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Remember High Hat? He’s the leading character in the research based, Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program by Ron Goldman and Martha Lynch. This past month High Hat traveled around with Mardell Moeller Granger of Chester, Illinois.

Those of you with High Hat dolls, we’re waiting for your pictures! Email: webmaster@agsnet.com

High Hat chums with the one and only "Popeye" in Chester, Illinois.

High Hat at a covered bridge near Chester, Illinois

High Hat at Fort Kaskaskia overlooking the Mississippi River.

High Hat visits a kindergarten class at Evansville Attendance Center- see HH front row, center

High hat visits with SLPs at Southwestern Illinois Speech Language Hearing Association

Remember High Hat? He’s the leading character in the research based, Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program by Ron Goldman and Martha Lynch. Last month’s newsletter found High Hat in New Brunswick and Minnesota. This month see pictures of his visit to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the Schmitz family of Commerce Twp., Michigan. Each month, we’ll feature High Hat in different locations. Thanks to Carol Schmitz for this month’s pictures!

Where's High Hat? Look carefully for him on the log. High Hat at White Fish Pointe Light House on Lake Superior. "Sand in m'shoes, sand in m'shoes..." High Hat at White Fish Pointe at Lake Superior in Michigan. Whoa High Hat! Careful! High Hat visits the Locks at Sault Saint Marie, Michigan.

"Sand in m'shoes, sand in m'shoes..." High Hat at White Fish Pointe at Lake Superior in Michigan.

Whoa High Hat! Careful! High Hat visits the Locks at Sault Saint Marie, Michigan.

Remember High Hat? He’s the leading character in, “Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program” by Ron Goldman and Martha Lynch. In last month’s newsletter we asked you to send pictures of High Hat visiting your part of the country to share with our readers. Each month we’ll feature High Hat in different locations.

Thanks to readers Rhonda Rubin and Ryan Williams, this month’s travelogue finds High Hat and friends in Shediac, New Brunswick and at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Those of you with High Hat dolls, we’re waiting for your pictures! Email: webmaster@agsnet.com

Julie, age 9, Natalie, age 4, and Lynne age 7 [see High Hat peeking between Natalie and Lynne]. The girls visited Shediac, New Brunswick this summer. Why? See the next photo…”]

Meet the Arsenaults: [L to R

... Because they wanted to see the Home of the World's Largest Lobster! See High Hat left on Lynne's lap

Julie, Natalie, and Lynne shifted for a better view. Can you High Hat?

Where is Waldo…er… High Hat? Watching the American League Championship Series in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Mr. October. High Hat cheered for the Minnesota Twins at the American League Championship Series in Minneapolis.

High Hat with his "Homer Hankie" from the Minnesota Twins. Sorry Twins, better luck next year.

Mr. High Hat-featured in the ensuing story-plays a starring role in the early reading program, “Sounds and Symbols,” developed by AGS Publishing.

Read stories about loveable High Hat and you discover that he shows up at some unusual places, at just the right moment. This summer was no different.

High Hat knows the fine art of mingling and making new friends. On his summer vacation he was captured on film hunting for antiques . . . taking in a baseball game . . . and enjoying the company of several speech-language professionals.

Before you swing into the 2002/2003 school year, take a few moments to browse High Hat’s picture travelogue. Here’s to the memories of summer lingering and sustaining us for the rest of the year!

Always ready to solve a problem—even on vacation!

Perching on the arm of Lavinia Colvin.

Laureen McHatton visits with High Hat.

Lynda Mayster has a new friend.

Gwen Maxie finds High Hat delightful.

Linda Kukler introduces the guest of honor.

Karen Bryar and friend off for a night on the town.

Roberta Silver sets a special place for High Hat at the table.

High Hat has the best view in the room.

Warming up for a baseball game at Comiskey Park

It's time to relax on the back porch.

High Hat finds a "bear" of a resting spot on a walk through the woods.

Visiting an antique shop, High Hat blends in with other novelties.

The bulletin board in Janet Kujat's and Terri Haberman's classroom celebrates High Hat

At North Star Community School dedicated teachers and an astounding program help students learn to read

Fishing for sounds and symbols

The tour of North Star Community School continues and the discovery of how kindergarten teachers are finding unique ways to teach early reading skills to their students.

In another corner of the building a small group of students work with teachers Janet Kujat and Terri Haberman on a Sounds & Symbols activity. Janet has created a great review and reinforcement game with a plastic New Year’s Eve hat. The game titled, “Uh-Oh High Hat,” is a combination of Go Fish and Bingo. The children’s grinning faces reveal excitement and anticipation. In fact, they view this game as their reward of the day.

Children playing the "Uh-Oh High Hat" game

To play the game, the children take turns pulling a miniature character card out of the hat and saying the character’s name and sound. Whoever is the first to fill up their “Bingo” card wins. A couple of High Hat character cards are mixed in with the others in the hat. If a student picks out this card, he or she has to say, “Uh-Oh High Hat” and then put all of his or her own cards back in the hat. In essence, the child has to start all over. You can tell the class is having fun and learning at the same time.

Multi-sensory activities

Every kindergarten teacher at the school brings their own personality to the Sounds & Symbols program. Teacher Barb Stevens is no exception. Today, Barb settles into her white rocking chair with the High Hat puppet, while a dozen students take their place on the carpeting in front of her. She sets the mood for the upcoming lesson by playing The High Hat Song. “Here comes High Hat, oh ho! He’s back again today . . . It’s time to take your place.”

Students are eager to identify the sounds in the balloons

The Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program incorporates a variety of multi-sensory activities to address different learning styles. Through a “balloon” activity, children practice identifying and saying sounds they have learned. On the board, Barb writes five symbols and draws circles around each one. First she points to ‘t’ and asks the class, “Who can find the ‘t’ sound?” All the children raise their hands, hoping to be selected.

Barb starts with an eager girl in front who approaches the board and points to ‘t.’ “Which sound did you find?” Barb asks. The student says the ‘t’ sound out loud and then draws a string onto the corresponding balloon. Barb continues the process so all the children have a chance to identify and repeat a sound. She also encourages the class to say each sound out loud together.

Barb Stevens uses a large pocket chart to hold Sounds & Symbols flash cards

Throughout her lesson, practice and repetition help instill learning. “The program works,” says Barb. “[Sounds & Symbols] is so great that we will be able to write Mother’s Day cards in May.” On a counter at the back of the classroom Barb has organized her Sounds & Symbols materials in a unique way. She has filed each character card, flash card, and blackline master by symbol into a large file box. She says this system works well for her, making it easy to prepare her lessons. The filing box also keeps the materials safe and protected.

Reading can begin in kindergarten

In Bob Wold’s classroom a High Hat doll hangs near the bulletin board. Various aquariums filled with turtles, lizards, and insects surround the perimeter. He presents one to two Sounds & Symbols lessons a day and introduces a new sound every three or four days. The progress students have made is truly amazing.

Barb's filing system holds Sounds & Symbols materials

Bob insists the Sounds & Symbols lessons, “are the most important academic part of their day.” Throughout activities, he calls on students silently by selecting a stick with a child’s first name written on it from a cup. His students recognize their names instantly.

Student involvement is key to Bob’s approach. He asks children to volunteer to be the “teacher” or a “helper.” He sits down, while students take turns pointing to symbols and having the class say the sound. He also writes words on the board that are unfamiliar to them, and has them sound out the words letter by letter. During the last activity he encourages children to make up sentences using particular words.

Teachers at North Star Community School find it easy to adapt Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program to their own styles. With comprehensive lessons and abundant choices of activities, it’s easy to keep students motivated. When the ability to read is the foundation to learning, a high quality reading program is crucial to a student’s overall success in school. Barb Stevens believes in it because it’s based on sound research and designed by experts in the field. Like the other teachers at North Star, she keeps seeing the results, day after day.

High Hat doll in the classroom

The "name sticks" Bob uses to call on students

Hand-embroidered Hmong artwork brightens the school

At North Star Community School dedicated teachers and an astounding program help students learn to read

On a quiet, residential street in Minneapolis, Minnesota resides North Star Community School. The building—a minimalist modern structure of concrete and glass—contrasts with the 1940′s bungalows surrounding it. On a winter day, the streets are silent, except for the occasional crunch of tires on snow. But inside, you can hear the eager voices of elementary school children and teachers working together in open learning spaces and classrooms.

Despite the hard and expansive gray concrete walls, the school emits warmth and vibrancy. Hand-embroidered Hmong wall hangings, larger than life, fill the walls with patterns and color. The artwork has been donated to the school by parents. Fewer than 800 children attend North Star, which serves kindergarten through fifth grade students.

Just to the right of the front entrance you can find the offices of dedicated staff, like Valerie Sandler, an Educational Speech/Language Pathologist. Outgoing and enthusiastic, Valerie, has worked diligently to raise the reading scores of kindergarten students at North Star.

A turnaround in kindergarten class scores

Valerie Sandler, Educational Speech/Language Pathologist

At North Star, the kindergarten students’ entrance scores are among the lowest in the district. But by spring, the situation has changed entirely. According to Valerie, after using Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program for a year, “North Star kindergarten classes have exceeded district averages especially in sound/symbol identification and blending.” Janet Kujat, a kindergarten teacher, adds, “We’ve had more kids able to sound out words than ever before.” It’s a major achievement, especially for children who are often economically disadvantaged and/or learning English as a second language. Valerie, who embraces a teamwork approach, introduced Sounds & Symbols to the kindergarten teachers, a communication prep specialist (K-Grade 1), and a special education teacher (Grades 1-3).

Barb Stevens, Kindergarten Teacher with the High Hat puppet

Another kindergarten teacher, Barb Stevens, who has taught at the school for four years, is amazed at the results they are getting with Sounds & Symbols. She explains, “Some kids come to school with nothing.” Many North Star kindergarten students are not exposed to reading and books at home. They haven’t been held in a lap and read to, and therefore lack many of the prereading skills other children learn at home. Valerie adds, “Some children even begin kindergarten without knowing how to count to one, use scissors, and color with crayons.” The teachers have been delighted with the comprehensive set of materials in Sounds & Symbols, the well-organized lessons, and suggested activities. All in all, they find the lessons adaptable to their own styles and creative impulses. It’s a pleasure watching teachers weave their magic with the children.

Storytelling introduces a new sound

Amy Goodrich reading "Zoo Zoo" to the class

Together, kindergarten teachers, Amy Goodrich and Kristin Jeness, teach a class of forty students. The children sit cross-legged on a floor watching Amy, as she begins the Sounds & Symbols story, titled, “Zoo Zoo.” Kristin takes a chair towards the back to make sure all the children are paying attention. She doesn’t have to worry, however, because, as soon as Amy begins to read about Zoo Zoo, the zookeeper, one girl puts her finger to her lips and whispers, “shh” to the children around her.

High Hat—the central character of the Sounds & Symbols program and the star in all the stories—wears a tall green and white striped hat. He solves problems by pulling things either out of his hat or a special pocket. “High Hat is my name, and helping people is my game.”

In today’s story, High Hat helps solve the zookeeper’s problem by bringing some new, unusual animals to the zoo. All these new animals have a “z” sound in their names like “Oze,” an animal with “three sharp teeth, five big toes, a tail, eight fingers, and one long nose.”

Sounds & Symbols character cards and flash cards displayed together on the bulletin board

As Amy reads the passage, ” ‘Look at those!’ said Zoo Zoo. ‘We’ll have some real shows with our Oze, I suppose,’” the children are entranced. They listen attentively with their eyes focused on the colorful storybook pictures. To help them learn the “z” sound, the story incorporates rhyme, alliteration, and repetition. Many of the words contain the “z” sound—words like, “grizzly,” “zebras,” and “lizards.”

Without missing a beat, the children say the last line of the story out loud, “Because more than anything else, High Hat likes to make people happy.” They know that every story ends with this fabulous line and they relish the opportunity to participate.

Next, Amy holds up Zoo Zoo’s character card and asks each child to say its sound. So many of the children raise their hands ready to respond. Then she asks which symbol it goes with on the bulletin board. All the character cards and sound symbols the children have learned in previous lessons are displayed in a row. Posting the newest character card demonstrates visually the incredible progress students are making.

Learning sound discrimination and sequencing

Student erasing one of the sound symbols

The class moves on to reviewing other sound symbols like “w” and “b.” Amy uses an erasable white board and writes down several sound symbols. She asks students to come up one at a time and erase the sound that she pronounces.

Each activity takes less than a few minutes and children stay involved and interested. Amy next asks the children to put their hands on their shoulders when they hear the “z” sound. She reads a list of words including “zoo” and “zipper.” She then asks the class when did they hear the “z” in “zipper”? First? Middle? Or end?

Often children in the class are asked to come up with their own examples—ones that are even more difficult than the teacher’s examples. Today a child volunteers a word with a “z” sound, “Isabelle,” which happens to be the name of their teacher’s daughter. When the children individually or as a class answer correctly or provide brilliant examples, Amy offers lots of positive verbal reinforcement, such as the unique exclamation, “Kiss your smart brains!”

What Amy appreciates particularly about Sounds & Symbols is that “it asks you to use language, like blending sounds.” These skills are indeed the building blocks of learning to recognize words.

Do you have a “success story” about the Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program (or High Hat) that you would be willing to share?

Have you achieved measurable results (for example, higher test scores) with the Sounds & Symbols (or High Hat) program?

Have you found Sounds & Symbols (or High Hat) to be especially effective when using the program in a particular way or with a particular child?

From all over the country we have heard remarks such as “I’ve never had a child not learn to read with this program,” or “It has done wonders for my ESL students,” or “Our students had the highest test scores in the district.” Now we would like to hear the stories behind these statements.

We are preparing a technical manual for the Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program. The manual will contain a synopsis of research studies done with earlier versions of Sounds & Symbols. (If you have done research with this program or know someone who has, please let us know so we can incorporate it in this manual.) We would also like to include case studies, success stories, testimonials, and other anecdotal information. That’s where you come in . . . .

We are not looking for 5-page reports. What we are looking for are some true stories (from a few paragraphs to a couple pages) of how Sounds & Symbols has effectively helped you reach children just learning to read. We will need your permission to use your name and job title in conjunction with your story.

If you decide to share your story with us, we will send you a complimentary High Hat hat (a $40 value) as a thank-you gift. You will also be entered into a drawing for a new Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program kit (a $300 value).

But you have to hurry! Our deadline is February 15, 2002.

Martha Lynch and Ronald Goldman at the first 1996 Martha E. Lynch Lecture

Teacher. Speech-language pathologist. Lecturer. Researcher. Author. These titles are just some of the many roles Martha E. Lynch has embraced throughout her extraordinary career. She has dedicated approximately forty years of her life to the profession of speech-language pathology, and her story is one of steadfast service, innovation, and inspiration.

As an undergraduate college student, Martha majored in elementary education at Middle Tennessee State University. While student teaching, she encountered students with articulation disorders, one student who stuttered, and another with an unrepaired cleft palate. Because of these experiences, Martha became very interested in speech-language pathology. She minored in public speaking and took every speech class available at the college.

After graduating, Martha still set her goal on becoming a classroom teacher, but wanted to get her masters. She was offered a graduate scholarship at Vanderbilt University and began to pursue a masters degree in speech-language pathology. “I thought speech-language pathology would be a great background for a classroom teacher. At that point, schools were not required to have speech-language pathologists in classrooms. It was not a state or federal law,” Martha explains.

After a few months Martha decided to stay in the area of speech-language pathology and use her teaching background as supplementary. Before she graduated, she accepted a position at Bill Wilkerson Hearing & Speech Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “One of my first responsibilities was to set up a program for severely language-impaired kids. I organized and taught most of these classes myself. I always viewed myself as a teacher, but with the special skills of a speech-language pathologist,” says Martha.

She continued to work at Wilkerson Center after receiving her M.S. degree from Vanderbilt University. During her 14-year tenure at the center, she served as a speech clinician, supervisor of the children’s language program, research assistant, coordinator of speech pathology, clinical coordinator, chief speech pathologist, and instructor at Vanderbilt and Peabody College.

One of the projects Martha worked on included developing a new program for children with severe speech problems. She worked with Dr. Ronald Goldman, a researcher at Wilkerson.

Martha elaborates: “At the time I was working with kids who did not benefit from the traditional auditory approach. Back then other approaches weren’t available. So I experimented and tied in some things used in schools from my elementary education background. I began showing the visual symbols to these kids while I was working on their speech, rather than just using an auditory approach. When we were working on a sound, I would teach them the letter and the sound that the letter made and found that it did help.”

Martha and Ronald then started to develop a program to meet the needs of these children. Ronald received a research grant, and they started using the newly developed phonemic visual oral association approach to see if it would indeed improve children’s articulation abilities. They used the Initial Teaching Alphabet developed by Sir Isaac Pitman as their symbol system.

“We got excellent results from the project. We found that the kids did make faster progress. The severe dyspraxic kids and the severe artic kids corrected more errors over a given period of time with the phonemic visual oral association approach, as opposed to the traditional auditory approach. We did additional studies and developed our own modified alphabet that also had a one-on-one sound correspondence, so that there wouldn’t be any confusion and could be used with very young children.” Ronald and Martha expanded the research project to develop the Goldman-Lynch Sounds & Symbols Development Kit. They field-tested the program for about eight years before it was published in 1971.

The Goldman-Lynch Sounds & Symbols Development Kit was revised in 1986 and renamed the High Hat Early Reading Program. This year the program was updated again and is now titled, Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program.

According to Ronald, in the past children with language difficulties were not diagnosed or treated until they reached the first and second grades. Today screening occurs at the prekindergarten through kindergarten level. He credits Martha with helping make that happen by being a strong advocate for early intervention. “Martha has been involved with literacy—reading and phonics—since the ’60s and ’70s. She is one of the pioneers of early intervention,” he says.

For the last 24 years, Martha has worked in private practice as a speech-language pathologist in Nashville, Tennessee. She likes the direct patient contact and has a great deal of experience working with children who have dyslexia, dysgraphia, and other communication disorders. Ronald describes her as “outstanding,” “highly respected,” and “a clinician’s clinician.” He adds, “If I had a child who needed intervention, Martha would be the one I would choose to work with my child.”

Martha Lynch and Ronald Goldman at the fifth 1996 Martha E. Lynch Lecture

Martha Lynch is truly dedicated to teaching and encouraging others to become the best teachers they can be. She has given many lectures and seminars throughout the United States and also lectured in Canada and South America. She explains, “When I was teaching graduate students at Vanderbilt University it was very apparent to me that a speech-language pathologist has to be a teacher first. Some, and I emphasize, some speech-language pathologists get upset when you refer to them as teachers, because they see themselves as ‘more than that.’ But to me, there’s nothing better than being a teacher.”

Martha continues to promote the importance of early intervention, especially to her colleagues. “Speech-language pathologists need to know how to teach reading to young children. No one was doing this in the past. They were working with adults who had lost their ability to read, but not with children. Nobody was addressing the educational needs of these young children. Consequently, my background in elementary education showed me that it could be done, and so I started teaching reading as a part of my language therapy. I’ve taught my own staff how to do it, and they’ve taught others. Through the lectures and workshops I’ve given over the years, I’ve tried to teach the same thing. There are a lot of people who are now addressing the needs of these language disordered children who are in academic distress. ASHA [the American Speech-Language Hearing Association] has also issued a statement about our responsibility towards literacy. Fortunately, more and more speech-language pathologists are moving in that direction.”

Martha feels it is important to bridge the gap between therapy and the classroom. In her practice she not only provides therapy for communication disorders, but she tutors children in academics, particularly in reading and writing. “I have always tried to make classroom teachers and the education community aware of the problems of kids who have communication difficulties, and speech-language pathologists in the schools aware of the academic needs of these children.” She adds, “We need to become a part of their educational system.”

Throughout her career, Martha has received awards and recognition for her advocacy and service to others. A couple of years ago she received the Distinguished Service Award from the Tennessee Association of Audiologists and Speech/Language Pathologists (TAASLP). At the time she was recovering from major eye surgery and was asked to have breakfast with two friends. She did not know that she would end up at the state convention for their awards breakfast. There they presented her with an award. Martha recalls, “When they gave me the award they called me a pioneer. All I could picture in my mind was a little old lady sitting in a wagon wearing a bonnet.” Needless to say, that was not the image she had of herself.

When asked about the recognition she has received, Martha says, “I don’t view myself as others do. I see myself as a regular person that does not deserve that much honor or acclaim. I am just grateful that God has given me the opportunity to serve others.”

Eleven years ago, the Bill Wilkerson Hearing & Speech Center announced as part of its 40th anniversary their first annual guest lecture series. This lecture series was named in honor of Martha Lynch. The late Dr. Freeman McConnell, one of Martha’s mentors and a former director of the center, said of her, “[Martha's] tenure of more than a decade on the staff of Bill Wilkerson, where she served as chief speech-language pathologist, was marked by meticulous organizational skills, a high sense of duty, and most of all, an unequivocal commitment to high professional standards in serving communicatively disordered patients.”

Four years ago the center merged with Vanderbilt University and became the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center for Otolaryngology and Communication Sciences. To date, the Annual Martha E. Lynch Guest Lecture Series has brought in 36 speakers to discuss subjects of particular interest to school speech-language pathologists.

The series “was designed for the continuing education needs of speech-language pathologists,” explains Kate Carney, the public relations coordinator for the center. She credits Martha with “affecting thousands of children’s lives—including myself.” That’s because back in 1965, when Kate was four years old, she was part of the original Goldman-Lynch study. She received phonemic visual oral association tutoring directly from Martha as part of a sample of children who did not have language disorders. She remembers the lessons and being able to read before she entered school.

“Forty to seventy people attend each seminar in the Nashville area. It’s a good thing we do for the community. People are generally very pleased with the sessions and grateful for the information,” Kate adds. Three lectures have been scheduled to date for the upcoming series. Melissa Kirby will speak on voice disorders in children in December 2001; Ann Sanders will discuss state eligibility requirements for special education services in March 2002; and Kathleen Whitmire will examine changes in IDEA in April 2002. A fourth lecture will be announced later.

Martha was very honored and surprised by the creation of the lecture series. She tries to attend every lecture she can. She has also been a presenter.

After almost forty years of “teaching,” Martha is amazed by the number of students she’s worked with—and now finds herself working with her students’ children. Loved by so many, Martha often receives invitations to weddings and graduations. The fact that she’s invited to participate in many important milestones of her students’ lives speaks volumes.

Martha recalls one family in particular. “A mother of a child I was working with had dyspraxia, as did her child. I told her she really needed to be in therapy at the same time as her son in order to make the best use of his correction. She enrolled. One day she called me right before her session to say she couldn’t wait to talk to me . . . She told me that today—for the first time in her whole life—she called a doctor’s office and made her own appointment. ‘They could understand me,’ she said.”

When asked about what has been the most rewarding part of her career, Martha replies, “Seeing my students come in and make strides in therapy and apply the skills they’ve learned is what it’s all about. For many of these individuals what they learn has a great impact on their present and their future. Knowing this is enough to keep me going, even on those difficult days.”

Many moons ago, in 1971, AGS published the Goldman-Lynch Sounds and Symbols Development Kit. Authored by Dr. Ronald Goldman and Martha E. Lynch, the kit was originally designed to put children on the path to reading with early phonics training, speech improvement, and speech therapy. This research-based program helped children learn to discriminate sounds, determine sound positions, segment or sound out syllables and words, delete and substitute sounds, and blend the sounds and symbols into words and sentences.

A few moons later, in 1986, the program was revised under a new name, the High Hat Early Reading Program. Today, a great number of people still use both versions of High Hat, but many of them continued to beg us for a revision and new materials. We aim to please, and last month we completed the next generation of this popular program, blending the best of both editions, into the Sounds & Symbols Early Reading Program.

To produce the new Sounds & Symbols, we listened to the comments and suggestions from users who contacted us over the years. We also formed a focus group of kindergarten teachers from a school in North Minneapolis that has used the High Hat program, very effectively, with its diverse population. This generated many solid ideas about how to make a good thing even better.

Sounds and Symbols Early Reading Program

For this latest version of the program, we’ve written more stories, and edited the existing ones. We created wonderful new art. All of the activities have been updated and streamlined, along with creating convenient reproducible masters, to help classroom teachers save time. We did a little gender and racial balancing of the characters and made new puppets and a bag to contain the program. All of the stories and songs were recorded on CD. We even gave the High Hat character a head-he had merely floating eyes and a mustache under his hat before! The new Sounds & Symbols can be used with children from pre-kindergarten age through third grade.

It’s been a lot of work with numerous pieces to coordinate, but of course we did it. All materials hit the warehouse stage on or near August 17. Now we can proudly tell our customers once again that High Hat- unlike Elvis-has returned to the building. (Thank ya, thank ya very much.)