You want to provide the best early childhood experience for children and their parents. But you don’t have easy access to high-quality training. We provide you with relevant, research-based, and Biblically-sound training and on-demand courses so that you and your staff can confidently care for and teach young children.
Back to School: Five Simple Ways to Partner with Families
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Hey Reader! As a new school year begins, it's the perfect time to focus on one of the most important parts of your classroom—not your lesson plans or classroom décor, but your relationships with families. For many children, you'll spend as many waking hours with them as their parents do. That's why it's so important to build a true partnership from the very beginning. Take time to learn about each family. Ask about siblings, grandparents, pets, favorite activities, family traditions, or upcoming vacations. Find out what parents do while their children are in your care. These simple conversations help build trust, and trust creates strong partnerships. Strong relationships also make difficult conversations easier. Whether you're discussing challenging behaviors, developmental concerns, or learning differences, parents are much more likely to listen when they know you're on the same team. When families feel respected and supported, it's easier to work together to help each child thrive. Five Simple Ways to Build Family Connections 1. Learn—and use—parents' names. 2. Make drop-off and pick-up count.
These brief conversations often become the foundation for lasting relationships. 3. Share something positive every chance you get. 4. Celebrate every family. 5. Help families get to know one another. A Final Thought Children thrive when the important adults in their lives work together. The conversations you have in those brief moments at the classroom door during drop-off and pick-up may seem small, but they're laying the foundation for trust all year long. Start with relationships. Everything else becomes easier when families know you're on the same team. Cheering you on this week! -Your ECCN team P.S. If you don't want to receive these weekly emails anymore, no hard feelings. Click HERE to be removed from this list. (You'll still receive other emails from us based on past preferences.)
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Early Childhood Christian Network
You want to provide the best early childhood experience for children and their parents. But you don’t have easy access to high-quality training. We provide you with relevant, research-based, and Biblically-sound training and on-demand courses so that you and your staff can confidently care for and teach young children.
Hey Reader! As early childhood educators, we often notice things before anyone else does. Have you noticed child is struggling to remember something you’ve practiced again and again. Maybe you notice that a child who once used several words is using fewer. Maybe following directions, communicating, joining the group, or managing everyday activities seems unusually difficult. What do you do when you begin to wonder if a child needs some extra support? You don’t have to diagnose the problem. In...
Hey Reader! Arguably one of the most important things you can do in your early childhood classroom is build a strong connection with each child—and help children learn how to connect with one another. Before children can fully engage in learning, they need to know that they are safe, valued, and cared for. Here are a few simple ways to build those connections at every age: Infants & Toddlers 1. Respond to their needs. When a baby cries, pick them up. When they're hungry, feed them. When...
Hey Reader! If you are a parent or early childhood educator, you have likely felt the screen-time squeeze. On one side, we hear that technology is the future, and we must prepare our kids for a digital world. On the other, we are warned that too much screen time can delay language development, cause sleep disruptions, and impact social-emotional growth. It feels like a zero-sum game: hand over the iPad and worry about their development, or banish technology entirely and worry they’ll fall...