Cooperative Preschools

For those parents that are looking at preschools, I just wanted to share a little information about cooperative preschools. We have two cooperative preschools in Boise (that I know of, I apologize if I'm unaware of any others), Boise Cooperative Preschool and The Cooperative Preschool at St. Michael's. The Cooperative Preschool at St. Michael's is a NAEYC accredited program. Please see post entitled "Choosing Quality Childcare" for information about NAEYC and it's accreditation of childcare and other early learning settings.

Cooperative preschools rely on the support of parents. Parents donate their time in the classroom, they help on field trips, they help with fundraising, and even cleaning. Due to this type of parent involvement you get a quality preschool at a low cost. I also see added perks such as, you really get to know your child's first teacher, you get to know the children in your child's class, you get to meet other parents with children the same age, and you get great ideas of activities to transfer to home.

The parents I know that have done cooperative have really loved it. Parents with children enrolled in both programs have raved about the quality of learning, parent/teacher collaboration, and community activities. It works best for families with some flexibility in their schedules. Parents like I mentioned above must donate their time, and these preschools do not provide all day care, so it really works best for parents that work part-time, or for families in which one parent stays at home.

I believe both programs have wait lists, so if you are interested, please check them out!

Language and The Brain

Sorry parents! It's been way too long since I've done a post. Here come more excuses, but I've just been so been busy with all that summer brings. This has included a class to fulfill one of my last credits to renew my K-3 teaching certification. Here's an assignment I completed as a parent resource that I just had to share with all of you.

Enjoy!

The experiences of infants and young children effect their language development, for this reason parents and early childhood educators can have great impacts on a child’s learning and development of speech and language.

A child’s brain has areas specific to supporting language. These areas of the brain become more developed and specialized as the child has experiences related to language.

There are times within a child’s development where speech and language development are ready to occur. Babies are born able to detect hundreds of different speech sounds, and as they grow older this ability fades.

Children are able to learn multiple languages at young ages as well. As they get older this ability fades as well. Children that speak more than one language may take a longer period of time to process language, and may speak those languages somewhat later than what may be typical of a child learning one language. Children that have learned more than one language may also demonstrate attention and cognitive advantages.

Do you often notice that you or other parents speak to infants in a different way than you speak to adults? This type of speech is often referred to as “motherese,” or “parentese.” This slow speech, which emphasizes certain speech sounds, is very beneficial for allowing infants to hear and process language.

So how do we as caregivers and parents encourage children's language development: we respond to the child’s communication and attempts to use language, we provide language rich environments, and we use language with children in a variety of ways.

Information gathered from Zero to Three, Early Development and the Brain.