Life & Health

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.

Executive function is the collection of processes in our brain that help us make calm and rational decisions to accomplish tasks and goals. These skills can be developed through interactions with children to support their learning every day to develop these skills.

The purpose of this 2-hour course is to educate early childhood professionals on the benefits of targeting executive function, its component skills, and common patterns of executive function development to support teachers with planning learning experiences to support children’s development of executive function.

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.

Collaboration is an integrated part of how we build successful relationships, make connections, create support systems, and involve the community in the field of early childhood. Professionalism plays a critical role in how early childhood educators foster their collaborative efforts. Learning how to collaborate creatively and effectively is essential to being an early childhood professional.

After completing this 3-hour course, the participants will be able to explain what collaboration is, describe elements of professionalism, and list ways to collaborate in the early childhood profession.

Early childhood professionals should understand the standards, policies, and guidelines that must be followed based on the type of program they are working in. These regulations may vary for early childhood businesses, and some may have to follow multiple standards. Understanding these regulations, including best practices, keeps children safe and programs in compliance and ensures high-quality educational experiences for children.

After completing this 3-hour course, the learner will be able to explain the importance of understanding standards and policies, describe why we have regulations in the field of early childhood, list resources that provide state and federal guidelines, and explain best practices for implementation and creating systems for compliance.

Knowing what children can do and what they know is powerful information that can guide early learning teachers to create appropriate learning experiences for their children. The purposes and types of assessments are examined.

This 4-hour course for early learning educators is designed to review the purposes of assessment, how to evaluate and interpret the results, and create a plan to share results with families.

Math is FUN! It is one of the few times you can see the wheels turning as children engage in the exploration of number and number operations, geometry and spatial sense, classification, and pattern skills! Learning happens right before your eyes!

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.

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.