Agrilife Extension Resources

To facilitate positive social and emotional outcomes for children, early childhood educators need to understand and recognize the role of stress and trauma on early brain development and implement proactive and responsive measures to build children’s resilience.

This 2-hour course aims to help early childhood professionals understand how they can play a part in cultivating positive social emotional outcomes for each child by applying trauma-informed and resiliency-supporting practices in early learning settings.

Despite the known benefits of outdoor and nature play for young children, early childhood educators and administrators may worry about issues of safety and liability.

The purpose of this 2-hour course is to equip early childhood professionals to view risk in outdoor and nature play as a process of balancing risks and benefits, rather than a barrier to including outdoor and nature play in your program.

Early childhood educators can make the most of planned outdoor and nature play experiences in terms of children’s learning through the interactions they have with children as they play.

The purpose of this 2-hour course is to offer early childhood professionals actionable strategies for facilitating learning through outdoor and nature play.

In early childhood, a child’s social emotional development and mental health are one and the same. That means the strategies early childhood educators use to cultivate positive social emotional development are, by definition, supportive of positive mental health outcomes.

The purpose of this 2-hour course is to give early childhood professionals a review of key milestones and learning goals in the social emotional domain of development and a selection of practical strategies to help children achieve them.

A well-designed, naturalized outdoor learning environment can be the ultimate tool for facilitating meaningful, impactful outdoor play and learning experiences for young children.

The purpose of this 2-hour course is to introduce early childhood educators and directors to best practices in outdoor learning environments and offer tips for making incremental improvements to enhance the quality of your program’s existing outdoor spaces.

In order to facilitate healthy social emotional development among young children, early childhood professionals first need to have the tools to regulate their own emotions and manage their own stress.

The purpose of this 2-hour course is to provide early childhood educators with information and resources to recognize stressors and signs of stress and empower them to adopt healthy approaches to stress management.

Health and safety of children in care is the #1 priority for all early childhood professionals. Home-based child care has specific requirements that must be addressed to ensure health and safety practices are properly integrated into a home-based child care.

This 2-hour course is for prospective home-based child care business owners and will introduce some of the health and safety standards, best practices, and ways to properly implement these in your home-based child care.

Starting a new home-based child care business involves making a number of decisions including the type of home-based child care to operate and how to incorporate best practices.

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.