Keeping Your Smile
Whether you are a child care provider, teacher, parent, or foster parent, this session is full of ideas to help maintain and strengthen your smile and your commitment to quality early care and education. The session uses stories and humor to help caregivers learn to invest in their own care and wellbeing so they have the energy, focus, and inner resources to better care for the children in their lives.
Be A Professional Play Technician
Children (and adults) learn through play. That means one of your many roles as a caregiver is PROFESSIONAL PLAY TECHNICIAN. This session provides a job description for this important job title and offers tips and tricks for fostering creative, developmentally appropriate, child-centered, and engaging play.
Based on content in these books.
YOU=Professional Role Model
Like it or not, if you spend time with children you are a professional role model. Children are always watching and often learn more from our actions than our words. This session helps child care providers, teachers, parents, and foster parents look closer at how their actions influence the children in their lives and how they can be more effective role models.
Based on content in these books.
Are You Ready?
Your job as an early care and education professional is to create, nurture, and sustain healthy emotional environments. Physical environments flop if emotional environments are not strong and supportive. Cutting through the emotional baggage and clutter that exists in you, the children in your care, and their parents, is an essential challenge you must continually face as a professional. Are you ready to meet that challenge?
Based on content in these books.
Finding Your Smile Again
Too many providers spend so much time focusing on the needs of others that they fail to take care of themselves, which often leads to stress and burnout. This session will look at how burnout impacts providers and ways to deal with that impact. The session is based on my Redleaf Press Book, Finding Your Smile Again: A Child Care Professional’s Guide to Reducing Stress and Avoiding Burnout.
Attack of the Snoterpillars
Maintaining strong relationships with the children is the cornerstone of any quality child care environment, but such relationships are hard work when times are good and down right difficult when you are being attacked by snoterpillars. This session looks at the significance of child-caregiver relationships in building age-appropriate early learning environments and how provider stress and burnout can impact those relationships. Getting in tune with children is often physically, emotionally, and mentally demanding; doing it day in and day out can be exhausting, stressful, and monotonous. Providers will leave this session with useful tools for dealing with their stress, validation as early care and education professionals, and a smile on their faces.
Based on content in these books.
Do-It-Yourself Early Learning
This session takes a look at dozens of ideas for using materials from the local home center to promote child directed play, exploration, discovery, and learning. This session is based on activities from our Redleaf Press Book, Do-It-Yourself Early Learning.
Everyday Early Learning
This session is based on projects and activities included in my upcoming Redleaf Press book Everyday Early Learning. The session will take a hands on look at easy and fun materials available at places you already shop that promote play, exploration, and discovery.
Yoga and Meditation for Child Care Providers
This session teaches basic yoga exercises, breathing techniques, and meditation that providers can use to help reduce stress and burnout. Participants will leave with hands on experience with these techniques and tips for integrating them into their busy schedules. Most of the session is spent on the floor bending and stretching so participants should dress accordingly.
Learn To Relax
Being a child care provider or parent is stressful. Stress can negatively impact the quality of care children receive. This session will give providers hands on experience with relaxation techniques like deep breathing, visualization, progressive relaxation, and meditation. They will also learn how things like journaling, exercising, diet management, getting enough sleep, and other strategies can help battle stress and burnout.
Do It Yourself Children's Books
We want young children to have early hands on experience with books, but because they are young and inexperienced they often damage the books. This session will share ideas for making durable, inexpensive, customized books that the children in your program will love.
Based on content in this book.
Reenergizing Your Outdoor Play Environment
Participants will learn inexpensive ways they can improve their outdoor play environments. We will discuss health and safety, but our focus will be on creating an outside play area that promotes play, discovery, exploration, and learning.
Based on content in these books.
The Relationships Of Early Learning
This session looks at the importance of the child/caregiver relationship in promoting age-appropriate early learning. Strong relationships lay the ground work for everything from walking and talking to learning to read and do math.
Based on content in these books.
Cows In The Basement
A child’s life should be full of whim, fantasy, imagination, and goofiness, but all too often kids are being forced to grow up too soon. This session will look at how we as caregivers can feed their need for fun and fantasy...and have a good time ourselves while doing so.
Babies In The Rain
Like it or not, since everything infants and toddlers encounter is new, exciting, and a chance to learn, caregivers are Professional Role Models. Sadly, too many small children are spending valuable learning time confined to swings, bouncy seats, and cribs or exposed to developmentally inappropriate practices and materials because their caregivers are pressured, misguided, or uninformed. This session looks at these issues and ways caregivers can be more thoughtful, intentional, and tuned-in to the dance of early learning.
Looking For Something Special?
If you are looking for a unique keynote or training tied to your event theme or a special need in your area contact me about creating a special presentation just for your event. Click Here to email me now.