Open House

The Burlington Integrated Preschool and the LABBB Early Childhood Program will be hosting an Open House on Friday, January 21, 2010 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Burlington High School - where the programs are located. This Open House provides families with an opportunity to view the programs, meet the teachers and pickup registration packets to enroll their children for next year. Students must be 3 years old by August 31, 2011. For more information call Laura at 781-270-1808.

Book Pack Survey

Dear Parents:

In October of this year we began a new pre-literacy initiative at the Burlington Integrated Preschool. Each week you have received a book pack that is filled with high quality children’s books. Included with the books are reading prompts that are used to help develop beginning early literacy skills.

As a team we are pleased with how well the bock pack program is going. The children seem excited to take the back packs home on Thursdays. We are pleased that they are always returned on Tuesdays and in the same shape they went home in. However, we don’t know how families feel about the program and if you are enjoying it and finding it beneficial.

We would like to ask that you take a minute and go to our program blog and fill out the survey about the program. The survey is designed to help us fine tune the program and ensure it is meeting the needs of all families.

Thank You for taking the time to fill out the survey


Click here to take survey

PAC Meeting 1/19/2011 @ 7:00

Parents, How are your children doing in school? Would

you like to understand their strengths,

weaknesses and learning style? The Burlington PAC

invites you to a presentation, "Understanding Neuropsychological Evaluations" presented by Dr. Ann Helmus from NESCA,www.nesca-newton.com . Dr. Helmus is a dedicated, talented Neuropsychologist who will walk you through what a full educational evaluation is and what you can do with it's results.

The presentation will be held on Wednesday

January 19, 2011 at 7:00 P.M. in the School Committee Room at Burlington High School 123

Cambridge St. in Burlington Ma. For more information contact Dennis McCarron at

dandmmccarron@hotmail.com or at 781-273-5663.

Preschool Life Skills Teaching Program Skill 1

When the students return to school on Monday we will begin introducing a new social skills curriculum, The Preschool Life Skills. The curriculum we will be introducing was written and researched by Dr. Greg Hanley, BCBA. Dr. Hanley is a consultant to our program and will help us to support and implement the curriculum. The first skill we will target is for children to stop what they are doing and respond to their name being called. The expectation is that this skill will happen in both large and small group settings. Children will be expected to stop what they are doing and respond during times that they may be engaged with a favorite activity. I have attached a protocol that will be following in all the classrooms. If you have any questions or concerns about this new curriculum feel free to stop by the office, send an email or give me a call.

Preschool Life Skills Teaching Program

Skill 1

This semester, we are working to help your child learn some important social skills. Below, we have listed the skill that is currently being taught in the classroom, along with the general times we teach the skill. In addition, we have described our feedback procedure to suggest ways in which you can react as your child begins to acquire these new social skills.

The Skill: When an adult calls the child by first name, the child will stop competing behavior within 2 seconds, orient towards the speaker, and say, “Yes.”

General times we teach this skill: I. In a group setting (e.g., circle time) II. During meals (e.g., prior to passing a food item) III. While the child is playing (e.g., center time) IV. During a transition (e.g., before the child leaves or enters the classroom) Note: We teach this skill anytime we call the child’s name, and we try to call their name before we issue any instruction as well as before we provide some positive feedback

Feedback: If the child stops the competing behavior, looks up towards the adult and says “Yes” within 2 s of their name being called, the adult will provide enthusiastic praise (“Good job stopping, looking, and saying “Yes” when I called your name.”) and, if possible, provide access to a something fun.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to call _781-273-7632____________. Otherwise, we hope that our combined efforts help your child be as happy and social as possible.

Want to get your kids into college? Let them play

Some interesting reading and research that supports the philosophy of the Integrated Preschool

Editor's note: Erika Christakis, MEd, MPH, is an early childhood teacher and former preschool director. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. Together, they serve as Masters of Pforzheimer House, one of the undergraduate residential houses at Harvard College.

(CNN) -- Every day where we work, we see our young students struggling with the transition from home to school. They're all wonderful kids, but some can't share easily or listen in a group.

Some have impulse control problems and have trouble keeping their hands to themselves; others don't always see that actions have consequences; a few suffer terribly from separation anxiety.

We're not talking about preschool children. These are Harvard undergraduate students whom we teach and advise. They all know how to work, but some of them haven't learned how to play.

Parents, educators, psychologists, neuroscientists, and politicians generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to preparing very young children for school: play-based or skills-based.

These two kinds of curricula are often pitted against one another as a zero-sum game: If you want to protect your daughter's childhood, so the argument goes, choose a play-based program; but if you want her to get into Harvard, you'd better make sure you're brushing up on the ABC flashcards every night before bed.

We think it is quite the reverse. Or, in any case, if you want your child to succeed in college, the play-based curriculum is the way to go.

In fact, we wonder why play is not encouraged in educational periods later in the developmental life of young people -- giving kids more practice as they get closer to the ages of our students.

Why do this? One of the best predictors of school success is the ability to control impulses. Children who can control their impulse to be the center of the universe, and -- relatedly -- who can assume the perspective of another person, are better equipped to learn.

Psychologists calls this the "theory of mind": the ability to recognize that our own ideas, beliefs, and desires are distinct from those of the people around us. When a four-year-old destroys someone's carefully constructed block castle or a 20-year-old belligerently monopolizes the class discussion on a routine basis, we might conclude that they are unaware of the feelings of the people around them.

The beauty of a play-based curriculum is that very young children can routinely observe and learn from others' emotions and experiences. Skills-based curricula, on the other hand, are sometimes derisively known as "drill and kill" programs because most teachers understand that young children can't learn meaningfully in the social isolation required for such an approach.

How do these approaches look different in a classroom? Preschoolers in both kinds of programs might learn about hibernating squirrels, for example, but in the skills-based program, the child could be asked to fill out a worksheet, counting (or guessing) the number of nuts in a basket and coloring the squirrel's fur.

In a play-based curriculum, by contrast, a child might hear stories about squirrels and be asked why a squirrel accumulates nuts or has fur. The child might then collaborate with peers in the construction of a squirrel habitat, learning not only about number sense, measurement, and other principles needed for engineering, but also about how to listen to, and express, ideas.

The child filling out the worksheet is engaged in a more one-dimensional task, but the child in the play-based program interacts meaningfully with peers, materials, and ideas.

Programs centered around constructive, teacher-moderated play are very effective. For instance, one randomized, controlled trial had 4- and 5-year-olds engage in make-believe play with adults and found substantial and durable gains in the ability of children to show self-control and to delay gratification. Countless other studies support the association between dramatic play and self-regulation.

Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person's shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient for intellectual and social-emotional success.

The real "readiness" skills that make for an academically successful kindergartener or college student have as much to do with emotional intelligence as they do with academic preparation. Kindergartners need to know not just sight words and lower case letters, but how to search for meaning. The same is true of 18-year-olds.

As admissions officers at selective colleges like to say, an entire freshman class could be filled with students with perfect grades and test scores. But academic achievement in college requires readiness skills that transcend mere book learning. It requires the ability to engage actively with people and ideas. In short, it requires a deep connection with the world.

For a five year-old, this connection begins and ends with the creating, questioning, imitating, dreaming, and sharing that characterize play. When we deny young children play, we are denying them the right to understand the world. By the time they get to college, we will have denied them the opportunity to fix the world too.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Erika and Nicholas Christakis.