Creating Affirming Environments

The assignment that we were assigned to complete was to start and operational Family Child Care Center. I have honestly never worked in any other type of program besides child care programs. I knew that I would have to do some research to find out the types of materials and curriculum that were used in a family child care program.

After watching the video about Adriana' Castillo’s family child care program, I learned a lot about her center and the methods that she works with the families in her program. I thought that she did a good job of setting up the areas and having purpose behind the reasons that each area was set in a certain place in the home. One major quality that I really like about her program is that she interacts and works with the families to ensure that they feel involved in the program.

In my family child care program I would have a program that has 12 children at the max. I would have I would only have about four children that were preschoolers and the remaining children would be infants and toddlers. I feel that preschool children need to be a program that can focus on their individual needs and I want to ensure that I am doing such. I would have two other adults that work with me in the program. I would have a one to four ratio. At times I would have the children working in the areas together when they arrive in the program. However, I would have individual areas for each age group due to the fact that children from different ages play on different aggressive levels.

The areas that I would have in my center are: house area, block area, library area, sand and water area, science area, art area, computer area and I would also have a cozy area and a quiet area. The main part of the cozy area is to have a place for children to go to when they are upset and or need redirection. This small area would have pillows books and stuff soft animals that children can lay on or cuddle up with. I will also have a angry jar to give children an opportunity to release and let go of their anger and seal it up in the jar. Besides the cozy area I would have a quiet area where children can go and reflect about things that affect them.

I would also have family photos on the wall that showed each child's culture and family structure. I feel that having these photos will make it easier for children to transition into the program and nap time daily. I also would have story time daily before each nap time. I would have a family bring in a book or record their voice reading the book and we will play the tape during the nap time story. I feel that each parent really feel involved when they are doing these nap time stories. I really like the way Adriana' Castillo had a area where parents brought in things or items that were close to their family. That definitely pull the families in and made them feel like a part of the program.

As well as areas, I would have a parent board that gives parents information about what is going on in our program. This board would list the menus, lesson plans, schedules and our program calendar about the list of days we will have activities going on in the center. I would also send home daily reports that showed how the child's day was. I would also have a lending library for the families in my program. This would give me an opportunity to lend books to children while at home. I would have a system that would allow parents to check out books daily and read them at home to their children before bed or during the day. This is so important for me because I want to encourage families to read to their children in hopes of encouraging children to form a love for reading.




Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). Welcome to an Anti-Bias Learning Community (2012) [DVD] Strategies for Working with Diverse Children. Baltimore, MD: Author.