Child's Play, Learning and Development Lab

Final dinner with all senior labbers before our lab coordinator, Janelle, heads to graduate school this summer! 🥹👩🏻‍🔬

This week, Stories with Clever Hedgehog was recognized as a trusted partner of Project Kesher! We are so proud of our team 🦔 Please visit http://ebooks4ukrkids.org to see what Clever Hedgehog is all about!! 😁📕📚

We had a blast at our Spring Lab Party! A huge THANK YOU to our wonderful crew of labbers for another amazing semester 🥳🧸🎈

👩🏻‍🔬🧪🔬Researchers Nesrin (visiting scholar) and Faezeh (graduate student) hard at work! 😊 We love sharing our research findings with the community. We’d love to see you and your child in our lab, please see the link in our bio to sign up! 🤩

Come visit us at the STEM Expo at the Delaware Children’s Museum next weekend, Saturday, February 24th from 12-3pm 😁🪁👩🏻‍🔬 We will have fun activities and coloring sheets for your child 🖍️ We hope to see you there!

Happy Friday from our lab! 🥳
🤩Did you read our latest edition of our lab newsletter, Wordplay? Swipe 👉🏻 to learn all about what we’ve been up to at the Child’s Play Lab 👧🏻🧒🏼🪁

🔗Link in bio to sign up for our research. We can’t wait to see you and your child in our lab! 😎

📚Do you read books to your kids? Here are 8 reasons why you should!
🌟 Reading to kids not only helps their vocabulary skills but also aids them in learning empathy and using their imagination.🌟

Celebrating our research with a Fall 2023 Lab Party! So much fun!😊🎉

Unlocking the Secrets of Children’s Language Learning! 🗝️🗣️🧒 Explore these six essential principles for nurturing children’s language development! From daily chatter to meaningful connections, we're shaping young minds one word at a time. 💬✨

Special thanks to Dr. Roberta Golinkoff and Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek for this great information!

Did you know that kids who are speaking - and speaking clearly- may still need speech therapy?

SLPs also work on language development which is an important part of communication! If you have a child who is over 3 years old and has difficult with some of the following skills, a speech and language evaluation may be beneficial!

When we're empowering children to play outdoors, language choice matters! Are we focused on enforcing rules or supporting development? More often than not, the goal with nature-bonded parents is to strengthen connection, development, nervous system regulation and autonomy through specific word choice while ensuring a measure of safety.

Great weekend at the Society for the Study of Human Development Conference in Philly! 👩🏻‍🔬🧬
Our lab manager, Janelle, presented a poster on children’s category formation 👧🏻🧒🏼

HERE'S WHY MESSY PLAY CAN HELP YOUR CHILD'S LEARNING DEVELOPMENT

Providing opportunities for messy play can help your child develop motor skills, critical thinking skills and creativity.

[source: Happy Art]

👋 It's August 24th - Ukrainian Independence Day!
Clever Hedgehog wishes all little Ukrainians, parents, and friends a Happy Ukrainian Independence Day! 🦔
Stories with Clever Hedgehog

Visit www.Ebooks4UKRKids.org to celebrate Ukraine with Clever Hedgehog with fun facts, stories, games, coloring pages, and more! 🎉

Amanda, one of our graduate students, presented her poster on the Pattern Alphabet this past weekend at the APA conference in DC 🌆📕🤓 Go Amanda!

Celebrated a great summer of research at our Summer Lab Party last night!🥳☀️

You probably already know about language expansions--they're some of the bread and butter of early intervention, after all!

But what if we applied this concept to play skills, too. Play expansions help the child see new ideas for how to engage with toys, hear the language associated with them, and give them an opportunity to imitate without demands or instructions to do so.

Members can get more details on the benefits of this intervention, plus a printable caregiver handout at https://www.theinformedslp.com/review/think-language-expansions-but-for-play

http://doi.org/10.1177/0271121410378758

[Visual Description: Image is titled, "Think language expansions... but for play! How to support functional play skills without prompting." The first cartoon is labeled, "When your child is playing..." showing a child's hand playing with a car. The next car is labeled, "Join in, imitate, and describe" showing both an adult and child hand playing with their own cars. The adult is saying, "The cars are fast!" The next cartoons are labeled, "Then expand your play and describe like this..." The first cartoon shows a car going into a box and is labeled, "Add objects." The adult is saying, "Let's park in the garage." The second cartoon shows two cars bumping into each other and is labeled, "Use the toy in a different way." The adult is saying, "Crash! Watch out!" The third cartoon shows a hand cleaning a car with a tissue and is labeled, "Do something to the toy". The adult is saying, "Time to wash the car!" The fourth cartoon has a toy person riding in the car and is labeled, "Make toys interact with each other." The adult is saying, "Go, driver, go!"]

Join us on July 12th as we launch a new project, Stories with Clever Hedgehog, for Ukrainian and English speaking children and their families. Please scan the QR code to register for our webinar! Hope to see you there! 😊

Dr. Roberta Golinkoff and her team are excited to announce a brand-new website for children! Join us on July 12th as we launch a new project, Stories with Clever Hedgehog, for Ukrainian and English speaking children and their families. Please scan the QR code to register for our webinar! Hope to see you there! 😊

🎉Now Available: Stories with Clever Hedgehog! As a sign of solidarity with Ukrainian families, Dr. Roberta Golinkoff’s team of Ukrainians and Americans at the Univ of Delaware created a new website of free e-books and fun entertainment in both English and Ukrainian 😄 This is an incredible resource for kids especially this summer when school is out.

Please visit us at ebooks4ukrkids.org 🎉🎊 Clever Hedgehog can’t wait to meet you and your child!

Intern Spotlight! 🥳✨ Graduating Seniors

Matisse, Mackenzie, and Logan are graduating seniors in our lab this semester and we couldn’t have done our research without them. Thank you all for so much for your hard work, passion, and dedication to research, and congratulations!! 💙💛🐓

Congratulations to Faezeh, one of our graduate students, for winning the Kevin Miner Scholarship!! We are so proud of you 😄✨🎉🥳

⭐️Intern Spotlight ⭐️

💫Jenna L. is one of our Senior RAs. Today, she presented her poster on the effect of masks wearing on children’s gender classification at the Undergraduate Psychology Reid Conference at UVA!
Kudos to Jenna! 👏📖

🎈Our Spring 2023 Lab Party was so much fun! Congratulations to our graduating seniors and our remarkable Dr. Ramirez 🎉🥳🤩 Thank you to all of our labbers for a wonderful spring semester!

☀️💐We had so much fun at the Newark Egg Hunt yesterday! We met so many new families. We hope to see you and your child in our lab soon 😄🪺🌸

Thank you .and.sew for this!!!
We also love:
➡️ Family movie nights
➡️ Board games
➡️ Reading quietly as a family in the living room
➡️ Walks after dinner

Congratulations to Dr. Alexus Ramirez! Last Thursday, Alexus successfully defended her thesis titled, "Preparing young children for success through everyday conversations." We are so proud of you!🤩🥳

🤍💜

🚨NEW ONLINE STUDY🚨

We are inviting 3-5-year-olds to participate in a study exploring how children notice shapes in the world around them! Children will also play fun puzzle and math games. Participation involves a one-time, 45-minute appointment over Zoom.

Parents, click here to sign up: https://www.childsplay.udel.edu/sign-up/

Please share!