Over the last two weeks I have been working both with the Child and Family Coordinator at the West Vancouver Community Center, but also in their playcare center, Cypress Corner.
Cypress Corner is a playcare center, not to be confused with a daycare. It differs from daycare in that you can register or drop in for two hour sessions for play based learning. All of the women working in Cypress Corner have they Early Childhood Education degrees so are very well informed about childhood development and what the children need at such a young age. Most of the women working there are also mothers, which helps a great deal. I had previously worked in Cypress Corner in past summers, so I was easily able to fit into their schedule. The purpose of playcare is to start getting children to adapt to learning environments and social contexts before they enter traditional learning programs. They take infants from 6 months to two years and children from 2 to 5 years, A session in Cypress Corner for the over 2s consists of free play, outdoor play, snack time and circle time. Free play has a number of different centers set up, much like you would find in a primary classroom. There’s a craft station, sometimes playdough, a kitchen set and all sorts of toys that promote motor skills and creativity. The children are allowed to participate in any station they wish, and aren’t required to do all of them. This enables the children to learn to interact appropriately with one another and share.
Part of this program is to instill proper school behavior in the kids. They have to line up to wash their hands, and remain sitting for the duration of snack time. They have to put all their trash in the garbage can, and there is no running inside. Though these may be simple things, they are difficult to maintain at home, especially for parents with children of varying ages. More importantly, they are expected of children when they enter kindergarten. Cypress Corner is a great way to help kids develop the skills they need to be successful in school.
The women working in Cypress Corner have been in childcare for some time, so have a trained eye in recognizing when something is different with a child, and whether or no there are some issues there that need to be addressed. This identification early on, for autism and serious learning disabilities can greatly reduce the stress felt by the child once they enter school. In the two weeks I had there, I was able to observe a parent and the head of Cypress Corner fill out the forms and request an observation from family services to see if there was a diagnosis. Dyslexia ran is this child’s family, and he had multiple language issues. Family services did an observation, and further action will be taken from there. It was very interesting for me to see how this process is started, and what some of the warning signs where that alerted the parents and the staff.
Outside of Cypress Corner, I did mostly administrative work, preparing materials for the summer camp programs that are scheduled to begin on Wednesday July 2nd. I have been a camp leader at the WVCC for 6 years now and this will be my first summer not leading a camp since highschool, which enabled me to be very helpful with the organization. There are two main camp rooms in our facility, and they house all the craft and cooking supplies needed for our camps. I got two go through these two rooms and set them up, much like a teacher sets up their classrooms. I got to place orders for supplies from the Creative Children’s Catalogue, then organize and label everything in the cupboards of these two rooms. Being a community center, everything gets thrown into these rooms, so it was quite a project to clean it all, but the result was very rewarding, and I now have a very close relationship with the label maker. I also got to but together binders for the camp leaders, comprised of medical forms and photo release forms. I checked all the first aid kits as well.
Overall, it was really nice to get a chance to go back to my old stomping ground, and always fun to spend time with such young kids!