrophysicist and mother from the Washington, D.C., area. She has discovered that a basic set of Lego bricks — one of her favourite toys for encouraging creativity — is getting “incredibly tough to find.”

More and more, stores are replacing the basic blocks with elaborate sets based on movies, which encourage kids to follow instructions rather than create their own designs, says Susan Linn of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Yet studies show that kids play more creatively with “generic” toys than with those linked to movies and TV shows, Linn says. A child given a generic astronaut doll may make up her own story. Give her a Buzz Lightyear doll, and she may simply copy the dialogue from Toy Story.

“The best toy is 10 per cent toy and 90 per cent child,” Linn says. “We’ve got all these toys embedded with computer chips that talk and sing and play and dance at the press of a button. But what they do is deprive children of the ability to exercise their creativity. The toys that really foster creativity just lie there until they’re transformed by children.”

Kids learn about the world through play.

“Play is a really big part of a child’s development,” says Steve Snyder of The Franklin Institute, an interactive science museum in Philadelphia. “We don’t play by accident.”

Any toy can be a learning tool, he says. “Ask ‘What would happen if we did this? Why might this happen?’ At some point, kids stop asking questions. We want them to always ask questions.”