Brightside Academy – Early Education and Child Care

Parents want to know how to improve their child’s literacy skills. “Where is that new app or the new game that can teach my child to read faster?” you may think. But the answer is simpler than that. It’s story time! Think back to your childhood, story time gave us something to look forward to before bedtime every night. Exposure to books and reading aloud helps children acquire those literacy skills and reading skills you want them to develop.

The Brightside Academy Approach to Reading Skills

We at Brightside Academy continue to promote literacy skills initiatives in our academies with consistent reading or “circle time” across all age groups. Our goal is to increase literacy and to motivate reading at home. According to the New York Times, “Study Finds Reading to Children of All Ages Grooms Them to Read More on Their Own” a survey conducted of over 1,000 children ages 6-17 concluded that only 31% were read a book almost daily. “I don’t think that parents know how important that time and the role that it plays in children’s lives,” Kristen Harmeling said, a partner at YouGov. Not only does reading improve vocabulary, language development, and comprehension, but reading to your child unifies the family dynamic.” Children in the survey frequently cited reading aloud as a special bonding time with their parents.”

Develop Your Child’s Inner Voice

Reading aloud also helps children find their inner voice and develop a sense of “self” through story-telling. “Sharing books with children can also help them learn about peer relationships, coping strategies, building self-esteem and general world knowledge,” according to “Reading Aloud to Children: The Evidence” from ReachOutandRead.org.

As well as relationship building, reading helps children develop phonologically. When reading aloud, children are able to associate sounds and pronunciation with written words by practicing sound patterns. According to ReachOutandRead.org, “When children do well at detecting and manipulating syllables, rhymes and phonemes, they tend to learn more quickly [how] to read.”

Literacy Experts Agree on the Benefits

Whether your child is 11-months or 11-years, reading out loud has no age limit. Just as you would transition from pop-up, picture books to nursery rhymes to 50+ pages of a Dr. Seuss story, you adjust the complexity of what you’re reading as your child grows. “It’s this idea of marinating children in higher-level vocabulary,” said Pam Allyn, founder of LitWorld.Org. Although there isn’t much evidence to support improved reading comprehension among older children being read aloud to, literacy experts say that if you increase the difficulty of your reading context, children can hear and understand more complex words that build confidence to tackle different forms of literature on their own.

So as you get your child cleaned up, dressed, and tucked into bed tonight, help your child learn to read by pulling out a book, any book, and reading it aloud. The long-term effects can be phenomenal across all stages of child development. You will enjoy quality time with your child while working on building literacy skills that will have a lasting impact on your child’s life.

September is Attendance Awareness Month, and as the school year begins we would like to point out the importance of school attendance, even in the earliest years.

Did you know that absenteeism in the first month of school can predict poor attendance throughout the school year? Half the students who miss 2-4 days in September go on to miss nearly a month of school (Baltimore Education Research Consortium).

Many studies show that attending a high quality early learning program strengthens school readiness and long term academic performance. Regular attendance in these programs is critically important for children to become successful life-long learners. Not only will good attendance help build good habits for the children, it can also help alleviate academic problems later on.

The Brightside Academy Early Learning Program is designed to deliver skills that build on one another. If a child is absent, they often miss the foundation skills they need to learn the next skill. It can take days and even weeks to then teach the child that skills and catch them up. By that time, they have missed other skills. If they fall behind too much, they may never fully catch up.

If children are regularly absent, they may not be fully prepared for school. Preschool is a time for building the social, emotional, cognitive, and language skills needed for school readiness. “A growing body of research documents how many youngsters are chronically absent, meaning they miss 10 percent or more of the school year due to excused or unexcused absences. The research also shows how these missed days as early as preschool translate into weaker reading skills” (Attendance in the Early Grades: Why it Matters for Reading).

The best way to help us prepare your children for school is to make sure they are consistently attending so they are able to learn all of the necessary skills. Here are a few tips from Attanceworks that can help prepare your child for preschool and ensure attendance:

• Know the first day of school and make sure their child has the required immunizations and materials.
• Avoid letting their child stay home unless he or she is truly sick. Sometimes complaints of a stomachache or headache can be a sign of anxiety and not a reason to stay home.
• Talk to teachers, school counselors, or other parents for advice on how to alleviate a child’s anxiety about going to school or other issues.
• Develop back-up plans for getting to school if something comes up. Call on a family member, a neighbor or another parent.
• Avoid scheduling medical appointments and extended trips when school is in session

Leaders are made, not born. While some leadership skills come naturally to many children (ex: confidence, compassion), most of these skills must be taught and nurtured. Unfortunately, these skills are not always taught in public schools. At Brightside Academy we recognize this deficit and have incorporated activities into our daily curriculum to help develop leadership skills in all of our children.

Developing leadership skills is a life-long process that starts in infancy. We provide daily practice of these skills from our youngest learners through our school age children to help them develop and thrive as leaders.

Communication: We begin by teaching the children emotional and nonverbal communication. They learn to recognize emotion faces and as they become aware of the emotions, we teach them the words to describe them.

We also focus on social communication. This involves participating in conversations (both speaking and listening). We also incorporate activities that incorporate the communication skills needed to work in a group effectively.

Vision: A child who can see their outcome clearly is more likely to achieve their vision. This skill is taught through reading and listening to stories with memorable lessons and characters. We not only read the stories with the children, we discuss the characters and their choices.

Leaders are readers!

Goals Setting and Reaching: As you look around our classrooms, you will see brainstorming activities, learning charts, and other planning activities. Activities such as these empower the children and help guide their learning. They help set goals and ultimately, help the children reach those goals. It also builds their self-esteem.

Confidence in Self and Others: By working in teams, the children learn collaboration and negotiation skills. They are able to work together to reach a goal, building confidence and celebrating success along the way.

Classroom jobs accomplish this on an individual basis. While our preschool and school age classrooms have assigned jobs, older infants and toddlers are encouraged to clean up their space. When the task is complete, their success is celebrated.

Persistence and Encouragement: Often, children are faced with obstacles when completing an activity. Our teachers encourage them to work through that obstacle, giving them problem-solving ideas. We celebrate the attempts they make. It is not always the end product we are looking for, but sometimes just the process of getting there.

Our teachers also provide a balance of activities. Not every activity is a challenge for every child. Allowing the children to be successful is often what is needed to give them the confidence to try a harder activity.

Decision Making: Our children are given many choices in the classroom. They are encouraged to explore, experiment and try new things. They are given the choice of their classroom job, the space they want to work at, the book choice for story time. These decision making opportunities are seen in every classroom, every day.

What can you do to develop these skills in your child? Begin by being a good role model. Teach your children to communicate in a calm, respectful way. Explain the choices you are making. Lead by example.

• As soon as they can, involve them in a team sport or other group activity. This will teach them collaboration and negotiation skills. It will also help them build their self-esteem and confidence.
• Allow the children to make decisions. Let them choose their outfit for the day or what the family should have for dinner. Giving children the opportunity to make decisions teaches them responsibility.
• Read…read…read. Talk about the characters and their choices as you read the story. Discuss how the story relates to you child or your family. Children from infancy through school age like to be read to. Spend 15-20 minutes a night reading together.

Today’s children are the leaders of tomorrow. Brightside Academy is excited to help them develop their leadership skills to see where they will take us in the future!

In the spirit of giving, this holiday season Brightside Academy chose to spread the joy across our communities by partnering with local organizations to impact our families.

We had the privilege of providing special holiday gifts to families in need in each region of the regions we serve – Ohio, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

Our 685 Rogers Avenue and 683 Barbey Street locations in Brooklyn, New York collected donations for New York Cares and The New Hope Family Worship Center. Over 50 coats and toys were collected for these organizations.

Our Philadelphia 40^th and Market academy partnered with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to donate toys, books and teddy bears to local families.

A donor from our Toledo region donated two bikes to our Woodville location. They were given to two children from hardworking families who bring their children to school each day.

Brightside Academy is grateful for our families and proud to partner with organizations that support and strengthen our communities. The holiday season made it an even more meaningful time for us to make a difference in the communities and families we serve.

Families interested in enrolling their children at Brightside Academy can contact us at 877-868-2273, visit brightsideacademy.com, or stop by a local academy for additional information.