PHILOSOPHY

The goal of Children First is to provide a safe, secure, home-like, and stimulating environment for children by supporting our Educators and working in partnership with families to provide professional and high quality care for the children entrusted to us. We will strive to make every child feel respected, valued, and capable. Based on a problem-solving, anti-bias approach, Educators will provide play based experiences that evoke wonder, elicit curiosity, and engage children's senses, recognizing that children seek to make sense of their world. Our intent is to provide high quality, affordable, accessible, and inclusive care and support to families and children in our community.

Our Educators recognize that the family is the expert on their children and strive to support the family's vision while planning for their child's care. We strive to ensure that we provide partnerships and support while developing a strong connection and building "Circles of Support" around our families and children. Our circles of support will include providing information and resources to families that support the healthy development of children, gathering information from our families to learn how to honour and respect their individual practices, culture, and values when raising their children, and to provide information about community partners who may bring support to the children within our care.

Children develop problem-solving and conflict resolution skills as they participate in the broader community outside their home. We focus on developing the “whole child” by looking at and supporting the children’s social, emotional, physical, intellectual, and creative selves.

Young children develop their natural intelligence through movement, play, and social interaction. Our participatory approach to care-giving tasks such as eating, napping, and clothes changing is incorporated into the daily life of the program, starting in our infant room and continuing throughout a child’s time at Children First.

We are proud to be striving to implement Flight: Alberta's Early Learning and Care Framework as our curriculum, which places value on our children as Mighty Learners and Citizens and allows our Educators to become Co-Learners, Co-Researchers, and Co-Imaginers with our children.

Our partnerships with GRIT ASaP and ARCQE through their GRASP programs have strengthened our program's ability to provide flexibility and immense support to our children who have diverse needs and abilities.

Emphasis is placed on the use of an “emergent” curriculum, which arises out of the interactions between children, adults, and materials. Educators plan experiences for children based on their observations of children’s interests and needs, community events, seasonal changes, and their own passions. Activities include sand and water play, science investigation, art, music, movement, block building, storytelling, dramatic play, field trips, and outdoor activities.

Another important element of our philosophy is our commitment to an anti-bias curriculum. In order to provide an environment which reflects appreciation for diversity, care is taken to choose books, music, activities, and classroom materials that reflect a variety of non-stereotypic images and roles, which our children can easily identify with on a personal level. We strive to offer an environment that does not promote or celebrate holidays, but if the children express interest in particular holidays our staff will explore the topic further with them.

Through problem-solving, we work with children to prevent incidents by carefully setting up the environment, preparing for transitions, setting limits, and actively listening to children's feelings. Our Educators also intervene and help children negotiate when appropriate. Problem-solving helps to develop children's self-esteem, their ability to solve their own problems, and their ability to show empathy to others, which is essential to children's social development. Problem-solving also promotes children's ability to take responsibility for their own actions. Corporal punishment of children is not an appropriate method of guiding children's behaviour and is never used by our Educators. Any interactions with children which include emotional deprivation, physical restraint, or verbal degradation are not tolerated under any circumstances.

Children First recognizes that parent involvement is essential to ensure continuity of care to children and works to foster a healthy partnership between parents, their child's Educators, and the Program Supervisor. We encourage parent involvement, and the active exchange of information and mutual respect for similarities and differences in child-rearing practices. Parents are encouraged to offer suggestions, ask questions, and bring up any concerns that they have about our program at any time. We have an open door policy that allows parents to visit their children in the program when they wish. We invite our parents to engage in the program through volunteer activities such as program presentations, participation on the Board of Directors, fundraising, and other family oriented activities that we plan throughout the year.

We count these people among our influences: Hope Moffatt, Magda Gerber and the RIE approach, Bev Bos, Eleanor Reynolds, Margie Carter, Deb Curtis, Marshall Rosenberg, the schools of Reggio Emilia, and the children and families themselves. By following these inspirations, we strive to provide a program that offers an inclusive and fun learning environment that Educators, children, and families can be proud to call their own.