Salute to my CoWorkers

 A Labor Day salute to my fellow child care providers! 

 We do so much...

We are providing environments that are setting foundation for future academic success

We are providing opportunities and equipping children to become good citizens of our society

We are trained para nurses caring for falls, scrapes and more.

We are lawyers double checking our paperwork and being liable for every choice we make.

We are therapists for not just children who are learning social problem solving, but also to parents who come to us in tears for personal advice.

We are advocates for our children and our communities.

We place ourselves in multiple positions at a time, hardly every sitting down for a break.

We cannot dress nice because we leave covered in paint, glue, and boogers.

We allow a huge percentage of families to go to work and contribute to our economy.

We are at work before families even wake up so that they can be at work on time, and we are still there after their work has ended and they have commuted back to pick up their child. 

We have the honor of being chosen by parents to care for what they care most for.

So even if our check doesn't reflect it and the education community don't give us the respect we deserve,  even when a parent brings their kids in the door without saying good morning, or only focuses on the lost shoe, our society needs us, and today is a day for you to reflect on your importance.

*borrowed in part by Maplewood Children's Center

I was reminded yesterday how important it is not to make gender assumptions, especially with children.  A sweet 8 year old girl came in for her first day at Summer Care at You're Invited and my immediate response to her was "oh we have several girls your age to play with."  As I listened to her talk and watched her body language I thought that perhaps she wouldn't want to play just with girls and I quickly added, "yes, lots of girls or boys your age to play with."  (trying to recover from my lack of sensitivity)  Later in the day I watched this girl compete in an intense, competitive tetherball match with a boy a few years older and saw other boys lined up to play the winner.  They were all having a great time.  I reminded myself not to make assumptions about people based on their gender, that we can easily make children feel bad, sorry, guilty, confused, etc about their natural predilections when we decide what they will like based on our assumptions and stereotypes.

More activities for the Color Blue...

Lets take a Poll!

Be Free and Find Your Family!

Thanks to Miss Taylor for being brave enough to catch this huge cricket and put it in this container for the children to investigate.

Immediately some of the children were concerned that our cricket friend was lonely and needed to be with the family.  We took this opportunity to to learn about how to get everybody's opinion before making a decision and we took a poll!

A few of the older children went around asking every single child and adult if we "should let the cricket go free to find his family or keep it in the box"

 The decision was unanimous and we decided to let the cricket "be free and find his family" 

This wasn't a planned activity but when centers are flexible and children are given freedom to move around the environment and choose their own learning with adults ready to engage and facilitate this type fun, enriching opportunity happens!

Moments Under the Tree

I love trees and the gifts they provide... 
At You're Invited we are so fortunate to have several trees and I believe ours are being used to  to fullest of God's intentions for providing them to us.  Some of these trees are huge and provide the best natural shade and we are blessed to have a few that offer even more gifts.  Our trees that have low, strong branches provide endless opportunities for our children.  Low branches provide a feeling of being enclosed and give children a place that feels like their own little shelter.  Swings are possible when branches are low and of course the amazing, powerful feat of being able to climb something "hugemungus" like a tree.  As much as these trees offer, they can not be fully utilized without offering children the time to use them to their fullest potential.
     It is so important that children are given long amounts of time with the freedom to make their own choices in their play.    It easy to be convinced of the fallacy that children need to constantly be presented with curriculum and provided with information constantly.  The intention behind these overly structured environments is to "get them ready"  but what happens are children that can be stressed, overwhelmed and unable to think on their own.  They become dependent on outside resources to be stimulated and they don't develop the inner resources that can equip them for their future.
     Children need to be given time and spaces that are rich for building language and friendships, working out drama and creating pretend dramas, they need the time and space to be free, to think without interruption, to dream and to relax. 

Children’s play and play-based learning should be the fundamental philosophy behind early learning environments...

Whether by necessity or choice, the majority of parents work and many depend upon formal, organized out‐of‐home care.  Offering quality child care that supports the child’s natural desire to play and provide an environment that is intentional about creating opportunities for learning through play helps create a common good society.  Quality early care and education programs that follow a pedagogy of play support a child’s optimal development and readiness for success in school. Longitudinal research

(e.g. Chicago Child‐Parent Centers, High/Scope Perry Preschool and Abecedarian Projects) shows that children who attend high‐quality preschool programs are less likely to be placed in special education; less likely to be held back a grade; and more likely to graduate from high school and attend college.

A play-based child care program, like the one You’re Invited provides, is one that allows children to learn at their own individual pace through the natural process of play.  The profound benefits of this type of learning environment are losing ground to adult-directed, instruction based philosophies.  Important life-long skills such as problem solving, emotional development, divergent thinking, analytical skills, etc are being put to the side for worksheets, drills, table work and other developmentally inappropriate teaching styles.

Problem solving, for instance, involves an element of risk. If we want children to learn to solve problems we must create safe environments in which they feel confident taking risks, making mistakes, learning from them, and trying again (Fordham & Anderson, 1992). In a play-based curriculum, each day provides opportunities to learn about reading, writing, and math through real, meaningful situations. For instance, children set the table for snack so each child has one napkin, one straw, and one box of milk. Children string beads to match the pattern on a card or wait their turn because there is room for only four children at the art table. Through these meaningful experiences children begin to understand number, quantity, size, and other mathematical concepts.

       

It is clear the expectations of our society are changing and our culture is becoming increasing focused on specific functional skills such as arithmetic and pre-literacy as the objective of pre-kindergarten learning environments.  We feel children’s play and play-based learning should be the fundamental philosophy behind early learning environments and will continue to offer an environment that is proven to provide the most solid foundation for acquiring these functional skills when developmentally appropriate. 

Fordham, A.E. & Anderson, W.W. (1992). Play, risk-taking, and the emergence of literacy. In Play's place in public education for young children, edited by V.J. Dimidjian, 105-114. Washington, DC: National Education Association.

Too Much/Too Little: What Do Families Do When They Make Just a Little Too Much To Qualify for Subsidy but Not Enough to Afford Child Care?

I have been astounded and saddened by the number of families that have been recently dropped from the subsidy program they were working with to pay for their child care. The majority of the reasons were because the family received a small raise or got a few more hours a week in their position. While that is great for the family, it is certainly not enough of an increase in income to afford child care cost, especially in single parent families. A recent blaring example is a single father who was dropped from any assitance because the company he worked for paid him to get medical benefits. They considered this as income, even though the money went straight to provide medical insurance for him and his 5 year old son.

In the Early Childcare/School Age Care field, most recent conversations that have to do with the families we are caring for, there are a large number of families enrolled that are single parent families whose child care expenses are being paid by a state or county government agency. Consider these startling statistics:
· The poverty rate for female-headed families with children was 38.5 percent in 2009, compared with 8.3 percent for families with children headed by a married couple
· More than five in ten poor children (51.5 percent) lived in families headed by women
· More than half a million single women with children (12.5 percent) who worked full-time,
year-round in 2009 were living in poverty
To maintain employment and be able to provide for their families, women need access to affordable child care. Without affordable child care, many of these women have no choice but to leave jobs or school and sign up for cash assistance. There have been three families in the last two months leave our program and move with family because they didn’t make enough to afford child care but made just a little too much to qualify for assistance.
A report by Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity - Child Care Matters: Building Economic Security for Low-Income Women found that quality child care and education centers are often unavailable in low-income communities or impractical for women with shifting work schedules. Their research indicates that when a mother works a variable schedule, she is more likely to rely on informal care, which is typically provided by family and neighbors and is often less reliable than formal child care settings.

At Madison Street Church CDI/You’re Invited Children’s Center we strive to be able to offer a warm, quality program to families at an affordable rate. It is also important to be family friendly with our schedules, basing schedules on each families needs, flexible tuition costs, and we offer reduced tuition scholarships and we allow drop in care for families needing emergency/transitional child care. We partner with a women’s shelter to provide the children of the women in their program quality drop in child care while they are in a transitional phase of their lives. We are currently looking at more effective ways to meet the needs of those in our community and neighborhoods that are in a transitional time in their life and need quality child care to enable them to complete schooling and training, attend required meetings, go on job interviews and other necessary appointments that are not possible to attend with their young children. Madison Street Church is offering reduced tuition opportunities to families in need of school age before/after school care for families that make too much to qualify for subsidy but dont make quite enough to afford quality child care. Our hope is to partner with other agencies that have the same desire to walk with low income families through caring for their children, encouraging them as parents, and providing other services as needed.

Color Blue Preschool Activities!

Graphing with preschool kids - "Do you have blue eyes?"

Develop math and prewriting development sorting blue poker chips with blue tweezers into blue bowls and encourage open ended creativity with blue items, making a blue collage!

Fun ways to encourage learning with the color blue!

Baking Soda & Vinegar w/ blue water color!

After School Care Makes Sense!!

Did you know that statistics show that most juvenile crime occurs in the hours immediately following school dismissal? (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention 1999). The rate of juvenile violence in the afterschool period is four times the rate than any other period of time. Why, then, have county subsidy agencies decided to abruptly to discontinue paying for low income children to attend afterschool care when a child turns 11 years old? That is, for most children, 6th grade! Families, most often single mothers, will most likely be forced to have these very young children home alone, fending for themselves, or be cared for by an older sibling. This is not how I feel is the best possible way for our government agencies to take care of the children in our community. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention study suggests that the potential for reducing a community’s juvenile violent crime rate is greatest in our efforts to reduce juvenile crime after school. Several studies have also shown that afterschool programs can decrease juvenile crime and youth participation in risky behaviors, the type which often leads to violence (Fox and Newman 1997). School Age Care by You’re Invited suggests as well, that afterschool programs, like ours, that offer students supervised and engaged structured activities during the high-risk period (e.g., 3:00-5:00pm), are necessary and it seems the cost of what quality afterschool care is, is substantially less than what it can cost our community in the long run. In our desire to promote the “it takes a village” philosophy at You’re Invited we are looking at starting reduced or free tuition scholarships for families with children ages 11-13 years. Our hope at School Age Care by You’re Invited is to continue providing a safe place for children in these very important years to be safe and develop social skills, character development. The greatest return on our investment in these children is to help them to grow the best they can and they return these skills as contributing members of our community.

If you are interested in more information about helping our low-income families keep their children in quality care or about any of our other programs please feel free to contact us.

*Fox, J.A., and S.A. Newman. 1997. After-School Crime or After-School Programs: Tuning in to the Prime Time for Violent Juvenile Crime and Implications for National Policy. A Report to the United States Attorney General. Washington, DC: Fight Crime: Invest in Kids.

Going Up The Slide The Wrong Way!!

Many preschools (and public) schools have instilled these hard set rules about appropriate outdoor play. Kids cant swing on their bellies (great for proprioception), can only ride trikes on a path and the path is usually a circle (not very risky), cant move items outside their designated play space (not encouraging teamwork and creativity), and can't go up the slide the wrong way!

Have there been serious maming and disfiguring accidents that I dont know about or have we made decisions putting our possible legal liabilities and paranoia over the developmental needs of our children? I read an article recently that spoke of playground accident related lawsuits have actually increasing since this recent push of boring, static playgrounds with restrictive rules.

This picture taken at my school shows the beauty that can happen when children are allowed to "go up the wrong way on the slide." I think the joy on the face of the girl with the extended arm can be enough to encourage us to rethink our outdoor play rules. I wish I could have recorded her giggle! She is a 3 year old helping her older 4 year old friend up, modeling teamwork for the 2 year old friend next to her. Bliss!!

When children are supervised well and given opportunities to use outdoor equipment in ways that allow risk, creativity and challenge it will translate into positive self worth, confidence, and cooperation skills.

Monster Week!!

Slime!

Math, science, sensory, fine motor, cause & effect, language development - all in one great Monster theme activity!

We combined 12 teaspoons borax with 2 1/4 cup warm water in one bowl and 2 1/2 cups glue with 3/4 cup warm water and green koolaid or food coloring in another bowl. We slowly pour the borax mixture into the glue mixture and excitedly watched the mixture form while one of the friends stirred!

the language used was so fun to hear!

"its lumpy now"

"oooh slippery"

"soft like gum"

"greasy"

"its slimy"

"Im gonna make a slime cake"

"its slippery and hard"

Monster Week!

My coolest new find - Water Beads!! This bucket is four containers of these amazing waterbeads found at the dollar store. I added a little purple water color, some big googly eyes and lots of see through containers and scoops to create a great sensory/math/fine motor activity!

Monster week!!

Big Green Monster!

I put number stickers on the monsters on the table, the kids turned them to find the number and thats how many items they got to feed the Big Green Monster! We used all sorts of things to feed the monster - plastic insects, cars, little teddy bears, etc.

Waking Up Full of Awesome!!

If you are a girl, a mommy or daddy, aunt, gramma to a little girl, please read this:

http://blog.pigtailpals.com/2011/08/waking-up-full-of-awesome/

Engaging Babies with Photos!

Our wonderful teachers at Infant Care by You're Invited posted these beautiful pictures taken of the children at the center.

Photographs help our babies feel more comfortable with these images that are familiar to them. They also help build language when our teachers are sitting down with them talking with them about what they see.

ARRRRRRR Matey, Pirate Fun for Preschool!

Creating Pirate costumes for Pirate week!

Creating telescopes!!

More fun & learning with the Pirate theme!
Look, I made an ocean!" (playdough with boats & pirates)

Outside we had these activities:
"Cozy Area w/ pirate booksPirate Puzzle

Counting coins and cash from the pirates treasure chest!
The friends also learned and had fun doing these activities:

Created Pirate Hooks, borrowed from www.busybeekidscrafts.com/Pirate-crafts.html

Outdoor treasure hunt with treasure maps (learning the letter X)

Used a plank of wood and a kiddie pool to, yep you guessed it, "walk the plank"

The friend dicated pirate stories then they decorated page with Jolly Roger stickers (we learned how the Pirate flag got its name from Roger, the Jolly Pirate)

We read these great stories:
Do Pirates Take Baths, Kathy Tucker (our favorite!)
Pirate Girl, Cornelia Funke, et al
, Roger, the Jolly Pirate, Brett Helquist

Beach Day at School!

We ended two weeks of Ocean themed activities (which included a field trip to a local aquarium with a Beach Day! Here are a few of the activities we enjoyed -

Sorting Sea Shells (recycled plastic tray from a candy box)

Parachute play during together time( most schools call circle time)with blow up ocean animal balls and beach balls from $ store


Cant have a beach day without LIMBO!
Kids with hoses Woo hoo! We turned our sand box into a mini-beach

Ocean Art!
Shaving cream, blue paint & glue makes a great texture for the ocean "water"