We at Mary Kardash, Child Care Centre, believe children learn best through play. Our schedule is predictable but flexible to meet children’s needs. Large playtime blocks allow children to engage in a variety of interactions, environments, and activities, both planned and spontaneously throughout the day.
Empowering Children
We encourage all children to share their thoughts, feelings and ideas with each other. Children learn to develop language, self-esteem, and build relationships while they interact with adults and other children. They find common ground and learn about each other which extends into their play.
Our staff use predetermined playtime themes for children to develop social skills. For example, during work occupation themes, when staff observe children playing firefighters, they may change the dramatic play area into a fire station or take a field trip to the local fire station. When children see a fire truck driving by staff talking with them about fire trucks, the clothing firefighters wear, what tools they use, and compare this to the children and staff’s clothing, tools, and vehicles.
Build a Community
In our centre, we build a sense of community by greeting parents and children in a friendly manner. We provide newsletters, a daily written whiteboard for parents to read about upcoming events and their child’s day. We also use a digital picture frame, posted artwork, and we talk to parents to share milestones and anecdotes about their child every day.
Our Environment
Our environment is arranged according to children’s interests. At times, we may alternate children between our program groups to allow children to play in a variety of areas. We add to and take away from areas using the information we learn about children’s interest during our observations. For example, we expanded our block area when staff observed that many children wanted to play together.
Learning new skills though art. Children use our art area, to develop emotionally while using tactile, messy materials like finger paint, or the sand or water tables. When staff ask how the paint, water or sand feels, children learn to connect their experience to their emotions, so children learn to communicate their thoughts and feelings.
In our open area, children can role-play and pretend while they build confidence, practice coordination, balance and an awareness of themselves and others in space. They practice sharing and taking turns when they use cars, blocks and other play materials.
Embracing Spontaneity
Staff support each individual child in our program through planned and spontaneous play while capitalizing on teachable moments. A spontaneous activity occurs when staff recognize children’s needs and build on it without preplanning. For example, when staff see children crawling under tables and hiding in shelves, they give them blankets and help make a tent for them to hide in. When staff build on children’s interests, their learning is more meaningful.
Staff also provide preplanned activities like painting with different materials such as string, marbles, and toothbrushes: baking muffins: or trying out a science experiment.
Let’s Explore
We expose our children to the community and its resources. We often go on walks through our community. We include children’s homes on our routes, some local stores, and some parents’ workplaces. We use our area’s attractions such as local parks, community centres, pools and libraries.
Diversity Rules
Our environment includes a variety of age, race ability, culture and both genders, so children feel they belong but are also exposed to differences. For example, we have dolls of various ages and races, and both genders play food of different cultures and books that include a variety of races, ages, abilities, cultures and gender. Our staff, children and families bring their traditions and practices to the centre, and we share them to build on diversity.
Mary Kardash Child Care Centre Inc. 