Starting with Character - by Cathy Waggoner & Martha Herndon (Paperback)

About the Book

Activities and lessons for building good character through play in infants, toddlers, and twos.

Book Synopsis

Starting with Character focuses on character development in infants, toddlers, and twos. This guide provides everything needed for preparing the environment, creating routines, and evaluating individual learning styles. Lesson plans and steps for creating new lessons are provided, as well as guides for evaluating children's progress. Facilitate the development of key character traits in children: caring, honesty, integrity, respect, responsibility, and self-discipline.

Cathy Waggoner has worked in the field of education since 1989 with experience as a child care director and administrator at the Promethean Foundation.

Martha Herndon, PhD, has worked as both an ECE educator and researcher since 1975.

Review Quotes

According to the authors, both educators, previous research proposed that young babies and toddlers were too egocentric to understand another person's perspective. However, new approaches appreciate the enormous capacity for learning that happens in these early years and argue that even the youngest ones have a significant ability for moral learning. -Waggoner and Herndon explore how character is shaped through children's interactions with others, particularly primary caregivers, and focus their activities on six qualities typically associated with a strong spirit: caring, honesty, integrity, respect, responsibility, and self-discipline. With a healthy acknowledgment of child-development stages and limitations, the authors present activities such as peekaboo and tummy time for babies, followed by games such as "pillow walking" and "feeding the monster" for toddlers and two-year-olds. An alphabetical list of the games accompanied by recommended reading concludes this absorbing and informative offering. VERDICT Recommended for early literacy collections.--Library Journal

This book gives parents and teachers of little ones the concrete EASY activities that they can start TODAY that will prepare children for tomorrow. It encourages caregivers to look beyond using short-term applied behavior methods and take a long-term view that creates future citizens of good character. I enjoyed the narration of the case studies that provided the reader with more interest. As a provider of early intervention services, I was happy to see that many of the activities can also be easily adapted to improve communication and social pragmatic skills in young children. Parents often ask me for tips on how to improve their child's behavior, but since I read this book I was able to better articulate the importance of instilling character and describe an activity that would allow them to work toward the goal of character and look beyond behavior.--Rebecca Gray, CCC-SLP

About the Author

Cathy Waggoner has worked in the field of education since 1989 with experience as a daycare director and now an administrator at the Promethean Foundation. Her work with young children has focused on character development and the importance of providing quality preschool for all children.

Martha Herndon, PhD, has worked as both an ECE educator and researcher since 1975. Martha received her PhD in Individual and Family Behavior from the University of Tennessee with a focus on developing programs and optimal environments for children and families.