Life & Health

To grow and excel as an early childhood professional, you must reflect on your teaching practices and child observation to make changes and adjustments to your teaching approach. Intentional early childhood professionals engage in reflective practices and create a professional development plan that builds upon their strengths and enhances their teaching.

After completing this 4-hour course, the learner will be able to describe what an intentional early childhood professional is, explain what reflective practices are and how to implement this information effectively to improve their teaching, explain why being intentional and reflective promotes the development and learning in the children they are teaching, and create a professional development plan based upon their strengthens.

Promoting creativity in an early childhood setting is critical for the development of children’s brains. Environments, daily interactions, and experiences are all opportunities to promote creativity in young learners. Creativity can be expressed through the visual arts, music and movement, and dramatic arts.

After completing this 3-hour course, the learner will be able to describe the elements of creativity, explain how environments can encourage creativity, examine how the arts can support development across all domains in early childhood, and discuss the different categories of creative arts with connections to the four developmental domains.

Invest in your future in early childhood education with our Preschool Child Development Associate (CDA) Course Bundle. Enroll today!

Ethics, values, and vision are the foundation of who we are. As early childhood professionals, we must understand and evaluate our values and their impact on our decision-making process. Being mindful of how our beliefs and biases impact our approach to teaching and building relationships is how we successfully build relationships with children, families, and colleagues.

After completing this 4-hour course, the learner will be able to describe what ethics and values are, explain how these affect the early childhood profession, create a teaching philosophy that portrays your vision and teaching practices based upon these beliefs, and explain personal bias and its impact on the learning environment and teaching.

The Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential is the most widely used and recognized program to enhance current practices and provide a critical first step to a deeper understanding of early childhood education and career advancement. This course supports early childhood educators who are going through the process of earning a CDA.

In this two-hour course, the learner will be able to identify and follow the steps in the CDA credentialing process, determine the coursework required for the CDA, and describe the verification visit and exam process.

Being an early childhood advocate extends beyond the classroom and includes collaborating with colleagues to work to create positive improvements in our field. Advocacy in the early childhood field is how we make substantial changes in regulations that support funding, research, improve systems, and further the development of our field to make a lifelong impact on children and families. 

After completing this 2-hour course, the learner will be able to describe what being an advocate entails, explain how why advocacy is important, and identify various advocacy organizations.

A major component of completing the process for the Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential is building your CDA Professional Portfolio. This portfolio contains all the documentation needed to meet the requirements of the CDA credential and will be part of your CDA Verification visit. This resource binder should be built to be used by you as you work with the children and families you serve.

In this four-hour course, the learner will be able to identify the essential components that must be included in the CDA Professional Portfolio, including the family questionnaires, the Reflective Dialogue Worksheet, the resource collection items, and the accompanying competency statement for each of the six areas required and the Professional Philosophy Statement. This binder will be part of the resources examined by the CDA Professional Development Specialist and used as a reflection tool during the CDA Verification Visit.

Children are born curious about the world in which they live. In this course, we discuss how to use a variety of dresearch-based learning materials to promote and enhance their natural curiosity, reasoning, and problem-solving in the areas of social studies and nature.

After completing this 2-hour course, the learner will be able to describe how social studies and using nature support children’s cognitive development. Social studies experiences should reflect the range of the children’s cultural groups. The learner will be able to give activity examples from these two areas.

Engaging families to become involved in their child’s early care and education sets the foundation for that involvement to continue throughout the child’s schooling. Helping families understand the importance of this involvement is critical. Families may not always understand how important they are in the education process, from early care onwards.

In this two-hour course, the learner will describe strategies for conducting orientations, holding formal meetings with families, discussing ways to support child development at home, encouraging parent involvement, and determining community resources available to help families and their children.