Supporting the development of the individual child
By Danielle Caldwell
There is no better job than contributing to the healthy development and nurturing of young children. I often see the brightest young people share one thing in common. Early on they were lovingly taught and regularly exposed to new learning opportunities.
As a family child care home provider of a 5-star facility, I often must think outside of the box when supporting my children’s different developmental stages. Many family child care home providers like myself care for children of various ages. I make sure my lessons are universal enough that different dimensions can be added to each lesson to make sure that every child I teach is engaged and connected in the subject matter.
For example, let’s say I am teaching my children about apples. The lesson plan can cover a wide spectrum so that I can teach all of my children from infants or school aged. In the course of a lesson, I introduce infants to the color and texture of an apple. I incorporate songs that utilize the large motor skills to engage toddlers. When introducing an apple, I incorporate phonetic sounds to engage preschoolers. And for older children a science experiment includes the disection of an apple and a lesson on various apple varieties. I find that with multiple age groups a new learning dynamic takes place as younger children learn from their older classmates.
Quality child care in many settings with different age groups can work beautifully. It just takes a creative approach and perspective of supporting the social, emotional, health and cognitive growth of children at different stages of development. When you plan well, you can support the healthy development of young children successfully.
As a Board member of Durham’s Partnership for Children, I have the unique vantage of seeing how volunteers work to make sure they are investing in priority services for young children to ensure they have brighter futures just as I am doing the same in my family child care home.
For what we do in this organization as a collective body to care for our community of young children is just as important as early childhood educators supporting the individual development of young children. If the community cares, early childhood advocates care, families care, and educators care, the result will be more successful children entering school due to exposure to quality early learning experiences.
Danielle Caldwell is a member of the Durham’s Partnership for Children Board of Directors and owns and operates The Children’s Room Family Child Care, a 5-star program in Durham.