CHILD DEVELOPMENT
CHILD GUIDANCE
DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICES
CULTURAL & INDIVIDUAL DIVERSITY
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
ORGANIZATIONAL MANAGEMENT
PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
PROFESSIONALISM
CHILD DEVELOPMENT
Relationships Make a Real Difference: Understanding the Critical importance of Attachment and Attunement
Attachment helps a baby learn to deal with stress, influences overall learning, and affects relationships throughout life. This presentation stresses the critical role a secure attachment to a primary caregiver plays on the overall development of a child. The impact of trauma, stress and neglect are also presented. This workshop is beneficial for gaining insights into "at risk" students. Ideas for developing rapport and trust with hard to reach parents can also be included in this presentation.
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Brain Development for Children Birth Through Preschool
The human brain is an amazing and complex organ that allows each of us to think, feel, and act. This interactive presentation covers the basics of brain development and highlights each of the major developmental changes that children go through as well as the real physical differences between the male and female brain. Implications for how these differences impact learning are offered in this presentation. Learn how you can provide opportunities for optimal learning to take place for young children, from birth through preschool.
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CHILD GUIDANCE
Guiding Children Using Relationships, Reflection, and Resources: There usually are no quick fixes when it comes to child guidance. Child guidance involves everyone and everything; the family, the entire child care staff, the environment, the daily schedule, and more. Participants will examine their own beliefs and experiences and how those beliefs and experiences shape our understanding of guiding children's behavior. Child guidance will be explored in a broad range with importance placed on relationships, reflection, and resources.
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Biting: Your Dentist Can't Help You With This One! This workshop will show you how to handle biting in a professional and family-centered way. Learn how to talk about biting with parents, and learn new techniques to prevent this behavior and how to handle it when it does occur.
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Flexible, Fearful, Feisty: The Different Temperaments of Infants and Toddlers: This session will provide an overview of temperament, presenting the nine temperament traits and the three temperament types that represent common clusters of these traits. This session will also examine how temperament influences the relationships between infants and their caregivers, and will examine the concept of "goodness of fit." This session will combine icebreaker activities, a short lecture, and discussion, in addition to video segments from the Program of Infant Toddler Caregivers, "Flexible, Fearful, or Feisty."
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DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICES
Read to Me: You Never Outgrow a Good Children's Book (can adapt to all ages): Everyone benefits from being read to, so come listen to some all time favorites! Hear a sample of quality books for infants & toddlers, including timeless favorites. Come to absorb luscious language and relish in repetitive rhythm. Explore the messages books send to infants & toddlers and gather new or renewed excitement for books and maybe even sing a song or two!
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Creating Spaces That Work for Infants, Toddlers, and Twos: What kind of environments best meet the needs of the infants, toddlers and twos in our care? This workshop offers ideas on how to create safe and interesting spaces for young children aged 0 - 3 years. Using large group discussion and video snippets, we will explore the essential components necessary for quality infant toddler environments. Come to get ideas about specific activity areas, along with strategies you can easily implement as you work with children.
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Infant & Toddler Curriculum: This training will focus on "lesson" planning for infants and toddlers and why it is important to base these lessons on the children's interests and developmental needs, and not on using themes. Learn about the important components in providing high quality infant/toddler care, including how to infuse quality into your program while working within a system that is often strapped for time, money, and support. Practice using a "Developmental Skills Plan", an Infant/Toddler specific lesson plan developed by the instructor over the past decade. Develop creative solutions throughout this interactive session, to make your program the very best it can be.
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Using Puppets in Your Classroom: Learn tips and hear funny stories from an experienced provider who has incorporated puppets into her 16 years of supporting Wisconsin toddlers. Participants will return to work on Monday ready to use puppets to increase attention spans, ease transitions, conduct group times, enhance language development, sing songs (which will be shared with the group)....and have fun.
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Focus Boxes: Organize Materials for Fun and Learning: Learn to organize items that children do not always have access to, making these boxes accessible only at specific times, so children are excited to see them. Focus boxes provide sensory stimulation and help child care professionals to "focus" on developing specific skills, such as: cognitive, social, language and fine and large motor skills. Teach children about "earth-keeping" by utilizing found objects or giving new life to things that might otherwise have been thrown away. Engage parents in your program, asking them to save items to create or enhance your focus boxes. Most importantly, you and the children will be having fun while learning.
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Process vs. Product: The Art of Creativity: Focus on the benefits of creating art and embracing the process rather than the finished product. Be prepared to get messy while creating your very own masterpiece. You will even learn how to parlay children's art into a family-friendly fund raiser for your program.
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Using Art to Bring School-Aged Children Together: Learn how starting an art club with your school age group will help bridge the gap between social circles that are already forming, even at this young age. Be inspired by how art is a powerful and most enjoyable vehicle for enhancing children's social and emotional development, as you learn techniques for building their leadership skills. Help children find their inner "voices" as you gently guide them towards celebrating differences each child brings to activities you facilitate.
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Reuse the Recyclables: At times when budgets are tight and expenses are up, it makes good sense to create educational toys, games and art projects using items that typically are thrown away. You will learn to identify what can and cannot be recycled and participate in hands on activities, using templates that you can use in your child care setting.
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Woodworking for Fun and Learning. Preschool children are at just the right age to participate in simple woodworking. Learn how to introduce woodworking in all areas of your curriculum, so that woodworking can be used to teach life skills and so much more. Complete two woodworking projects, including a birdhouse recipe holder and a birdhouse cupcake. Receive free samples of wood and sandpaper to begin your next classroom project.
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CULTURAL & INDIVIDUAL DIVERSITY
The Courage to Explore: Culture, Peace, and Anti-Bias Resource Room: Take time to explore and relax in this popular, interactive space filled with curriculum ideas from real programs, training materials for staff, and resources for adults, children and youth. Courage to Explore provides opportunities to dialog with others, or simply a nourishing space in which to relax. If you would like to explore this topic in more depth, engage in the Power and Privilege workshop.
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Power and Privilege: Anti-Bias and Your Classroom: Explore the issues of power and privilege through discussions on thought-provoking ideas revolving around culture, race, class, gender, and religion. How do you address these sometimes difficult issues as they naturally arise with the children, families and colleagues that you work with? Come and share your journey on this exploration and learn from others as well. The Courage to Explore Resource Room often accompanies this presentation.
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FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
Parent Relationships: Opening Channels of Communication: We spend a lot of time focusing on building relationships with children and maybe not enough time on parent/teacher relationship. Yet the foundation for high quality infant/toddler care is built upon all of the relationships we form. In this interactive session we will review several case studies and discuss what we see happening and how we can handle situations in a more professional manner. Several strategies will be shared for developing stronger bonds with families and opening channels of communication. Come share your insights, as we learn from one another.
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ORGANIZATIONAL MANAGEMENT
Building Strong and Effective Program Policies: Are you working towards accreditation or just wanting to revamp your policies? Come share your ideas and learn from a professional who has worked in a nationally accredited program for 16 years, helping to write and implement policies. Learn how some policies have succeeded while others have failed, as you brainstorm options to improve for your specific program.
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PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
Staff Relationships: A Peaceful, Productive Partnership: Most would agree that quality early childhood education and care requires that staff work well together. But how does a staff with diverse backgrounds manage to work together peacefully and productively? Participants in this training will learn strategies to recognize different communication styles, and will find new ways of working towards common goals and viewing conflict as an opportunity for growth. Discussion and practice will allow new learning to be applied in your program on Monday.
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PROFESSIONALISM
The Ins and Outs of Leading Workshops: We all have knowledge and skills to offer others in the early childhood profession. Have you thought about presenting a workshop? Learn how to present to adults, share tips, explore learning styles, planning for small and large groups, and more. Whether you are a novice or experienced presenter, you'll gain ideas in this workshop.
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Caring for Ourselves: Re-energizing in the Early Childhood Profession: Cultivate self-kindness, linger in laughter, and rejuvenate your joys, because every early childhood caregiver knows the importance of renewal in teaching children and supporting families. In this reflective and uplifting workshop, you will: rediscover and recommit to the rewarding aspects of your work, learn how to manage daily stressors and develop support systems, and examine areas of your life that would benefit from some level of change.
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Taking On Turnover: Exploring the Benefits and Risks: For directors and teachers who are committed to building a professional staff, and staff in community-based agencies supporting such efforts, this workshop will pool the expertise and "best practices" relating to staff recruitment, development, and retention. Together, participants will build the case for investing resources toward these goals. This workshop will be an opportunity to share "lessons learned", to engage in group problem-solving and to speak frankly about the risks and benefits of 'taking on turnover'.
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The Changing Landscape of Early Childhood Education: The landscape of early education is poised to change dramatically as we heed the call for higher professional qualifications, quality improvements, assessment and accountability, collaboration with public schools, and more. This workshop will name the "truths" that define our work today. We will take what seems overwhelming and unmanageable and begin to create a road map to take charge of change and reclaim the work we love.
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Shared Decision-Making: A retention strategy: The principles of shared decision-making create a work environment in which staff and directors can work collaboratively to solve problems and make improvements. To create a program where teachers want to stay, they must be engaged. The benefits are reduced turnover of staff and higher job satisfactions, which in turn impact quality of care for children. This workshop introduces participants to the concept of shared decision-making, explores power dynamics within a staff, and engages participants in a dialogue and self-reflection on one's role as a decision-maker.
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Making a Career of It: Explore the demographics of who is providing early care and education, the challenges of recruitment and retention of a skilled and stable workforce, and the link between good child care jobs and good care for children. Engage in self-reflection on our individual career paths. Identify professional development strategies that are in place in Wisconsin and how they must be supported and expanded. These strategies include the scholarship and stipend programs, articulation agreements between institutions of higher education, portfolio development, and technical assistance programs.
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Creating Better Child Care Jobs: Starting in the Workplace: Our call for a fully funded child care system must happen simultaneously with actions we take NOW to improve the child care work environment. Young children and their teachers can't wait. The work of creating meaningful change in the workplace must involve all those whose lives are directly affected by the change, particularly child care teaching staff. This session introduces model work standards as a tool to create change, explores power dynamics as they relate to the change process, identifies a process for shared decision-making between administrative and teaching staff, and provides opportunities for participants to engage in problem-solving.
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Telling Our Stories within the Worthy Wage Movement: Discover the power of our stories to educate, advocate, and agitate for improved compensation in the early childhood field. In the process of storytelling, we build relationships key to organizing for change. How has low compensation impacted you personally and professionally? Join others in telling your story in answer to this question and others.
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Finding Your Voice as an Advocate and Leader: Like learning any new skill, learning to be an advocate is a developmental process, and who knows better about what facilitates a developmental process than child care professionals! This workshop helps participants find their voice as advocates through activities that focus on skill-building from this developmental perspective. Included in this workshop are some of the fundamentals on how our child care system is currently funded, what influences public policy, and who our potential allies may be.
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Advocacy Tool Kit: In this interactive workshop, participants will learn the skills needed to be effective advocates and ensure that the voices of early childhood professionals get included in the debate at the Wisconsin State Capitol. The voices of those who work with young children and their families are critical to the development of sound public policy, so join us in learning about the legislative and budget process, discuss do's and don'ts when communicating with legislators, and get tools you need to make advocacy easy.
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Social Justice, Economics, and Child Care: Piecing the Puzzle: If we are to identify ourselves as "agents of change" in pursuit of social and economic justice for children, families, and the child care workforce, we must be open to asking ourselves the tough questions: What does it mean to call for greater public investment in child care? Higher taxes? If yes, what kind and who pays? What's fair? What role do values play in economic policy? What will it take to 'lift the lid' on child care worker wages? This workshop is designed for those who are ready to challenge their thinking and develop some new language to talk about what's important to us as advocates of high quality child care.
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Leaders for Change: The goal of this intensive training is to develop leaders prepared to embrace change and to envision a system of early care and education that is good for children, families, and early childhood educators. To truly move forward we need to fully engage the voices of all stakeholders, particularly the voices of the child care workforce and others in our field whose leadership has been marginalized or not tapped into. We will re-define "leadership" and ""empowerment", explore the economics of child care as it relates to public policy and to one's own values, create a broader understanding of the child care crisis and the barriers we face, and prepare to take action.
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Re-claiming Our Voice: Talking About the Role of Government in Child Care: How do we talk to each other and to our allies about the role of government in early education? This workshop explores our personal values in relation to public values upon which decisions about early education are made. We will focus on using our values in communicating our messages and consider ways to "re-frame" the issues addressed in our messages to policy makers and community leaders.
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Building Allies for High Quality Early Education: As we become articulate about what high quality early education is, it is clear that we can't get there on our own. This workshop explores the questions: What is an ally? Why are allies important in organizing for change? Are the various sectors of our field allies to one another? We will discover potential allies by looking at our communities and mapping their strengths. We will focus on crafting messages to take out to a broader community including parents, business and community leaders, and elected decision-makers, as well as others engaged in social change efforts.
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Contact WECA to discuss your training needs, to gather information about fees, or to schedule a training.
Call 800-783-9322, ext 7253 or email:
training@wisconsinearlychildhood.org.
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