Read, Play, and Learn!® Seminar

Read, Play, and Learn!® An Integrated, Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum for Young Children

This seminar examines a curriculum model that incorporates literacy and play into a developmentally appropriate curriculum for children of all ability levels. It introduces classroom activities that are relevant, challenging, accessible to all children, and designed to promote independent learning and facilitate developmental progress. Dr. Linder discusses how Read, Play, and Learn!® can be used with children with disabilities as well as typically developing children to address cognitive, communication, social-emotional, and sensorimotor development in addition to pre-academic skills. She explains the activities and processes incorporated into preschool and kindergarten classrooms and uses slides to illustrate examples of curriculum modules.

Participants will learn how to develop centers that integrate developmental, educational, and therapeutic approaches. The curriculum, which utilizes storybooks as the basis for integrated study, includes emerging literacy, math, and science centers in addition to dramatic play, floor and table play, sensory and motor centers, music, and art. Dr. Linder shows early childhood professionals how to identify each child’s level of learning (sensorimotor, functional, symbolic) and adapt activities so that each can be challenging yet accessible to children at all levels of learning. She explains how to involve team members (teachers, paraprofessionals, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech–language pathologists) and the children’s families. Participants will learn to use collaboration to implement IEP goals as part of the curriculum and extend activities and skills gained beyond the classroom.

In this seminar, participants will

• become familiar with a curriculum that is designed to include children with disabilities in childcare and early educational settings
• learn how a literacy and play-based curriculum can address developmental and educational targets
• learn to combine pre-academic and play approaches and include parents as partners in the learning process

Who will benefit from this seminar?

Educators, curriculum specialists, early intervention teams, early childhood educators, reading specialists, education administrators, and related service professionals