Director's Corner
AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE PA EARLY CHILDHOOD STANDARDS
November 2024
St. Paul’s Preschool follows the Pennsylvania Early Standards as we create and adapt our curriculum to the various age groups within our school. Each month I will examine one of the standards we are focusing on in the classes and explain how the teachers are implementing it into their curriculum.
Health, Wellness and Physical Development: Learning about My Body
Standard 10.1-3.4 Nutrition
Cooking activities give children firsthand experiences that involve them in the process from planning projects and menus to cooking and baking and finally, to clean-up time. There are many rewards of cooking experiences: a sense of accomplishment, the thrill of experimentation, an awareness of taste, touch, and smell and the ability to model something a child sees his parents do daily. Early positive encounters with food also help children gain the knowledge they will use to form lifelong eating habits.
As children talk about foods, they begin to identify healthy and not healthy foods and to match foods to others in a similar category (fruit, vegetable, milk or grain). By including opportunities for children to cook, the teachers offer additional times for them to practice math (comparing sizes, shapes, and measurements, one-to-one correspondence, fractions, and temperature), science (vegetables that are stems or roots, fruit that grows on trees, what happens to sugar on hot cereal), reading and writing (making lists and using recipes and rebus charts), social studies (learning more about their world and community resources), following directions, putting things in sequence, and learning to communicate and cooperate with each other.
The teachers are careful when they incorporate cooking activities with the children. It is important that the cooking projects are appropriate for the children’s age, interest, and understanding, and that these experiences value cultural diversity. Foods from other cultures offer opportunities for children to taste the different ingredients and flavors. This also helps to develop their understanding that many of the foods they eat are both different and similar to those eaten in other countries.
When cooking activities are included in an early education environment, children are encouraged to:
feel responsible, independent, and successful
learn about nutrition and the food groups
work independently or cooperatively in small groups
complete tasks from preparation to cleanup
learn about new foods and become aware of recipes from cultures other than their own
learn about different careers that involve foods and cooking (farmers, truckers, grocers, bakers, and chefs)
introduce new vocabulary and concepts, such as measure, melt, knead, shake, sift, spread, baste, peel, hull, grind, grate, chop, slice, and boil
develop beginning reading skills with rebus charts and simple recipe cards
learn math and science concepts
develop small and large muscle control and eye-hand coordination
extend cooking into dramatic play, puppetry, art, and other centers
During this month of November, many of the classes will be discussing Thanksgiving and will be learning about how the Native Americans shared many of their foods with the Pilgrims. They will be discussing the concept of "Harvest" and how foods are gathered from gardens, trees and vines. They will be examining how foods look before they are cooked and after they are cooked. Many classes will be cooking with pumpkins, apples or creating GORP as a collaborative project! Food products used in the Science discovery centers will be scattered outside in the woods to feed the animals that live in the wooded area behind the school. All classes discuss what makes foods healthy and how these foods help their bodies grow strong. Healthy snacks are encouraged and the children talk about what they are eating during snack time each day.
We will also be collecting healthy foods items for the North Hills Community Outreach Center and for Animal Friends.
Helping to introduce nutrition concepts at an early age can influence a lifetime of food choices and balances.
QUESTIONS FOR THE DIRECTOR
Each month I will focus on a question or two from the parents. Please send your questions to the director at:
QUESTION: How do you cut down on illness? It is that time of year when children are sick a lot. How do you handle ill children in the classroom?
ANSWER: This is a great question at this time of year. Please review your parent handbook on our Health Rules (page 11-12). If a child becomes ill during the school day, we make the child comfortable in our Conference Room (on a nap mat with a pillow and blanket / soft lighting in the room) with a staff member, while we call a parent. The staff member will wait with the child until someone comes to take the child home. We remove the sick child from the common classroom area and from the healthy children as an attempt to prevent the spread of illness.
St. Paul’s Preschool has developed an illness tracking procedure to help regularly review and identify health concerns, patterns, and program structural problems that may be contributing to the illnesses that occur within the program. This helps in not only identifying problems that need to be corrected, but will also provide the school with information that can be used to engage in preventive action planning.
- Each classroom completes an Illness Tracking Log per month. This is why we ask why the child is being kept home from school because he/she “is sick”.
- At the end of the month the teaching staff submits the log to the director
- The director review the illness log monthly
- The director will note any patterns/trends (time, room, staff, etc.)
- If a trend is determined the director will
- Review classroom/outside environment to determine causes(s) of the trend
- Speak with staff involved
- Provide training as needed
- Seek technical assistance if needed
- Implement change
- The director then re-evaluates the changes to determine effectiveness
Classrooms areas are cleaned and sanitized each evening. The teachers also wash any toy that has been “mouthed” by a child during the preschool day. Dress up clothes and doll clothes are washed often, as are stuffed animals and cloth dolls. If a class has a large number of children absent with illness, the custodial staff will set off a “disinfecting bomb” over the weekend.
If you are interested in the cleaning and sanitizing products used, please stop in the preschool office to view this information.
Of course, if there are any communicable diseases, an immediate notification will be sent to all parents with information on signs and symptoms, mode of transmission, period of communicability, and control measures being implemented at school as well as control measures that can be implemented at home.
