Supporting Positive Peer Interactions in Inclusive Child Care Settings

Many parents work nontraditional hours, meaning their children need access to early care and education programs outside typical operating hours. In the absence of qualified early care and education programs that offer nighttime care, these families may have to make challenging and precarious choices, choosing between maintaining their employment and leaving their children without the appropriate care.

The purpose of this 2-hour course is to support early childhood program owners and directors through the process of incorporating extended hours of care, including overnight care, to support the needs of many families across Texas.

The learning environment can function as an additional teacher when set up to promote learning and development across the four developmental domains. Consider the types of learning experiences your children can gain from your classroom design to the materials you have included. Ensure all children have developmentally appropriate opportunities to learn.

After completing this 2-hour course, the learner will be able to describe how to design an environment to promote development and learning, explain how to select appropriate materials, explain how to plan curricula for children, create a daily schedule, and an implementation plan to follow through on the daily schedule.

Early childhood education is not an act of transferring knowledge into children’s passive minds. Effective educators recognize that children must be active, engaged participants in the learning process. Thus, to effectively teach young children, we must first understand how they learn.

In this 2-hour course for early childhood professionals, we will introduce you to some of the most well-established scientific theories about children’s learning and development and how you can use the power of decades of scientific research to hone your teaching.

Every family plays a critical role in a child’s development and influences the work of an early childhood educator. Families, as a child’s first teacher, are in a position to promote healthy development and provide a foundation for how children see the world. In Defining the Importance of Families, you will take an in-depth look at the meaning of family to a child and how collaboration strengthens your work as an educator.

In this 4-hour course, we will describe the various types of family structures, discuss strategies to use for effective communication with families, and look at ways to create opportunities for collaboration.

Observation is the primary assessment tool of the early childhood professional and can empower your teaching at a classroom level and at an individual child level. Discover ways to increase how you can use your observations to increase learning for your children. This course may be included in the training hours needed for the CDA credential.

In this four-hour course, you will learn the role of observation and documentation in the teaching and learning cycle, ways to document observations, and the importance of accurate documentation to fully support very young children’s learning.