EDUC 6162 - Week 4

On the NAEYC website home page, we have a few columns to look through. Our week's issue is highlighted a few times in the home page. The News and Highlights column begins with "Child Care and Development Block Grant" where they explain that money has been granted to raise the threshold for health and safety in early childhood programs. The NAEYC applauds that and encourages the senate to do the same. On the Act column, the first item listed is "Invest in Kids… ". By clicking on the link, the following is seen: "Join Us in Supporting a Strong Start for America's Children. Children’s early learning experiences set the course for success in school and life.  High-quality programs benefit everyone: children, families, communities – and because of the return on investment, everyone wins.  …" (NAEYC, 2014). These topics are clearly in line with the trend being studied this week in our course. With NAEYC being the leading organization in early childhood education, it is a strong message of support for these issues.

As a member, I can login and access the online version of Young Children. The September issue of Young Children is described in a previous blog entry, and a lot of it is about diversity in early years programs. Under the Public Policy icon of the website, we see the NAEYC's support and efforts to get more funding for improving quality programs in early years.

My personal favorite section on the website is Topics, where you click to find a list of practical topics for our daily work. The topics listed that are currently important issues (and potentially trends) for my practice include "Anti-Bias education: Holidays and fairness", "Obesity prevention" and "Play and learning".

Working with a huge mix of cultures and religions, being sensitive to holidays and what is celebrated, is quite important. I enjoyed learning about ways to handle holidays that are not bias and that embrace all celebrations. What a wonderful issue to tackle, and the link has a book listed that tackles this issue.

The Obesity prevention link has numerous resources that helps us educate parents and implement healthy eating in our centers. The first parents workshop this year at our nursery will be about healthy nutrition for the children in our care. Once again, this is an important issue for my work, and worldwide.

Once again, the Play and Learning issue is visited annually at our nursery, in order to ensure that play remains the core of our curriculum. This issue is very well resourced and backed up on the NAEYC's topic section.

www.naeyc.org