| |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
| |
Program Development
For a family child care provider, taking care of children goes far beyond making sure their basic needs are met. Age appropriate psychological, emotional, and intellectural development is also of concern development. As most family child care providers do not have formal child development educations, proper program development can be a challenge. Fortunately, there are both national and local level resources designed to address these concerns. The following websites provide family child care and general child care program development information.
General
Organizations such as the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), and the Council on Accreditation for Children and Family Services (COA) include program development services as part of their accreditation process. For more information on such services offered by these and other accreditation organizations, please see the Accreditation page.
The Creative Curriculum for Family Child Care
by Diane Trister Dodge and Laura J. Colker
Published by Teaching Strategies Inc.
This book shows how to organize the home environment for child care and how to plan appropriate activities with mixed-age groups in a variety of interest areas ranging from cooking to outdoor play. The book also includes important tools for organization, communication, and planning: safety checklists; a sample daily schedule; equipment lists; and sample letters to parents.
The High/Scope Educational Approach
This is a set of guiding principles and practices that adults follow as they work with and care for infants/toddlers, preschoolers, and elementary, and adolescent students. These principles are intended as an “open framework” that adults are free to adapt to the special needs and conditions of their group, their setting, and their community. “Active learning”—the belief that children learn best through active experiences with people, materials, events and ideas, rather than through direct teaching or sequenced exercises—is a central tenet of this approach.
 Back to Top
Infant-Toddler
Infant Day Care: The Critical Issues
By Abbey Griffin And Greta Fein
This report discusses quality in infant care for all types of child care for children under two whose mothers work. It discusses quality in terms of dynamic, structural and contextual features and well as its effect on the children in terms of attachment.
Zero to Three
ZERO TO THREE is one of the nation’s leading resources on the first three years of life. Its aim is to strengthen and support families, practitioners, and communities to promote the healthy development of babies and toddlers. Its Center for Program Excellence (CPE) provides resource, referral, training and consultation services to leaders of programs serving infants, toddlers, and their families by providing training and consultation to the many programs that make up the multi-disciplinary infant/family field, including child care services such as family child care. The CPE's services include information and referral, phone, email, or in person consultation, and state-of-the-art training design services.
The Active Learning Series
Developed by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute and published by the Pearson Learning Group, this series devotes a volume to each specific age group—infants, ones, twos, threes, fours, and fives, as well as children with disabilities. Each volume contains over 300 field-tested activities as well as a planning guide, activities, a system for matching activities to stages of development, materials needed, suggestions for language and interaction, and activity checklists. Sections include activities for listening and talking, physical development, creativity, and learning from the world around them.
The Creative Curriculum for Infants and Toddlers
Part of the Teaching Strategies Creative Curriculum series, this is a comprehensive and easy-to-use framework for planning and implementing a quality program, one where building relationships with children is central. The Curriculum outlines what children learn during the first three years; the experiences they need to achieve learning goals; what staff and parents do to help children reach these goals; and the materials needed to support the implementation of the Curriculum. Also available in Spanish. The Creative Curriculum for Preschool translates new research and theory from the field of early childhood education into a practical, easy-to-understand approach to working with children and their families. Its distinguishing features are a framework for decision making and a focus on interest areas.
Learningames, The Avecedarian Curriculum
Developed by Joseph Sparling and Isabelle Lewis, this curriculum is intended for children from birth through 5 years. Activities are derived from developmental milestones in the domains of social/emotional development and cognitive/creative development, language, and motor skills. Each game provides caregivers with an example of how to enhance child development. The illustrated games of the revised Learningames are being published in 12-month spans. In addition to the games, the completed curriculum will include a User’s Guide and an Assessment Instrument.
The Program for Infant/Toddlers Caregivers (PITC) Curriculum
This Curriculum was developed by WestEd, Center for Child and Family Studies, in collaboration with the California Department of Education Child Development Division. It is a comprehensive training system developed to assist caregivers of children under the age of 3 to provide infants and toddlers with healthy, emotionally secure, and intellectually rich experiences in care. The training covers four modules: Social-Emotional Growth and Socialization; Group Care; Learning and Development; and Culture, Family, and Providers. The goal of PITC is to help caregivers recognize the crucial importance of giving tender, loving care and assisting in the infants’ intellectual development through an attentive reading of each child’s cues. The training materials provide the foundation for a style of care in which caregivers study the infants in their care, reflect on and record information about the children’s interests and skills, and search for ways to set the stage for the child’s next learning encounters.
Back to Top
School-Age
The following websites contain information for family child care homes that provide care for school age children. Since most children in this age group are enrolled in school during the day, some of these websites deal specifically with after school care.
Full-Day Programming
By Sandy Davin, Director of After-School Program of the Urbana Illinois School District, NNCC's Connections Newsletter
This brief newsletter article discusses what to incorporate into a full-day program for school-age children. A sample schedule for a full-day school-age program is provided.
Approaches to School-Age Child Care
by Michelle Seligson and Lillian Coltin
A broad discussion of the types of programs, including family child care, available to school age children during the times when schools are traditionally closed in terms of the developmental needs of school age children.
National After School Association
Formerly the National School-Age Care Alliance, it is a professional association dedicated to the development, education, and care of children and youth during their out-of-school hours.
National Institute on Out-of-School Time
Provides information on announcements, upcoming events, training services, publications and data, and resource links, as well as information about the NIOST initiative and a proposed partnership to establish standards and accreditation of school-age child care programs.
Rainy Day Activities
NNCC's Connections Newsletter
This brief newsletter article suggest several activities that can be done with school-agers when weather keeps them indoors.
Back to Top
Mixed Age Groups
Caring for Mixed Age Groups
by Joni Levine
Provided by the Child Care Lounge, a resources, training and consultation website designed for those active in the field of child care, this article discusses the challenges and benefits of caring for mixed aged groups in a home setting. It also includes tips for caring for mixed age groups.
Teaching Strategies' Resources for Family Child Care Programs
Teaching Strategies offers curriculum resources, training manuals, and parent resource booklets to help family child care providers in their biggest challenge, meeting the needs of infants, toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children in the same facility, their home. Teaching Strategies helps providers design a quality program for each age group based on each child's needs in a home environment.
Back to Top
Early Literacy
The Family Child Care Way
Chris Cross, the president the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) is interviewed about the NAFCC's partnership with Get Ready to Read! In this discussion, he talks about how family child care stands apart from other child care settings, and how NAFCC is using GRTR!.
Supporting Early Literacy Development in Family Child Care Settings. ERIC Digest.
Prepared by Mei-Yu Lu
The purpose of this Digest is to provide information for family child care providers regarding children's early literacy development. A definition and the characteristics of family child care are discussed in the first part of this Digest, while the second half focuses on research-based strategies and recommendations that help support early literacy development for children enrolled in family child care settings.
Overview of Learning to Read and Write:
Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children
A joint position statement of the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). Issued in 1998, the statement provides guidance to teachers of young children in schools and in early childhood programs (including child care centers, preschools, and family child care homes) serving children from birth through age 8 years.
READY*SET*READ Early Childhood Learning Kit
Developed by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Corporation for National Service, and the Department of Education to advance President Clinton's challenge to help every child in America read independently and well by the end of the third grade.
The National Institute for Literacy's Partnership for Reading is a national reading research dissemination project authorized by the No Child Left Behind Act. The Partnership for Reading's mission is to make scientifically-based reading research more accessible to educators, parents, policymakers, and other interested individuals.
Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement
CIERA's mission is to improve the reading achievement of America's children by generating and disseminating theoretical, empirical, and practical solutions to persistent problems in the learning and teaching of beginning reading. Its web site includes a family literacy resource base and a searchable database listing several hundred articles, publications, and videos relating to issues of family and community literacy.
Child Care, Inc. provides an early literacy development program through the Talk Reach Read (TRR) program, a resource project funded by the Citigroup Foundation. The program is designed to promote early literacy development with infants, toddlers and preschool children in early care and education settings, including family child care.
Back to Top
Home Visiting
Although home visiting consultation is offered by some accreditation organizations as part of their process, it is more widely available on a level local. Please note the following examples:
Home Child Care Support Services is a non-profit group devoted to providing information, education, training, support and other general services for home child care practitioners in the New City of Hamilton. It supports family child care providers by offering an array of services, including home visiting consultation
Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) offers support programs for children from birth through the age of five for the state of Minnesota, including family child care home visitation. With this program, licensed ECFE teachers and paraprofessionals make home visits to child care providers. Staff provide information and support for the providers, as well as written information to be shared with the families. They also provide developmentally appropriate, fun, learning experiences for the children in the provider’s care.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Back to Top  Printer-friendly Page  Contact Us
|
|
