Heartland Association for the Education of Young Children

The Heartland Association for the Education of Young Children is a local chapter of KAEYC serving Riley, Geary, Clay, and Pottawatomie counties. HeartlandAEYC meets regularly, giving members an opportunity to network with other care providers and early childhood professionals.

Last year during the Week of the Young Child, an annual celebration sponsored by NAEYC, HeartlandAEYC hosted the 1st Annual Early Childhood Provider Recognition. The event took place at the Sunset Zoo in Manhattan, KS. Prior to the event, community members had the opportunity to nominate early childhood providers to be recognized. Heartland was pleased to honor 17 local child care providers in the company of colleagues, families, and children.

 

6103 purple flags were displayed at the zoo to represent the number of children served in HeartlandAEYC's counties.





We look forward to another successful provider recognition during the Week of the Young Child 2016. Follow HeartlandAEYC on Facebook and Twitter for details on the event as they are released.

Do you serve children in Riley, Geary, Clay or Pottawatomie county? Contact Heartland through social media or at heartlandaeyc@gmail.com to get involved. 

Submitted by Chelsea Mitchell

Kansas AEYC Board Member

Heartland AEYC Treasurer

This post is part of a series from AEYC chapters and ECE student organizations in Kansas. If you would like to submit to the KansasAEYC blog on behalf of an organization, please contact Chelsea Mitchell at email.kansas.aeyc@gmail.com.

Child Care and Development Block Grant

submitted by Kasey Kile, Kansas AEYC President

Deb Crowl, KansasAEYC Public Policy Chair, Stephanie Schmit, CLASP,
Helen Blank, NWLC, and Kasey Kile, KansasAEYC President

On Monday, Deb Crowl, Kansas AEYC Public Policy Chair, and Kasey Kile, Kansas AEYC President, attended the 'Implementing the Child Care and Development Block Grant re-authorization meeting hosted by Kansas Action for Children.  This meeting allowed for several state organizations to come together to discuss the opportunities and and the challenges that Kansas has in regards to this re-authorization.

What is the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG)?

On November 19, 2014, Congress re-authorized CCDBG, the major federal child care program, for the first time since 1996.  The new law strengthens CCDBG's dual role as both a major early childhood program and a work support for low-income families.  

• The CCDBG governs the use of state and federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) dollars for child care assistance and quality improvement initiatives.
• CCDBG re-authorization establishes many new requirements for states, but also maintains state flexibility in many areas.
• The re-authorization does not guarantee new funding to comply with new requirements.

What are the new opportunities in the CCDBG Re-authorization?

• Protect the health and safety of children in care through more consistent standards and monitoring those standards.
• Allow families to more easily access child care assistance that supports stable and continuous child care, and that can be coordinated with other programs.
• Improve the quality of care, including through increased quality set-aside, support for child care providers, and targeted initiates for priority populations.

Further, this meeting had speakers and assistance from Helen Blank, Director of Child Care and Early Learning with the National Women's Law Center, and Stephanie Schmit, Senior Policy Analyst for Child Care and Early Education and Legislative Coordinator with CLASP.  These two individuals brought a wealth of knowledge and resources  regarding the CCDBG re-authorization.  For more information from either of these entities, I encourage you to visit their websites that are linked above.  Deb and I were lucky enough to have some round table discussion with Stephanie Schmit, as well as, take a picture with Helen and Stephanie!  

This conversation and discussion is not over.  There will many more meetings and discussions regarding the implementation of CCDBG for Kansas.  

Resources and information for this blog are from Kansas Action for Children, CLASP, and the National Women's Law Center.

Engaging Young Children in Play

Engaging Young Children in Play 

submitted by LeAnn Kruckenberg- Early Childhood Special Education Teacher and KAEYC Board Member

Through the years that I have worked to set up enticing and engaging play environments for young children, I have learned that very small changes in materials and environment can make the biggest impact on the quality of children’s play.  Following are some of my favorite strategies.

Novelty

Young children are excited about exploring materials that they have never encountered or that have previously been off limits to them.  Many times these materials are things that have only been available to adults in the child’s typical environment.  In my classroom, I provide a writing area that is stocked with unlimited access to materials such as a tape dispenser, stapler, scissors, pencils, markers, rulers, plain paper and envelopes.  This area is always very popular with the children.  I also find that adults enjoy using the materials to create things themselves or assist children in being able to accomplish the desired results. Compared to manipulatives purchased from a toy catalogue, these materials are very inexpensive and often much more appealing to everyone.

Making a monstrously exciting creation

 Open-ended Materials

These days, young children are frequently bombarded with toys that do something for them such as making noise, moving or lighting up.  I have often encountered young children who have to be taught to use toys like wooden blocks to build structures or to use pieces of fabric to make a costume.  As you prepare your early childhood environment, be mindful of your choices of materials.  Consider how many different and unique ways a child may use materials when selecting activities for them.

Happy Structure-building buddies

Natural Materials

Providing access to natural materials such as pinecones, acorns, leaves, sticks, or rocks invites young children to explore nature and experiment in their play.  In my experience, I have found that once adults indicate an interest in these materials, the children become very interested in looking for them outside the school and at home.  At school, I offer special containers and special places in the classroom to collect these types of materials.  Once a child’s interest is piqued, he/she immediately engages in the joy of natural collections.

Do you see what I see?

Our Classroom 'Rock' Band

Multi-sensory Materials

Young children respond best to materials that engage multiple senses.  When choosing classroom activities, I try to make sure that they will appeal to at least two senses if not more.  Most common activities will appeal to the visual or auditory senses.  Consider enhancing activities by adding smell, tactile elements, taste or movement.  We often don’t think of movement as a sense.  However, we all gain valuable information from moving our body.  One of my favorite multi-sensory activities is cooking with children because it often appeals to all of their senses. 

The "joy" of cooking

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