Creating Affirming Environments

Welcome to “Child’s Play” family child care center. My name is Elizabeth Garcia and I will be sharing with you the vision of my center. I serve 20 families and their children ages 3-5. The children have several centers for learning and play along with areas that help promote healthy social identities that help with building confidence and family pride. When first entering the center, families will find a “Parent News Board” that not only gives basic information such as daily schedule, menu, lesson plan, and news letter but also resources for the families. Families can use this board for their own use too. They can add letters of their own of things going on in their own lives, up-coming events that they want to share with others in the community and offer services. Each child has their own cubbies lined along the wall with a picture of each child along with their name. The centers are set up so that the “quiet” centers are close together and the “noisy” centers are together. Each center has labels on the shelves and containers in English and Spanish and some have pictures of words in sign language. The centers also have multi-cultural items to help all children feel welcome and included. The library contains multi-cultural books to help “introduce differences and similarities” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010); the art area contains multi-cultural paints, paper, crayons, and markers to help support this as well. The music area has a “diverse selection of CDs…to reflect children’s home cultures and languages as well as the larger community, country, and world” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010 p. 52). The dramatic play area contains dolls that support girls, boys, and cultures as well as “clothing and toys for both genders {that} reflects the children’s background. (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010 p. 52). The bock area contains many different types of blocks along with people figures for children to use for play acting and expressing emotions. The walls show diverse children playing in the different centers, different art work or wall hangings that represent different heritages and a section for the children’s art work to be shown. I also have a “Share Your Culture” center that contains shelves for families to bring in something that represents their culture or heritage. The items are displayed for a month and then sent home and a new item is sent back in its place. Each family has a time that they can come in and share the item with the children and explain why it is important to them. My “calming down” center has a large soft pillow along with small pillows on the floor. In this area children can explore their emotions by looking in a mirror that is on the wall above the pillows. Around the mirror are many different faces of children showing different emotions like happy, sad, scared, frustrated, mad, excited, tired, and so on. We eat family style for breakfast and lunch which means the children serve themselves as much as possible; they also help with the setting of the table and cleaning up when finished. Thank you for visiting, I hope you enjoyed our center.

Inspirations:

I was really impressed with watching the video segment with Adriana Castillo and some of the sections that she included into her center. Many of these things I would not be allowed to create at my own center that I work at; however, if I did have my own center I would have them. The main section that inspired me was the Family Culture Share that Castillo has in her center. I loved this idea and knew right away that I needed to include this in my own center. Another inspiration that I received from Castillo was the idea to allow families to use the “news board” themselves. I thought this was another excellent idea for partnership between the center and families as well as a type of support for everyone. I like that the board is not just used to inform parents about daily routines and what is on the menu. I like that it can be used by the families to inform everyone about different things going on in their lives or in the community. The calming down area is another center that I was inspired by Castillo. I believe that this could be a comfort for the children and I included the mirror with emotions so that they can try to evaluate their own feelings. I do have a mirror with emotions on it now in my classroom, but it is by the sink because that is where I was told to put it. I believe it could be of better use in a center for children to be able to explore their feelings.

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer) (2011). Welcome to an anti-bias learning community. [Video webcast]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_4066646_1%26url%3D