Week 6

While navigating through Zero to Three National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families Website I found several outside links that I had not yet explored. The outside links I found were, “Military Family Projects, National Training Institute, Early Head Start, and MIECHV TACC.” I chose to search the Military Family Project site. “We work to increase awareness and collaboration throughout military and civilian communities so that professionals who work with parents and children can more effectively care for babies, toddlers, and their military-connected families (Zero to Three, 2014). I think this is really important because military children and families need extra support. For example, during a parent deployment all children deal with the effects differently and it is important for people around these children to understand and help as best as they can. A lot of times the children do not know how to express their feelings and what they are going through.

Following the e-newsletter that I was sent I searched all available links. All the links provided great specific details for babies’ and toddler’s development. It was very interesting and informative as a parent and educator. I would recommend this site and the information to parents as a resource. The website contains information that adds to my understanding of equity and excellence in early care and education. There is a section called Early Care and Education. In this section it discusses childcare, family/friend/neighbor care, and school readiness interactive birth to three. These subsections have great information! They provide tips for hiring a caregiver and probe questions such as “what is considered a high quality child care setting for infants and toddler?” Each subsection also includes more links for additional information.

“All babies and toddlers need positive early learning experiences to foster their intellectual, social and emotional development and lay the foundation for later school success.  Babies and toddlers living in high-risk environments need additional supports to promote their healthy growth and development. All child-care arrangements, including family, friend, neighbor, and family- and center-based child care have the potential to provide high-quality, individualized, responsive and stimulating experiences that occur within the context of strong relationships and which are imbedded in everyday routines.” (Zero to Three, 2014).

Exploring the website and e-newsletter this week I learned that there are so many resources for good high quality early care and education for parents to research. I also learned of a great website for military families. This was very interesting to me because my children go through deployments several times every year and I see how it affects for them. It is very important for the people surrounded them to understand and try to help them cope.

References

Zero to Three National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families (2014). Retrieved from http://www.zerotothree.org