ChildCareExchange.com - ExchangeEveryDay

Time to Get Organized

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

"Simplicity is the art of doing less of what doesn't matter and focusing more on what does matter." This sage advice comes from Paula Jorde Bloom in her book, Leadership in Action: How Effective Directors Get Things Done (Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons, 2005). Jorde Bloom offers these steps to simplify your work life:

Meet with your office staff to think of ways you can reduce the amount of paper generated and routed to others.
Ask your team, "What things are we doing today that, if we were not doing them, we would not start doing?
Keep paper communications lean to reduce the amount of mental clutter that people have to wade through to get to the essence of your message.
Cut red tape for your teachers. Eliminate the obstacles to their success.
Don't allow things to accumulate that no longer have a real function. This means being selective about using your storage space.

More Tools for Being an Effective Manager

Exchange has packaged six of its practical management resources into a single "Center Manager's Tool Kit" and is offering the entire set at a 33% discount. Resources in the kit include:

The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations
Managing Money: A Center Director's Guidebook
Stick Your Neck Out - A Street-Smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond
250 Management Success Stories from Child Care Directors
Exchange Article CD Collection #4: Avoiding Burnout
Exchange Article CD Collection #5: Supervising Staff

Decline of Picture Books

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

In reporting on this year's Bologna Book Fair, The Economist (April 5, 2008; www.economist.com) observed an issue on the minds of attendees: "How to revive picture books, those lavishly illustrated creations that teach children to love books long before they can read them."

The Economist cited a number of reasons for the decline of picture books...

"All publishers find it hard to deal with cut-price Internet selling, harder nosed high-street booksellers, and people's increasing reluctance to read. Picture books have a particular problem: they cost a bomb to produce and unless they are seen and handled, their price may seem prohibitive."

Read About Literacy - Earn a Continuing Education Credit

You can now earn CEUs online by reading Exchange articles - including one set of course readings on Literacy in the Early Years. Currently the following online courses are available on the Exchange website:

Teachers:

Outdoor Play Environments
Food and Nutrition Challenges
Literacy in the Early Years<
Serving Children with Special Needs
Managing Challenging Behaviors
Math in the Early Years
Brain Research Implications for Early Childhood
Involving Parents in Your Program<
Observation and Assessment<
Reggio Emilia Learning Experiences
Making Play Work
Social and Emotional Development

Directors:

Leadership in Early Childhood
Supervising Early Childhood Staff
Training Early Childhood Staff
Evaluating Early Childhood Programs
Marketing Child Care Services
Trends in Early Childhood Education
Managing Money
Director Safety
Physical Evironment and Room Arrangement

Taking Back Childhood

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

In her new book, Taking Back Childhood, Exchange author Nancy Carlsson-Paige writes that childhood culture has changed dramatically in just one generation. Social trends - screen time, commercialism, sped-up daily life, violence and sexualization, academic pressures - are changing how children experience their early years. Carlsson-Paige observes:

"When corporations pitch their wares to kids, it's not just products they're selling through the increasingly sophisticated campaigns their marketers devise. It's also a mindset - one that tells kids, 'You'll be happy if you have this toy, if you eat this food, if you look this way.' One result is that from an early age many children get the message that happiness comes from acquiring things, which undermines their ability to find satisfaction and to meet their basic developmental needs through play and meaningful relationships with others. As we learn more about how commercialism is harming our children, we'll see that, despite its pervasiveness, there are many ways to counteract its destructive influence."

Carlsson-Paige suggests steps adults can take to counteract the harm to children from current social trends:

Keep it simple with toys. Remember that fewer is better, simpler is better.
Reduce television time, especially children's exposure to commercial TV.
Avoid substituting material things for emotional expression and connection.
Find regular times to be together as a family and encourage children to contribute to family life as a way of caring rather than a means to getting a material reward.
Help children find peace and sanctuary through connecting to the natural world.
Help children explore their own unique talents and interests, and show your interest in their activities by making descriptive rather than evaluative comments about what they do.
Point out ads, talk about why they exist, and ask open-ended questions that encourage children to think more about marketing, keeping children's ways of seeing the world in mind.
Prepare kids ahead of time for visits to a store.
Help children learn how to handle the urge to buy without giving into it.
As children get older, talk with them about our interconnections with the people and conditions that produce the items we consume.

Save on Taking Back Childhood!

Penguin Books is offering ExchangeEveryDay readers the opportunity to purchase Taking Back Childhood at a 15% discount. Add Taking Back Childhood to your shopping cart and on the shopping cart page add this coupon code: EXCHANGE

Geography Matters

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

The Every Child Matters Education Fund has published a report, "Geography Matters: Child Well-Being in the States", that compares statistics among the 50 states on 10 indicators of child well-being such as infant mortality, child poverty, uninsured children, and child welfare expenditures. What the report reveals is that a "widening investment gap in health and social programs is contributing to a wide 'child well-being gap among the states." Children in the ten lowest ranking states are...

Twice as likely to die in their first year as children in the highest-ranking states
Three times more likely to die between the ages of 1 - 14
Three times more likely to live in poverty
Thirteen times more likely to die from abuse and neglect

Top Ten States
1. Vermont
2. Massachusetts
3. Connecticut
4. Rhode Island
5. New Hampshire
6. Hawaii
7. Iowa
8. Minnesota
9. Washington
10. Maine

Bottom Ten States
41. Arizona
42. South Dakota
43. Nevada
44. Arkansas
45. South Carolina
46. Texas
47. Oklahoma
48. New Mexico
49. Mississippi
50. Louisiana

States with Job Opportunities

The Exchange Job Opportunities service lists positions available for teachers and directors in Colorado, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, California, Utah, Maryland, and Massachusetts at www.childcareexchange.com/jobs. If you are looking for staff, this is also an extremely cost-effective way to get the word out to a blue chip audience of candidates.

Make Yourself Unique

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

One of the resources in Exchange's Center Manager's Tool Kit is a CD collection of Exchange articles on "Avoiding Burnout." Included on this CD is the article "Go For the Gusto - Put Zest Back In Your Job," which offers this advice on making yourself unique...

"Joyce Brothers, writing on the factors of success in business in How to Get What You Want Out of Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), observed, 'The more you can bring more than one facet or talent to a job, the greater your probability of success. You can make yourself unique. You can work to acquire a cluster of skills that no one else has.'

"Think about what excites you about your job and about your life outside the job. What are your prime skills? What other professional challenges interest you? Can you combine your current skills and interests into a unique and rewarding career?

"If, for example, you have mastered the tasks involved in administering a child care center, and now you find yourself increasingly intrigued by computers, maybe you can build a business out of helping child care centers enter the computer age. If your strongest suit is the marketing of your organization, maybe you could set up a marketing service for a network of centers.

"Overhaul your work day. Keep an appointment book with you for several days, logging in what you are doing every 15 minutes. Now take a close look at how your time is allocated. During what amount of your workday are you called upon to exercise your strongest professional skills? How much of your time is spent handling mundane clerical or administrative tasks that could just as well be handled by a lesser-trained individual? How much of your time is devoted to evaluation, development, and innovation? How much of it is consumed by maintenance activities and fire fighting? How much of your time is deliberately planned by yourself? How much is controlled by others through phone calls and drop-in visits?

"Now take a stab at fantasizing your ideal work day. How much time would you spend on reading and writing? How much time would you allocate to talking with your staff? When would you come in to work and when would you go home? How would you put your peak performance times to best use? How can you bridge the gap between how you really spend your time and how you know you should?"

More Survival Tools for Directors

Exchange has packaged six of its practical management resources into a single "Center Manager's Tool Kit" and is offering the entire set at a 33% discount. Resources in the kit include:

The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations
Managing Money: A Center Director's Guidebook
Stick Your Neck Out - A Street-Smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond
250 Management Success Stories from Child Care Directors
Exchange Article CD Collection #4: Avoiding Burnout
Exchange Article CD Collection #5: Supervising Staff

And the Winners Are...

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Lakeshore Learning Materials sponsored the "Win a Trip to the Working Forum on Nature Education" contest on the Exchange web site. Nearly 1,000 hopeful individuals entered the contest that concluded in mid-April with a drawing for two winners of trips to the Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska for the Working Forum. And, the two trip winners are...

Cheryl Tremblay
Cheryl's Child Care
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Bess Sternberg
Sternberg Educational Consultants
Point Arena, California, United States

Check out the Exchange Curriculum Tool Kit

Exchange has bundled some of its most popular curriculum resources into a "Curriculum Kit" and has put a highly discounted price tag on the collection. The Curriculum Kit includes:

Beginnings Workshop Book #5 - Curriculum: Art, Music, Movement, Drama
Beginnings Workshop Book #4 - Curriculum: Brain Research, Math, Science
Hearing Everyone's Voice: Educating Young Children for Peace and Democratic Community
Connecting: Friendship in the Lives of Young Children
The Wonder of It: Exploring How the World Works
Out of the Box Training Kit: Recognizing the Essentials of Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum

School-Age Programs Matter

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Disadvantaged students who regularly attend top-notch school-age care programs end up, after two years, academically far ahead of their peers who spend more out-of-school time in unsupervised activities according to findings of an eight state school-age study. The Promising Afterschool Programs study, reported in Education Week (November 28, 2007; www.edweek.org), examined 35 programs, selected for their record of success, serving 2,914 students in 14 communities stretching from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Seaside, California. Education Week described how the study worked...

"...Researchers divided students into three groups: a 'program only' group of students who attended their afterschool program two or three times a week and did nothing else outside the school; a 'program plus' group who visited the afterschool programs two or three times a week and also took part in sports, church programs, music lessons, or other extracurricular activities; and a 'low supervision' group who dropped in on a mix of afterschool activities from one to three days a week. The researchers found, over the course of the three-year project, that the more engaged students were in supervised afterschool activities, the better they did on a range of academic, social, and behavioral outcomes. For instance, 3rd and 4th graders in the 'program plus' group tallied gains on standardized mathematics tests that were 20 percentile points higher than those of children who rarely went. The frequent attenders also made more progress in developing sound work habits, task persistence, and better social skills, and in reducing negative behaviors such as skipping school or fighting."

What Threats Concern You?

For 15 years, Exchange has surveyed early childhood leaders on the threats their organizations face. Now you can participate in this year's survey by voting on the current Exchange Insta-Poll.

Let the Kids Run Wild

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Bonnie and I are in New Zealand for the Working Forum for Teacher Educators. This morning the headline in the New Zealand Herald (April 28, 2008; nzherald.co.nz) read, "Let the Kids Run Wild, Says Irwin." This was the message delivered by another visitor to New Zealand, Teri Irwin, the American-born naturalist, author, and widow of Australian naturalist Steve Irwin. Her message to Kiwi parents was "go to the bush with your children to get to know the outdoors again."

In talking about her campaign to instill the wildlife experience in other people, she shared this story...

"I was visiting a butterfly sanctuary in another country and there was a woman who, as a butterfly flew by dodged it, like it was flying at her. I thought 'wow we're getting far from wildlife.' If you're afraid of a butterfly, we're in trouble here.

"It's exciting in New Zealand because so many people get their kids out to experience nature and to learn not to be afraid of it."

Contributed by Roger Neugebauer

Exchange Resources on Nature

Exchange has a variety of practical resources on introducing young children to nature. We have two books...

Learning with Nature Idea Book
The Wonder of It: Exploring How the World Works

And, we have the following nature-oriented Beginnings Workshop 16-page training tools...

Nature and Young Children
Science, Using the Outdoors
Curriculum and Nature
Outdoor Environments

Combining Traditional and Online Learning

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Brian McFarlin at University of Houston ran an experiment in which half the students in a large undergraduate kinesiology course were taught only by the traditional in-class lecture format and the other half were taught in a hybrid format that combined lectures and online learning. At the completion of the courses, the students in the hybrid format had grades that were 10% higher than those in the traditional format. Writing about this experiment in Advances in Physiology Education McFarlin concluded, "Hybrid courses allow students additional exposure to course content that is not possible in a traditional classroom environment. This exposure may lead to an improvement in academic performance."

What are Your Views on Online Learning?

We are collecting both instructor and student reactions to online learning for an article in Exchange magazine, as well as for a presentation at NAEYC's Professional Development Institute. We invite you to share your views on online learning in a brief Exchange survey. If we use your views, we will give you direct credit as the source.

Is Autism on the Rise?

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Evidence abounds that the incidence of children diagnosed with autism is on the rise. For example, in the state of Washington the number of students with autism jumped from 2,104 in 2001 to 6,000 in 2007. In the United Kingdom, the rate of autism diagnosis has risen from 50 in 100,000 in 1990 to 400 per 100,000 today.

Theories about the cause of this rise also abound, identifying a wide range of environmental factors. However, Dr. Dorothy Bishop and her colleagues at Oxford University now are proposing a much simpler explanation - that in the past many children with autism were misdiagnosed. Her article in the May 2008 issue of Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, describes a research project where 38 teenagers who, as young children, were diagnosed as having a developmental language disorder. The researchers went back and re-diagnosed these children by interviewing them and their parents. The result was that fully one-third of these children were misclassified and, in fact, under current procedures, would have been considered to have some form of autism. Dr. Bishop concludes that while we should not assume that other factors are not still involved, it appears that a major cause for the increase in autism is simply changes in diagnostic criteria.

Exchange's Many Resources on Challenging Behavior

Exchange has a number of extremely helpful resources for supporting teachers in dealing with children with challenging behaviors:

Our book, Behavior, has 24 articles written by experts in the field on how to deal with challenging behavior.
Ten Out of the Box Training Kits on "Positive Discipline" provide directors with all the resources you need to conduct in-house training sessions.
An Exchange CEU course on Managing Challenging Behavior provides credit for reading 10 Exchange articles on the subject.
Exchange's newest resource, the DVD Facing the Challenge, is an expertly crafted video training tool.

Young Americans Geographically Challenged

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

A survey conducted by the National Geographic Education Foundation, and reported in Education Week (May 10, 2006; www.edweek.org), revealed, according the study's organizers, that too many young adults "appear in some way unprepared for an increasingly global future." When American adults aged 18 to 24 were surveyed about geography...

Six of ten could not find Iraq on a map of the Middle East
More than 50% did not now that Indonesia is a predominantly Muslim nation
Only 25% knew that Mandarin, not English, is the most widely spoken language in the world
Less than a six months after Katrina, 33% could not find Louisiana on a map
Nearly two-thirds could not find the United Kingdom
Nearly three-fourths could not find Egypt

Resources for Decision Makers

Exchange has practical and insightful resources for leaders in early childhood organizations. You can purchase our best selling guidebook, The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations, at a 20% discount this week. Or, for an even greater discount, you can purchase our popular "Managers Tool Kit" with a discount price on the following collection of resources...

The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations
Managing Money: A Center Director's Guidebook
Stick Your Neck Out - A Street-Smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond
250 Management Success Stories from Child Care Directors
Exchange Article CD Collection #4: Avoiding Burnout
Exchange Article CD Collection #5: Supervising Staff

Regulation of Family Care Questioned

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

A report, Leaving Children to Chance, released by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies takes a close look at the standards and oversight for small (up to six children) family child care programs. In the Foreword of the report, NACCRRA's Executive Director Linda Smith offers this chilling reflection...

"More than 1.7 million children under age six are in family child care homes every week. And yet, for the most part, our research on family child care policies found that most states do little to protect children while they are in family child care homes. Only 12 states begin to license family child care when one unrelated child is cared for in the home. The rest have widely varying thresholds, with South Dakota at the end of the spectrum: only with the existence of the 13th child does South Dakota regulate family child care homes. We chose 14 basic elements of quality child care to review and score the states. No state received the maximum allowable points. Only one state [Oklahoma] received a score of even 75 percent. Fifteen states scored zero because they do not inspect family child care homes prior to issuing a license, allow more than six children to be present without regulation, or do not license small family child care homes. Of those states with a score, the average score was 60 out of a possible 140....

"It is our hope that policymakers at the federal and state level will be motivated to protect children's safety and help insure their healthy development.... Together we can make a difference."

Three New Out of the Box Training Kits Available

There are three new Out of the Box Training Kits. And, when reviewing these new training tools, remember that you can now purchase 5 kits for the price of 4! The new kits are:

Assessing Mathematical Learning
Positive Strategies for Children with Sensory Integration Challenges
Conversations with Children: The Common Thread in our Work

How Sweet It Is

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

A spoonful of sugar helps the thinking get done. At least that is the conclusion of researchers at Florida State University. In a study reported in The Economist (March 29, 2008; www.economist.com), student volunteers were put through some brain taxing work and then half of them were given a glass of lemonade with sugar and half without sugar. When confronted with a decision-making scenario twelve minutes after consuming the lemonade, the students who had consumed the sugary drink were much more likely to use reasoning in coming to a decision. Those who had not consumed sugar tended to rely on intuition alone in making their decision. So if your job requires considerable decision making, you had best forsake those sugar-free drinks, at least during high brain activity times.

Resources for Decision Makers

Exchange has some sweet resources for leaders in early childhood organizations. You can purchase our best selling guidebook, The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations, at a 20% discount this week. Or, for an even greater discount, you can purchase our popular "Managers Tool Kit" with a discount price on the following collection of resources:

The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations
Managing Money: A Center Director's Guidebook
Stick Your Neck Out - A Street-Smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond
250 Management Success Stories from Child Care Directors
Exchange Article CD Collection #4: Avoiding Burnout
Exchange Article CD Collection #5: Supervising Staff

Threats to Your Organization

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

For the past 15 years, Exchange has been conducting surveys of what early childhood programs perceive to be the most serious threats to their organization. Last year when we did the survey as an Exchange Insta-Poll, the top ten threats were identified to be...

Shortages of qualified teachers
State of the economy
Competition from the public schools
Decreases in public subsidies
Pressure from parents to teach more academics
Lack of affordable space for expansion
Changes to state regulations/licensing requirements
Competition from new centers
Child being injured in an accident at your center
Competition from unlicensed providers

Now you can have your voice heard in the 2008 "Threats to Your Organization" Exchange Insta-Poll. Provide your input and check out what this year's major concerns are.

Directors and Teachers Wanted

While you are on our website voting for your top threats, why not check out our Job Opportunities feature. Positions available are listed for teachers and directors in Colorado, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, California, Utah, Maryland, and Massachusetts at www.childcareexchange.com/jobs. If you are looking for staff, this is also an extremely cost effective way to get the word out to a blue chip audience of candidates.

Bottom-Up View of Quality

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EDT

In her article, "Looking at the Quality of Early Childhood Programs" in the Exchange management guidebook, The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations, Lilian Katz, makes these comments...

"The characteristics of a program that really predict its outcome are the answers to the bottom-up question, which is: What does it feel like to be a child in this environment?

"Obtaining answers to this question is not easy! It requires making the very best guess one can about how each individual child in this group experiences the program. We can proceed by asking about the environment on behalf of each child:

Is it welcoming rather than merely captivating?
Do I belong in the group rather than merely have a good time?
Am I usually accepted by adults rather than scolded?
Am I taken seriously rather than just precious or cute?
Am I usually accepted by some peers rather than isolated, neglected, or rejected?
Is this environment usually involving rather than entertaining?
Are the activities meaningful rather than mindless?
Are the activities engaging rather than amusing?
Are the activities interesting rather than boring?
Do I usually come here willingly rather than reluctantly?

"It seems to me that only when answers to most of these questions are positive can we assume that the quality of the program is worthy of our children."

Art of Leadership on Sale!

This week the popular Exchange guidebook and textbook, The Art of Leadership, is on sale at a 20% discount. The comprehensive guide includes contributions from the leading experts in the field (including Lilian Katz) on the following management areas...

Leadership
Advocacy
Getting organized
Legal issues
Financial management
Fundraising
Personnel policies
Recruiting and selecting staff
Supervising and developing staff
Evaluating your program
Shaping your curriculum
Working with parents
Marketing your program
Community outreach