Preschool Child Care - Early Learning Initiative Program
Purpose in Child Care:
The purpose of the Early Learning Initiative (ELI) program is to prepare preschool aged children, 3-5 years old, from low-income families with the necessary early language, cognitive, and pre-reading skills needed to prevent childhood reading difficulties and ensure continued school success after leeaving our child care center.
Teacher's Day Care Education:
Teachers' education plays a vital role in the outcomes of students' success. To ensure children exit preschool with the skills necessary to perform well in kindergarten and there after. Our preschool child care staff is required to complete 20 hours of Ohio Department of Education (ODE) approved professional development trainings per year.
Child Care Assessments:
Assessments are used to determine children's speech/language, cognitive, gross motor, fine motor, and social/emotional/behavioral development. Assessments of the children at our day care are administered during the Spring and Fall of each year. Teachers monitor children's development throughout the year by using the Creative Curriculum's Developmental Continuum. Results from the Get It, Got It, Go assessment shows that preschoolers are making significant gains in achieving picture naming, alliteration and rhyming skills.
Curriculum:
The instructional program supporting the Early Learning Initiative program is The Creative Curriculum for Preschool 4th edition. Quasi-experimental childcare studies show that this curriculum improves the quality of the preschool classroom and promotes school readiness. Implementation of this curriculum will provide preschoolers with the necessary tools to reach the threshold of kindergarten, equipped and ready. The child care curriculum defines the vital role of integrating content learning to children's everyday play experiences while focusing on the major components of pre-reading: oral language, phonological awareness, print awareness, and alphabetic knowledge.