Child Development Media, Inc.
Margie Wagner, M. Ed., is the founder and driving force behind Child Development Media, Inc (CDMI). She has worked with special needs children for thirty years and her passion for working with such children is evident in her commitment to providing superior training and supervision materials. In 1993, she developed CDMI, the world's largest single source of commercially available books, videos, and curricula on child development. CDMI's website is a rich resource for educators and professionals, offering resources tailored to all age groups and selected by experts.
Site Resources
Although the site has many, many resources, it is designed for easy navigation. Choose from broad categories of books, videos, curricula, and conferences to get an overview of the top selling and highly recommended videos, such as "Observing Young Children: Learning to Look, Looking to Learn," book titles such as Play in Practice, or curriculum guides such as "Respecting How Children Learn Through Play." Find child development conference, seminar, and workshop information on the home page and under the "Conferences" tab. Concise summaries of the materials help practitioners select the resources they can best use.
The Assessment and Planning section of the website contains numerous titles designed to help practitioners better understand the process of assessing and appropriately planning for the education of children. From ages and stages questionnaires to videos explaining the individualized education plan to resources about the autistic child, the titles available here will provide invaluable resources for educators and administrators.
CDMI's Curricula section is rich in educator resources, from self-directed teacher's guides to handouts to videos that detail science, math, and visual arts in the classroom. Divided into infant/toddler, preschool, and parent education and guidance sections, the resources are logically categorized for easy navigation, leaving room for "browsing" as well.
The site's History, Theory and Research section contains works by Erikson, Piaget, Bowlby, and Dewey and others. Rich in both biographical information as well as theory and research, the books and videos here provide excellent sources for a solid groundwork in child development theory.
Infant massage, raising non-violent children, stimulating sensory and motor development, adoption issues, parent involvement in education, and discipline are but some of the varied topics available in the Parenting section of CDMI's site. Books and videos geared toward an audience of parents from a variety of educational levels provide practitioners a selection of ways to present important parenting information.
The site's Play section covers playground safety, Piagetian theory of cognitive development, research on the benefits of play, and design principals for children's play areas. A wide variety of topics are covered here, but they all center on the promotion of play as an important aspect of childhood development.
Child hearing loss, language development, second language learning, sign language, and speech language delay are the topics covered in CDMI's Language and Communication section. Here you will find resources for parents and educators designed to promote language and communication skills, to use everyday communication to foster these skills, and a basic primer on sign language, among other titles.
Comprehensive Site with Many Titles
The CDMI site contains many, many more titles; the catalogue, available online and in print, is 200 pages long. Browsing this well organized site will result in finding source material you never knew existed, and choosing what titles to order will be hard.
The company offers a thirty day money-back guarantee and secure ordering and encourages site users to contact them with any questions or new materials. While you're on the site, visit the CDMI blog for summaries of recent studies regarding child development. Plan on spending a lot of time on your first visit to this page; there is a lot to see!