Has anyone seen this new commercial for Subaru? (This is not a plug for the Subaru car company but it may be a plug for the advertising firm that they use.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xCYYwDcdck In 30 short seconds this commercial depicts a notion about supporting children’s ideas so successfully that it speaks for itself. I have been […]
The US government has a lot of great resources for teachers, centers, schools, and home care providers. This page at www.childcare.gov is chock full of helpful sites for child care providers. There are pages dedicated to small business enterprises as well as pages that will describe funding sources, grants and loan applications. Take a look!
What are some of the other ways you supplement the income of your program to make ends meet? A lot of programs count on fundraising as a source of extra income. However, fundraising can be tedious, time-consuming, and can frequently yield small amounts that don’t seem altogether worth the effort. We now live at a […]
This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Chicago Metro AEYC Opening Minds Conference. My colleagues Cathy Main and Kathleen Sheridan and I presented the Early Math Counts project three days in a row. We met several great child care providers, directors, and teachers and hopefully got to spread the […]
KWLs serve many purposes in the early childhood classroom. They are a great way for children to think about what they know (or think they know) and for them to voice their opinions and ideas about what they want to know. It provides direction and meaning for an emergent curriculum and stimulates creative teachers as […]
While researching the available tools out there for managing the financial part of the business of child care, I found this great site that seems to have everything you could ever want. It also has links to resources you didn’t even know you wanted! This organization “First Children’s Finance” out of Minneapolis, Minnesota has organized […]
Did you know that this is the coldest snap Chicago has seen in 2 years? Last year, I never even broke out my real winter coat, the one that goes down to the ground and looks like a giant sleeping bag. I originally bought that coat over 14 years ago when I was a kindergarten […]
I was reviewing a textbook the other day and I came across this quote, “Child care represents the fourth largest expense for the working family after housing, food, and taxes.” I suppose on some level I knew that, but when you see it in black and white it really is shocking. Two children in child […]
I had never seen these manipulatives until I was at a center last November and a teacher was using the ones pictured above as a tool to assess a child in her classroom. The kit comes with three clear plastic jars, several colored balls and blocks, colored lids, and cards for matching. The teacher was […]
A million years ago when I was a preschool teacher, my co-teachers and I decided to move away from the traditional, weekly newsletter and toward something that we hoped would be more meaningful. We began to WEB! Lots of teachers use WEBS to plan (like the one above). I am talking about using WEBS to […]