Creating Affirming Environments

Goals:

1.       Parents and children to feel welcome in the childcare environment

2.       To promote equality despite religious beliefs, cultural background, and/or ethnicity

3.       To teach children how to respect differences in others and celebrate their own strengths

The most important elements are to develop a relationship with the parents and their children, creating a nurturing environment for the children, having two separate rooms or spaces designated for quiet and active activities, and include elements of diversity throughout the center.  

• Developing a relationship with parents and children can be achieved when caretakers set up consistent routines for the children. Understanding the daily schedule helps parents to feel like they are not in the dark. I would have an open door policy to parents to develop effective communication. Keeping the environment structured, calm, and smooth  helps parents to build a positive repoire with caretakers. Trusting another adult with your child is very difficult for both child and parents.

•  Creating a nurturing environment can be achieved when the caretaker talks to the children in a gentle, respectful, and caring manner. In the media segment, the home daycare provider discusses how she works with the children when they are leaving their parents in the morning. After  the parents leave, she takes the child into the nap room to get them ready to join the other children. She explains that she doesn’t make the children stop crying. She talks to the children and helps them to calm down.

• Setting aside spaces designated for quiet and active activities are beneficial to let the children know when they are expected to calm down and when they can expend energy. Children have different types of activities that they are involved with throughout the day. For example, story time before nap is an quiet activity and gross motor activities are done in a different environment. The different designated spaces allows children to differentiate between active and quiet activities.

• Incorporating elements of diversity are very important to exposing children to individuals that are different. Some ways to include diversity into the classroom would include different skin tone baby dolls, discussing holidays celebrated by certain religions, teaching Spanish to the children, and obtaining classroom materials that emphasize diversity.