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Connecting with Connections

April 2015

Your Monthly Connections For Children E-Update

Dear Friend,

APRIL is the Month of the Young Child

What better time to celebrate the important role that parents, teachers, caregivers, and other adults play in the lives of young children! It's also time to look at the many ways we can support the rapid brain growth and development of children from birth through the first five years of life. Every child's earliest experiences contribute to her or his ability to learn throughout life. Here are some great ways to help children grow:

This month, Ready for School highlights children's physical health and abilities to care for themselves.
In our guest column for April, There's an App for That!, Joey Lamberti reviews an array of Apps designed especially for parents and families.
Mother's Day is coming up - Support CFC with a donation in honor of your special women!
This month our Program Spotlight features Connections' coaching role in the Race to the Top Quality Rating and Improvement System in Los Angeles County.
April is also national Autism Awareness Month and we're sharing some great resources.
Visit Connections For Children at the Arts & Literacy Festival April 25th at Virginia Avenue Park!

Ready for School -

Building Blocks for Kindergarten

This month, Ready for School focuses on Healthy Habits - Self Care, Physical Wellbeing, and Motor Skills.

Now is a great time to reinforce healthy eating habits. Children need to have energy and to be alert for school. Focus on healthy choices for breakfast, lunch, and snacks in child-size portions.

Good sleeping habits are important too. A five year old needs between ten and twelve hours of sleep every night.

Children are ready for the kindergarten classroom when they can take care of personal needs, such as going to the bathroom, washing hands, and buttoning, zipping and tying clothes and shoes. It builds a child's confidence when he or she is independent with self-care. Kids like to know "I can do It!"

You can find more tips to support children's health and wellbeing in the Santa Monica Cradle to Career Building Blocks for Kindergarten - click on the button:

There's an App for That!

by Joey Lamberti

Every one of us has a cell phone. Heck, even my 12-year-old brother-in-law has one. One of the fun (and overly time consuming) advantages about having a smartphone is the apps. There are tons of them. What many parents don’t know is that there are apps designed with them in mind. This includes apps for the various stages of pregnancy, to an app designed to help parents become better “brain builders,” to apps that store your child’s artwork digitally, and finally apps that keep track of your children at all times.

This Mother's Day, Remember the Special Women in Your Life - Make a Gift in their Honor and Support Connections For Children!

Please help us continue to nurture children's future success. Your support can help build early literacy skills, allow a child to learn about art, music, and science, and can help a young family access quality child care. Your gift today will impact the lives of children and their families for years to come.

And, to thank you for your generosity, we will honor the special women in your life with a personalized Mother’s Day card, which commemorates the love, laughter and goodness that young children bring to our world.

Together, we can make the difference for young children and their families.

Click to Make a Mother's Day Gift

Race to the Top - Improving Child Care Quality
For the past two years, Connections For Children has partnered with the Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Office of Child Care to provide coaching support to family child care providers and child care centers participating in the Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC). Working with over 20 child care sites, CFC coaches have helped them to prepare for their initial quality assessment, understand where quality improvements are needed and develop plans to make recommended changes, and finally help them attain a higher score in follow-up ratings.

RTT-ELC is designed to improve the quality of licensed child care programs through the community, with a goal of closing the achievement gap for at-risk young children ages birth through five. Through free workshops and coaching, providers and educators meet monthly to learn about resources and how to make environmental improvements in preparation to achieve the highest scores as indicated in the RTT matrix.

Also, most importantly, the participants have adopted the use of screening tools to better understand each child's development and growth. Using assessment tools, such as Ages & Stages Questionnaires (ASQ-3 and ASQ-SE) and the Desired Results Developmental Profile (DRDP), gives the early childhood educator a shared language with parents for understanding the children's development. The use of these tools is has inspired parents to follow-up with further assessment, and/or testing if indicated by the results of the ASQ-3 or the ASQ-SE. Thus, children are benefitting and receiving early intervention which helps them as they grow and develop in their early years.

Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month. Autism affects 1 in every 68 individuals and often appears during the early years. Find out more about autism and young children at Autism Speaks. There are lots of great resources you can access on their website if you have concerns about how your child is communicating, interacting or behaving.

You can also visit Connections For Children to learn more about local resources if you have concerns about your child. Through free workshops and RTT coaching, providers and educators meet monthly to implement tools, such as ASQ-3, ASQ-SE, and the DRDP, and to discuss other environment improvements in preparation to achieve the highest scores as indicated from the RTT matrix, for the final observation. Also, and most important, the use of the ASQ screening tools are successfully inspiring parents to follow-up with further assessment, and/or testing if indicated by the results of the ASQ-3 or the ASQ-SE. Thus, children are benefitting and receiving early intervention which helps them as they grow and develop in their early years.