Show # 99- Elaine Weitzman, Hanen Centre

In this episode, I talk with Elaine Weitzman from the Hanen Centre. The Hanen Centre is an international organization focused on helping parents and educators enhance the language and literacy skills of young children. The programs they have been developed are research-based and the information they offer parents is practical, easy, every day things we can do to truly enhance how our children learn.

The Hanen centre has come out with a yearly calendar that gives parents and teachers a month by month, week by week resource of how to specifically help build critical language skills for young children. This is a straight-forward, easy to use guide to doing simple things that can have a big, long term impact on your child’s education and literacy.

To give you some perspective on how important this is, a recent show entitled “Going Big” on This American Life by Ira Glass featured a segment regarding the Harlem Children’s Zone, an ambitious program focused on helping parents help their children in the same way the Hanen Centre does- and it’s working miracles in terms of improving children’s scholastic outcomes.

It’s simple things, like reading to your child, asking them questions, talking about emotions, answering those endles “Why?” questions that help spark your child’s curiosity about the world and encourage them to develop these critical skills necessary for later literacy and academic success.

Please contact the Hanen Centre through their website at www.hanen.org. The calendar for 2009 is now available, and sample months are available on their website.

Click here to listen to Elaine Weitzman, Hanen Center- Developing Early Language Skills with your kids

Show # 80- Nancy Thomas- Early Childhood Education and Spotting Issues

Nancy Thomas (also my Mother In Law) is an expert in early childhood education. nancy has her master’s in early childhood education from Wheelock Coolege in Boston, and has worked in the field for over thirty years. She has inspected day care centers and preschools for Broward and Dade County, Florida; she has owned her own center, and she teaches classes through Nova University.

When a child seems to be having some developmental delays or is not like the rest of the kids, where do you go for help, and what questions do you ask? Nancy was one of my primary resources, and we spoke about what it was like when my oldest son seemed to have some problems and how we handled that.

Nancy has always been a great source for me when I’ve been worried about my kids, and in this interview, we sit down and discuss how children develop over time and cognitive development; trusting a parent’s intuition; why teachers hate giving bad news; contextual learning, the importance of story-telling as a learning tool; making family connections; and teaching children both to take the risks they need to learn as well as learning to be independent over time. Nancy is always thoughtful and provoking, and I know you will find her guidance as helpful as I have.

Sorry for the delay in shows- stomach flu has had us under the weather- but we’re back!

As always, please email us at ldpodcast@gmail.com or you can contact me via skype at whitney.hoffman, or on twitter as Ldpodcast!

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