Gardening is great way for children to experience nature and science by exploring how things grow and where food comes from while offering opportunities for lessons in math, language, social interactions and cultures.

Recommended for Preschoolers

Materials Needed:

• Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert
• A pencil, crayon, pen or other writing tool, and paper
• Grocery store advertisements and scissors

Developmental Goals: 

• Identify a variety of healthy food options, in this case fruits and vegetables.
• Associate letters with the beginning sounds of words.
• Recognize upper and lower case letters. Categorize produce as either a fruit or a vegetable.

In the Future:

• The more opportunities young children have to explore a variety of foods, the more likely that they will eat a varied and healthy diet as they grow.
• As children build their understanding of letters and the sounds they make, they will begin to piece letters together in invented spelling.
• The ability to categorize objects is a beginning math skill that children will later build upon as they identify the properties of shapes and understand how to complete a pattern.

Activity:

1. Introduce the book to your child.  As with any new book, take time to allow her to explore the book’s pictures on her own before sitting down to read it out loud.
2. As you read the book, invite her to talk about the foods she sees on each page.
3. In addition to simply identifying the fruits and vegetables, talk about which ones she likes, which ones she wants to try, or what recipes you could make with the foods.
4. If your child has shown an interest in the alphabet, invite her to tell you the letters she recognizes.
5. For more letter play, you can encourage her to make connections among the letter sounds and the first letter of the foods on each page.
6. After enjoying the book a few times, invite your child to guess which foods are fruits and which are vegetables. You can extend on this idea by bringing out grocery store advertisements from the newspaper and having her cut out pictures of fruits and vegetables. Once she cuts out the pictures, have her sort them into two piles: a fruit pile and a vegetable pile.
7. You can take this further by having your child create a grocery list of fruits and vegetables by either drawing pictures of the foods, writing letters to represent the beginning sounds of each food, or using invented spelling. At the store, ask your child to look closely for the foods that she put on your list.

As our country has slowly started to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools and child care centers have been weighing their options when it comes to welcoming students back. Our early childhood center, Educare Chicago, after much careful consideration, made the decision to reopen and eagerly prepared to welcome children, families and educators back earlier this month.

Educare Chicago has been a lifeline to many parents throughout this time. The school serves families from under-resourced communities by providing high-quality child care and resources to their families.

Educare staff support parents as the primary nurturers and educators of their children. That support didn’t stop when the school closed back in March. Educare Chicago teachers and staff have been with parents every step of the way, providing helpful learning resources, spare masks and messages of encouragement.

“I appreciate you all so much for all you do,” another parent said of the support she’s received from the school. We know that these early years of a child’s education are critical to their future success in school. The current health crisis has shown just how important it is for working families to have access to high-quality early learning for their children. Without early childhood centers and schools being open, the families we serve are forced to stay home due to lack of child care and are unable to go to work, making it almost impossible to make ends meet. No parent should have to choose between providing care for their children or losing needed income.

What does back to school look like during COVID-19?

Both Illinois Governor Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lightfoot determined that child care programs could reopen if specific requirements were met prior to accepting students back into the building. The safety of the children, families and educators at Educare Chicago has been paramount to the school’s leadership team and has informed their decision making every step of the way. The school established a Reopening Committee to help plan for the many requirements mandated by the City of Chicago and the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) to reopen their school. Prior to its reopening, the school also submitted a written plan to DCFS.

In accordance with state and city requirements, Educare Chicago resumed center-based school operations on Monday, August 3, and is allowed to serve a limited number of children. Educare Chicago is committed to safely providing comprehensive services for children and families. The school has had to adapt some practices due to the new rules and regulations. Several of the changes that have been put in place to ensure children, families and staff are safe include:

• Screening children and staff daily prior to entry into the school
• Limiting access to children throughout the day
• Increased cleaning and sanitation practices
• Social distancing and wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff and children over age 2
• Increased square footage of 50 square feet per child
• Excluding children and staff when there is a cough, temperature, diarrhea, rash or any COVID-19 symptoms
• 6 feet of space between cribs and sleeping cots
• Installation of protective barriers
• Updating policies and procedures

What is Educare Chicago?

Educare Chicago was founded in 2000 as an innovative early childhood education program providing comprehensive services to children and families in under-resourced neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. Educare has spawned a national network of 25 schools and has reimagined what it means to educate our earliest learners.

Educare Chicago was founded by Start Early after years of working with children and families in the Grand Boulevard community. The Start Early’s work prior to the opening of Educare Chicago provided critical insight into the Educare Model. Based on four core principles: intensive family engagement, continual professional development, high-quality teaching practices and data utilization, the Educare model has been shown to prepare children for kindergarten in multiple developmental categories.

Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your toddler will learn about the idea of perspective by using everyday objects and comparing their sizes.

Don’t underestimate the incredible thinking skills that young children have. Through this activity, your preschooler will collect and sort leaves by different characteristics to practice early math concepts.

From a child’s first soccer team to recreational softball leagues to rooting for your favorite team, sports hold an iconic place in our lives. And they play an equally important role in helping children’s development in the early years.

It’s easy to see how sports can help with children’s gross and fine motor skills development. Less obvious, but just as critical, is the role that sports and play-based learning activities have in social-emotional development and speech and language development.

Be a Good Sport

As babies grow into toddlers, they gradually start to regulate their emotions. Playing sports with others gives them the opportunity to experience feelings such as joy, frustration, pride and patience in a non-threatening situation. To help them develop social-emotional skills, try:

1. Naming emotions as they play. “Suzy, great job catching that ball – you must be so proud of yourself!”
2. Help your child regulate his emotions when he is upset by talking about their feelings. “Tyler, I can see that you’re upset about missing the goal – let’s talk about why you’re upset.”

As children continue to grow and begin to play on teams, they develop teamwork skills that will be invaluable on and off the field. Team sports also provide a great opportunity to encourage empathy while learning new skills and celebrating successes. Try these tips to make sure your child will win the sportsmanship award:

1. Model the behavior you want to see – cheer as loudly for all the children on the team as you do for your child. Encourage your child to be a “cheerleader” for their team.
2. Reinforce the importance of taking turns at shooting the basket or practicing on the balance beam.

Hat Tricks, Fartleks and Setter

Every sport comes with a vocabulary of its own. Which means more and more opportunities to expose your children to new and varied language! From silly to repetitious to obscure, how do you make the most of this treasure trove?

1. As your child plays, name actions and items that are involved in their sport. Kick, run, pass, racquet, ball, tee, somersault…..the list is endless.
2. Have your child put the game into their own words – ask them to tell you how the game works.

We can’t guarantee that your child will become the next Serena Williams, David Beckham, Simone Biles or Derek Jeter, but we do know that time spent playing sports in the early years will pay off in many other ways!

When the reality of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was clear many months ago, Start Early and our partners quickly pivoted to support our youngest learners virtually, and we’re continuing to innovate and evolve to ensure our most vulnerable children and families don’t get left behind as the pandemic stretches on.

One of our strongest partnerships is with the Educare Learning Network. In 2000, Start Early developed the first Educare school in Chicago to provide high-quality care, education, and a stimulating learning environment for children birth to age 5. Since then, we have partnered to create 24 Educare schools across the country to provide children in under-resourced communities with quality early learning experiences. In accordance with CDC recommendations, 22 of the 24 operating schools within the Educare Learning Network are currently closed, with 2 schools having reopened to provide essential services at a reduced capacity. But that does not mean our early learning programs have stopped. From online lesson plans to reading and singing sessions via Facebook Lives, our educators are helping to ensure children and families have the resources they need during these challenging times.

In 2014, Congress addressed the child care crisis by appropriating $500 million to expand access to Early Head Start, which included the creation of a new Early Head Start–Child Care Partnerships program (Partnerships). Tulsa Educare was awarded two of the three Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships grants (rounds 1 and 3) and currently supports six family child care homes and one center, with additional centers set to open in August 2020. One of the child care homes that Tulsa Educare currently partners with is Aunt Jackie’s Family Childcare owned and operated by Jacqueline (Jackie) Evans.

We recently interviewed Jackie Evans along with Brittany Egger, the director of Child Care Partnerships and Quality Assurance at Tulsa Educare. They shared their thoughts on the impact of the Partnerships on the Tulsa community, the challenges they face, and their hopes for the future of infant/toddler care.

1. Tell us a little bit about your relationship/partnership. How did it originally come to be? What does it look like now?
   Jackie and I met after we received notification that we were awarded the [EHS-CCP Partnerships] grant. Unbeknownst to us, Jackie and Caren Calhoun, our executive director at the time, had worked with each other years before. This helped jump-start her trust with Tulsa Educare. We began slowly. The first time I went to her house we just sat at her kitchen table and she told me about her program. I observed the children and did parent engagement events to build trust with her staff and her families.
2. From your perspective, what has been the impact of the Partnerships program across the Tulsa community?
   Family Child Care Homes are an integral part of the Tulsa community. The level of family partnerships and bonding that occurs is hard to duplicate in a center-based program. Jackie has a passion for increasing the number of high-quality family child care homes across her community. With our newest Partnerships grant, we chose to partner with five new family child care homes.
3. What challenges have you faced participating in the Partnerships program? How have you addressed those challenges?
   With any change there are challenges. How are we going to do all this new required paperwork? When do we have time for this in our already busy day? With the staff, are they going to want to go back to school to get their Child Development Associate Certificates? All of these were challenges. However, working together to restructure daily schedules and assign responsibilities to all staff, we were able to easily adjust to the new regulations and demands. Jackie’s staff completed their CDAs within their first year, and have now completed both their Certificate of Mastery and are working on their Associate Degrees. The new regulations were challenging, but brought a level of professionalism to the home that wasn’t there before.
   
4. What is your big, bold hope for the future of infant/toddler care in Oklahoma?
   That all children have equal access to high-quality programs and caregivers have more options for specific infant/toddler training. Additionally, that Oklahoma can bridge the divide between child care programs and public school programs. We hope for these things because we all know that the quality of care, experiences, and opportunities children have in the very early years can predict future success.
   

In 2000, Start Early developed the first Educare school to serve children and families on the South Side of Chicago. At the time, the community was rebuilding after the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest public housing developments in the country.

Since then, we’ve partnered with diverse communities and early childhood champions to build a national network of 25 birth-through-age 5 Educare schools and improve access to quality early education across the country. Our shared goal is to help our most vulnerable children enter kindergarten ready to learn. Start Early serves as the national coordinating office of the Educare Learning Network, providing strategic alignment and functional support to the Network and our partners.

To achieve our goal, the Educare Learning Network builds strong public-private partnerships across the country to create strong schools and longtime champions who will amplify our call for change. We collaborate as a Network to advocate at the local, state and federal levels for policies and programs that advance our mission and support quality improvement and supports for our youngest learners and their families in communities that are under-resourced.

Through our work on the Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (Partnerships) program — created by Congress in 2014 — reaches across policy, practice and research to improve early education nationwide. Through the program, grantees are able to provide local child care programs that agree to meet Head Start Program Performance Standards with a range of supports (e.g., infrastructure improvements, higher teacher pay). Partnerships grantees partner with local center-based and family child care programs and leverage community resources to expand access to high-quality early care and learning for families who are working but earning wages below the federal poverty level.

Currently, 13 Educare organizations in 12 states and the District of Columbia administer Partnership grants with a variety of partners including local child care centers, family child care homes, school districts, nonprofit organizations, homeless shelters, and other community organizations. The number and type of community partners vary by grantee, as do the number of infants and toddlers served (from 60 to over 600), geographic distances covered and the role of the Educare organization in the Partnership.

In addition to Educare organizations administering grants, the Educare Learning Network advocates to protect and expand this program at the state and federal levels and shares our best practices and policy recommendations with the field. In 2019, we partnered with the Bipartisan Policy Center and the First Five Years Fund to put forth a policy recommendation, titled “The Early Head Start – Child Care Partnerships: Flexibility With Accountability,” summarizing our shared Partnerships work across the country and program recommendations. In 2020, we launched an article series called “A Path to High-Quality Child Care through Partnerships,” featuring stories from Educare organizations’ Partnerships across the country and highlighting the impact of COVID-19 on Partnerships grantees, their child care partners and the families they serve. The series and offers our unique policy recommendations to maintain, improve, and grow our nation’s supply of quality infant toddler child care.

Visit EducareSchools.org

The Partnership for Pre-K Improvement (PPI) was launched in 2017 to learn together with states about how to build quality, equitable pre-K systems that ensure children succeed in school and in life. The initiative’s unique approach fosters partnerships across program, advocacy, and research organizations in support of a common vision for pre-K systems improvement.

Through the initiative, three states — Washington, Oregon and Tennessee — are partnering to strengthen the program policies, infrastructure, and resources necessary for high-quality pre-K that will result in improved classroom quality and outcomes for children.

State partners are supported by the following organizations, who work together and in concert with other national and state program, advocacy and research partners. Start Early acts as the backbone organization, facilitating collaboration.

• Start Early engages state government leaders to create strategic plans to build the system capacity and infrastructure needed for continuous improvement of quality pre-K.
• The Alliance for Early Success supports advocacy organizations to build advocacy capacity to ensure the policies and resources essential to quality pre-K are in place.
• Cultivate Learning at the University of Washington engages local researchers to build research-practice partnerships with states and generate data for continuous quality improvement of pre-K.

Leaders in each state have made meaningful improvements to their systems, including data, professional learning, and instructional leadership infrastructure that contribute to continuous improvement of pre-K. Additionally, local organizations in each state have built strong partnerships across program, advocacy and research to sustain pre-K systems improvements long into the future.

Based on this learning, PPI partners are collaboratively creating tools and generating knowledge to help other states and communities apply this program, advocacy, research approach and thereby continue improvement beyond the life of the project.