News

Everyone who has ever been around babies knows that they communicate from the very beginning. Who can ignore a new-born's cry? I've not met that person yet. Whether we are the parents, grandparents, or just someone else in the room, an infant's cry gets an immediate response from us.

I have talked about the issues of how raising children to keep themselves safe by learning good risk assessment skills is important and how our instinct as parents to keep our children safe from harm plus the attitudes toward liability in the US encourage everyone in our society to protect children from all risk. This article by John Tierney published in the New York Times states the argument for incorporating some risk in your child's life quite effectively. Take a look by clicking on the link below and see what you think.

As many of you know, we have a nutritionist who works with us. Twice a year we give her the menus of what children are eating here for snacks and hot lunches, and she gives us recommendations and ideas for improving our nutrition program. One thing we have heard from our nutritionist consistently is the importance of variety in children’s diets. This not only is important for good nutrition, but helps develop healthy lifelong eating habits.

Some 3 year olds found a very intriguing project set up in their classroom last week. There were cylinders containing two different colors on the table. When they shook the cylinders, the colors combined to make a new color. So when the red and blue cylinder was shaken, the colors combined to make purple! When the children stopped shaking, the colors separated again. So clearly, red and blue make purple!

Happy New Year everyone! Over the past week many of you have been at home with your children. It's probably very fresh in your minds that finding quality television for young children is always a challenge! I ran across news of a new set of PBS programs focusing on science for preschoolers that looked intriguing. I watched a few episodes and found them appealing, with good content that I thought many preschoolers would both learn from and enjoy. I have attached information on the shows and where to find them.

CPSC is happy to announce an additional Enrichment Program, BookTree. BookTree is a monthly book-lending program for children from infancy to about age seven. Each month, BookTree delivers personalized totes containing ten high-quality, illustrated, age-appropriate books to CPSC. The benefits of BookTree include:

Our NAEYC Accreditation is something of which we are very proud. It is a confirmation that our school maintains the very highest standards of early care and education. In the past few years, the NAEYC Academy which administers the NAEYC Accreditaiton program added a new component to its oversight of schools in this program. They conduct random, unannounced visits where they spend 10 hours looking at records and observing half our classrooms to verify that we adhere to the Accreditation standards in our everyday operations between Accreditaion renewal periods.

Setting limits with our preschoolers is challenging for the vast majority of us. We struggle to do this effectively. Sometimes the best technique when a child is really upset and not doing what you want, is to simply let the child be angry until they're done. I watched a parent do this very successfully one evening when her child was lying on the floor of the office refusing to get up and join the rest of the family who were waiting outside the front door to go home. First the child wanted her mom to come in and get her. After the mom and dad changed places, she cried for her dad.

Awhile ago I posted a blog on risk taking and young children. I find this a really fascinating topic. Every human parent takes keeping their child safe as a fundamental responsibility. So why should we let our children take risks? How does that fit in with keeping them safe? I ran across another really good article on this subject I want to share. It makes the point that teaching children to assess risk is a very important part of their learning. Enjoy!

I often say children are little learning machines. You really don’t have to tell any child that learning is a good idea. They know that. They spend all their time and energy on the task of learning. As I was walking through the toddler yard the other day I saw a fantastic example of this that contains important feedback for teachers and parents.

You have heard from me before about the very important role dramatic play has in a young child’s learning and education. To help us focus as a school on enriching our dramatic play, we have been having regular time set aside in our staff meetings for teachers to report on the dramatic play that is going on in their classrooms. At our last staff meeting one of our teachers shared a terrific example of how rich in educational content dramatic play can be.

On July 16th at 4:00 in the afternoon, after several weeks of practice, our graduates, their teachers, and the families of the graduates gathered in the Senior Preschool yard for their graduation ceremony. Graduation clothes were donned, performance props were gathered, chairs were arranged . . . we were ready! The parents were seated and when all was ready, the graduates danced in to a jazzy piece of music to take their seats.

I had a really eye-opening conversation with one of our teachers the other day. This teacher was working her way through some challenges in her life. I asked her how she was doing as I greeted her one morning. She recounted how the children were helping her and giving her the strength she needed. Here’s what she said. (The names below have been changed to preserve privacy.)