What I found to be true about my child care was rewarding. I feel good about all the reminders of best practices and how to organize materials. I found a few things I will change. The first thing is Planning using the Material Management Guide. Just being to visualize what I have in storage is a great way to stop wasting time “looking” for the items. I like the thought of asking your is it Simple, Complex, or Super Complex in order to reach the children where they are in their own development. I will also try to implement “complexity over time”. I didn’t use these thought processes when I plan activities but I can see where I need to and especially why I need to implement this routine.

The development and milestones was very helpful to refresh what and when children should be able to do certain things. The No stage and Why stages are clear to see within my group. I was surprised about a one years inability to communicate well. My one year old is speaking two word sentences and let’s you know exactly what he wants or needs. This just shows that development is individual. Knowing these areas of development allows me to plan according to their stage of development.

In my child care, we try to rotate the equipment monthly. I realized through this that I may be changing things up to quickly. I need to let the kids build upon each of of learning over time. This should take more than a month to accomplish correctly. I am excited to try this. I am also going to include more loose parts within my program. I will be very nervous because I have a young group but I will have to model correct play and have the children help put things away.

The one thing I will take away from all of this is to play the “What If…” game. This is something I like to do because the children have to think about the question before responding. I also like the term “Growing Brains” I can’t wait to talk to them to teach the steps to use to help solve their our problems. I have tried to teach them to “Use their words” and I have given them the words to use but I really like the steps 1. Identify the problem. 2. Brainstorm 3 ways to handle 3. choose one way to try first and decide on a back-up plan. 4. try out the strategy 5. evaluate how well the strategy worked. This could build language and communication at the same time. It allows the children to work together to solve the issue that may be a disagreement. The point is to get the children to become Problem Solvers.