What Does It Mean to Be a Creative Family Child Care Provider?

What are some of your own views about being a creative family child care provider? Pause for a few moments to think about this.

Creativity is a crucial part of the human experience. The ability to think creatively helps us rise to challenges, overcome obstacles, and create opportunities. Being creative demonstrates openness to new experiences. These experiences include having a good imagination, valuing feelings, trying new things based on individual interests, and having a curious mindset (Kaufman, 2016).

In your family childcare home, you are responsible for creating meaningful experiences that incorporate creativity throughout the day. Being a creative provider can be expressed in a number of different ways. Here are some ways to express creativity:

• Use everyday materials that might seem useless to spark open-ended creative work

• Solve space constraints to create supportive learning environments

• Follow your curiosity

• Allow yourself to make mistakes

• Try out new things

• Be willing to accept new or different perspectives

• Embrace diversity

Objectives

1. Reflect on what it means to implement meaningful curriculum and assessment as you manage your family childcare program.

2. Identify key elements of developmentally appropriate practice and reflect on how these elements contribute to program management.

3. Understand the importance of being a lifelong learner with regard to working with children and their families and identify ways you can pursue your own professional development.

Children attending family childcare programs should have a variety of experiences that are developmentally appropriate, intellectually stimulating, engaging, and fun.

High-quality programs rely on a written, evidence-based curriculum as the foundation for teachers and providers to use to plan daily experiences and activities.

Curriculums and lesson plans are different things. A lesson plan is an outline or map for a specific lesson or learning experience. It has learning objectives for the activity. It should include also: materials needed, steps for the activity, teaching strategy, child’s role, connection to early-learning standards or goals, and adjustments for individual learners and needs.

Curriculum is the comprehensive framework for all lesson plans. You may have chosen a particular curriculum, assessment, and format to document children’s growth and development.

The curriculum you use directly influences how you manage your program.

• children in your program are active and engaged.

• Your goals for each child is clear and shared by all (yourself, families, any related professionals or support personnel, your family childcare administrator or licensing specialist).

• Your curriculum is evidence-based. In other words, it is based on research-oriented knowledge about best practices in the field of early-childhood education.

• Experiences and activities are meaningful and intentional and involve children’s engagement with and exploration of their environment.

• Experiences and activities build on children’s prior learning and experiences.

• Your curriculum is comprehensive and addresses each child’s multiple developmental domains.

KIT strives to help the world learn to accept differences and see the ability in every child. Our organization helps others meaningfully include kids with disabilities through inclusion training, behavior support practices, coaching and consultation, policy development and sharing our best practices information and research. By creating inclusive environments where no child is excluded, everyone benefits.

Let's Get Started: Kit Accounts

The Value Of Disability Inclusion (Formerly "Introduction to Inclusion") - This is the 1st course in the Foundations of Inclusion eSeries (formerly known as the KIT 4 Core Inclusion Modules). In this refreshed course, you'll explore common views on inclusion and be asked to reflect on your experiences with disability inclusion.

Respectful Accommodations - This is the 2nd course in the Foundations of Inclusion eSeries (formerly known as KIT Core Inclusion Modules). In this refreshed course, you will build your bag of tricks for making accommodations for children and youth with disabilities or behavior support needs.

Viewing Behavior As Communication (Formerly "Supporting Positive Behavior") - This is the 3rd course in the Foundations of Inclusion eSeries (formerly known as the KIT Core Inclusion Modules). In this course, you will see how to use the ABC's to better understand why a youth is using concerning behavior and decide on helpful supports to try.

Partnering With Families - This is the 4th course in the Foundations of Inclusion eSeries (formerly known as the KIT Core Inclusion Modules). The children in your program are attached to a family unit. But, how do you build or maintain a positive relationship when you and the family are not on the same page about the child’s needs? In this course, we will explore the different perspectives families bring to the relationship and review strategies for engaging in supportive conversations around difficult topics.

Previously called the Navy Inclusion Operating Manual Prerequisite Training Course.

This course will introduce Navy CYP Professionals to the program-initiated support path and accompanying tools. The program-initiated support path is used to support children’s and youth’s needs when they are identified by Navy CYP Professionals. Typically, these needs are behavioral, developmental, or social-emotional in nature. The course is intended for Installation Directors, Directors, Assistant Directors, Training & Curriculum Specialists (T&Cs), and Program Leads.

• The first portion of the course walks learners through the program-initiated path with a focus on how roles and responsibilities are shared among team members.

• The second portion of the course introduces the Connections Practices Planning Tool and walks through each section of the tool using a case example.

• The third and final portion of the course focuses on the Environmental Practices Planning Tool using the same case example to illustrate how to complete the tool.

• Completed tools for case examples featuring children of different ages are included in the course and available under the Case Study section of the course.

• To complete the course, learners must receive a passing score on the assessments for all three portions of the course (80% or higher) and complete the post-course survey.

This course will cover how to recognize unsafe behavior and give you some practice applying the steps to de-escalate unsafe situations more effectively. Unsafe situations you may face can involve one child using unsafe behavior or two or more youth fighting. We will also discuss some limited circumstances where you may need to physically move a child to protect them. While this course offers general guidance on how to de-escalate unsafe situations, it does not cover every situation a child & youth professional may encounter.

Objectives

1. Decide whether the behavior described in a scenario is unsafe based on whether it places the child or others at risk for immediate harm.

2. Apply the correct steps to de-escalate unsafe behavior in different situations with individuals and two or more youth fighting.

3. Correctly identify scenarios where it would be necessary to physically move a child in response to a safety threat.

4. Select the correct way to safely move a child in a scenario.

Certs

TO DO: Create your K.I.T Account:

Complete the (4) webinars identified in today's class.

1. Foundations of Inclusion

2. Connect and Redirect: A strategy to support behavior

3. Guidance in Unsafe Situations

4. Overview of the Navy Inclusion Support System

** BONUS: Identify (3) webinars you are interested in completing for credit. Bring the course title with you tomorrow.