AROUND HOME : Learning Fun

A VISIT TO A teachers’ supply store is a reminder that play is child’s work. Good instructional materials are designed to be entertaining. Street and highway signs, posters and maps (of California, the United States or the moon) can brighten a child’s room. Child-scale brooms and easels, flannel boards, school-quality microscopes, foreign-language flash cards, puppets, and puzzles and games that build reading, math and science skills can be found.

Teachers’ supply stores are an excellent source of arts and crafts materials. Art tissue paper and pipe cleaners in a rainbow of colors are available, as are assortments of beads, glitter and seasonal and holiday merchandise. Because arts and crafts materials are often intended for a class project, color-separated packages are available. Be prepared to buy in quantity.

In addition to materials for teachers to use with children, most stores also carry guides and source books for teachers to use themselves, from ways to introduce foreign language into the elementary classroom, to back-yard science projects. Parents can adapt most of these ideas to home use with little or no modification.

Most teachers’ supply stores cater to educational levels from preschool to high school. Some publish catalogues and will ship merchandise. Larger items such as student desks and those “industrial-strength” tricycles that are made to survive several generations of three-year-olds, might have to be specially ordered.

Teachers supply stores include Lakeshore Curriculum Materials Co. in Los Angeles and San Diego (also catalogue sales); Angels Supply in Pasadena (specializes in preschool supplies; A. Warren’s Educational Supplies in Covina and Rosemead (merchandise carried includes educational computer software; Educative Toys and Supplies in Van Nuys; Syl-Bern in Reseda (aides for slow and gifted children); Kid Equipment in Los Angeles; CM School Supply, in Fullerton, and Little Red School House in Buena Park.