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The Family Place delivers comprehensive programs designed to strengthen positive relationships, teach essential skills and promote enduring healthy growth for families with young children in the Upper Valley and surrounding communities.
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Posted on 23 Feb 2022 by Administrator and has 0 Comment
We invite our community to join The Family Place in a celebration of the 2022 Week of the Young Child (WOYC), April 2-8, 2022!
An annual celebration by The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the week highlights the needs of young children and recognizes the early care providers and caregivers who meet those needs.
Did you know that a child’s brain grows more between the ages of birth and 3 years old than it does across their entire lifespan? 80% of brain growth and development happens in those years!
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged our children’s mental health and early development, and The Family Place continues to support our community with vital programs for children and their families. We’re all working together to encourage the future successes of our young children.
We are excited to partner with local organizations for the 2022 Week of the Young Child! We appreciate the generous donations, activity suggestions, and discounts from King Arthur Baking Company, Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS), Willing Hands, and Billings Farm & Museum! We are also thankful for the support of local organizations that provided activities and content for families this week: Artistree Community Arts Center, Cedar Circle Farm & Education Center, Montshire Museum of Science, Norwich Public Library, Norwich Bookstore, and Upper Valley Music Center!
We have FREE baking activity bags from King Arthur Baking Company for Tasty Tuesday, FREE seeds from Willing Hands for Work Together Wednesday and FREE passes to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) for Friday, April 8, for Family Friday! Limited quantities are available, so please email LisaB@the-family-place.org! Also, Billings Farm & Museum will give families $2 off on each admission if they use the phrase “Week of the Young Child” on Family Friday! Join in on the celebration!
We will celebrate early learning by sharing family activities (both virtual and in-person opportunities) on our website and @FamilyPlaceVT on our social media accounts.
IT’S OFFICIAL! By Gov. Phil Scott’s proclamation, April 2-8 is Vermont’s Week of the Young Child!
The proclamation recognizes the critical role early childhood education plays in young childrens’ development, and connects strong early childhood education and family services to the state’s overall community and economic health. The statewide Week of the Young Child celebration planning was developed in partnership by VTAEYC, Let’s Grow Kids, and The Family Place. Click here to download the full press release.
Daily Themes
4/4 Music Monday
Are you ready for #WOYC22? The week starts today with Music Monday, a day dedicated to celebrating how children learn through song and dance! Let’s celebrate together with Erin Jenkins Smith from the Upper Valley Music Center in Lebanon, NH! Erin teaches a Music Together class to the children of The Family Place’s Early Care and Education Center. We hope her video sparks some fun and interesting at-home activities for you and your family! Let’s all sing and dance to Erin’s video: click here to watch on YouTube.
Let’s continue to sing on Music Monday with Erin Davison, Youth Services Librarian at the Norwich Public Library in Norwich, VT! Erin shares a song called, “I’m In The Mood For Singing,” because she is in the mood to sing with her ukulele! Let’s all sing and dance to Erin’s video on YouTube here: click here to watch on YouTube. Erin also shares her recommendations for great books to sing for Music Monday! Click here to download the flyer.
Musical instruments are everywhere! Go outside and follow these instructions (click here) from our friends at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science to create music from sticks!
Thank you Norwich Public Library, Upper Valley Music Center, and the Vermont Institute of Natural Science for joining The Family Place in our celebration of Music Monday!
4/5 Tasty Tuesday
Celebrate Tasty Tuesday and make sweet potato biscuits with Anya and her family! The Family Place has partnered with King Arthur Baking Company this year by providing 50 baking kits (which include two kinds of flour, yeast, a dough scraper and a reusable bag) to local families. Watch the video posted on social media (click here) and learn how to use your baking kit to make your own healthy sweet potato biscuits! To pick up a baking bag at The Family Place by contacting Lisa Banks (LisaB@the-family-place.org).
In the video, Anya Gendal, CIS Family Support Home Visitor at The Family Place, shares tips on how to cook with your kids and how it benefits their growth and development and promotes healthy attachment between children and their parents. Recipe ingredients include sweet potato puree (homemade or canned), all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, milk (or buttermilk) and butter. The biscuit recipe is included in the baking kit and you can download a copy (click here). Happy baking, everyone!
4/6 Work Together Wednesday
Come by The Family Place and select a packet of seeds donated by our friends at Willing Hands! Watch the fun instructional video (click here) from our friends at Cedar Circle Farm and Education Center and learn how to plant seeds with your little helpers. Cedar Circle Farm’s Educators, Nora and Molly, explore the production farm’s greenhouse and sow seeds in the video. Plant seeds and tend your own plants at home with an activity worksheet (click here) from Cedar Circle. Enjoy your harvest in a few months with the recipe for kale or chard suggested by Willing Hands, or go to their website (click here) for additional recipe ideas. Gardening, harvesting, and cooking together as a family are wonderful ways to introduce science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning to children!
Educators and children in The Family Place’s Early Care and Education Program celebrated Work Together Wednesday for our Celebration of the 2022 Week of the Young Child by doing a project for our playground. We painted tree stumps together to use as stepping stones on the playground – we had so much fun! Click here to watch the video on our Facebook Page. It was a great lesson for the children about the importance of working together to create an end result and completing a project from start to finish. What can you do together as a family? Clean up the yard, paint the playroom, build a fort, clean out the garage? Be creative!
It’s time for a Work Together Wednesday story! Watch Andi Diehn, bookseller at the Norwich Bookstore, read the picture book “Iggy Peck, Architect” by Andrea Beaty (click here to watch the video).
4/7 Artsy Thursday
It’s Artsy Thursday! Are you ready to get creative with a project from Finnie, an educator from Artistree Community Arts Center? Gather these supplies and collage a work of art with your children! Grab anything you’ve got that will stick down (newspaper, cereal boxes, cardboard, junk mail, construction paper, feathers, etc.) and scissors (if parents decide they want to cut things into smaller squares). Parents can also cut paper into strips and have kids cut the strips into squares (age and comfort level dependent). You will also need glue! Explore the fun of tearing/cutting and gluing pieces down to create a fun tactile experience both during the creative process and beyond with a fun textured finished product! Biodegradable packing peanuts are fun materials to work with for collage projects. As with any activity, please make sure your materials are developmentally appropriate and that children are supervised and don’t put the materials in their mouths. Share photos of their creations with us using #WOYC22
For another Artsy Thursday, project make your own colored play dough by following these instructions from our friends at Vermont Institute of Natural Science (click here).
4/8 Family Friday
We have FREE passes to the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) for Friday, April 8, for Family Friday! Limited quantities are available, so please email LisaB@the-family-place.org!
VINS is committed to offering quality environmental education experiences to all, regardless of financial ability. Because we believe that everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy the wonders of our Nature Center, we offer reduced admission to those who need it most.
• Only Vermont or New Hampshire EBT cards are accepted.
• By showing your EBT card you can receive $5 admission per person in your household.
• By showing your Medicaid card you will receive $5 admission.
*Please show your EBT card upon entry to the Nature Center.
Also, many local libraries have a library pass that also allows for a $5 admission fee when you have the library pass checked out and in hand!
Learn more about the EBT program to VINS, visit their website: https://vinsweb.org/visit/
It’s #WOYC22 Family Friday! Engaging and celebrating families is at the heart of supporting our youngest learners. The Family Place and The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) applauds family members’ role as young children’s first and most important teachers.
For Family Friday, join us for The Family Place Playgroup at the Montshire Museum of Science this morning at 10:00 am! When you arrive at the Montshire Museum of Science, let the front desk know you are there for our playgroup and you will receive free admission. We will meet in the Wonder Woods space, an exhibition specially designed to ignite the curiosity and support the development of children ages 5 and under.
If you can’t join us this week, please come for another playgroup later this month or in April! For more information, contact Tia Howard (tiah@the-family-place.org).
Yay! Today is Opening Day at Billings Farm & Museum! For our Celebration of the 2022 Week of the Young Child, Billing’s Farm will give $2 off on each admission if they use the phrase “Week of the Young Child” today. Also, all guests received FREE ice cream today! Yum!
Billing’s Farm is the perfect place for a family trip on #WOYC22 Family Friday! If you can’t visit today, you can still enjoy Billings Farm & Museum from home! Browse topics online to explore and find videos, crafts, recipes, and information about farm life, their animals, their history, and more: https://billingsfarm.org/billings-farm-at-home/
If you are free this weekend, Billing’s Farm is having one of our favorite events, the Baby Farm Animal Celebration, on Saturday and Sunday, April 9th & 10th!
As we end our Celebration of the 2022 Week of the Young Child, we want to highlight a very important group of people: early childhood educators! The #WOYC22 was not only about celebrating early learning and young children, but also about their teachers, families, and communities. We thank these skilled and dedicated professionals for all they do to nurture and support the healthy development and well-being of our youngest community members! The Early Care and Education Program team at The Family Place brings creativity, curiosity, compassion, dedication, skill and teamwork to their work every day. Their focus extends beyond the children in their classrooms to being a resource for their parents, grandparents, foster parents and other family members, too. Hats off to these wonderful teachers! Learn more about them by reading the attached flyer (click here). Visit our Facebook Page to view all ECEP’s wonderful #WOYC22 activities (click here).
Thank you to our generous sponsors!
Month of the Young Child
Supporting Sponsor
Month of the Young Child Advocates
Snyder, Cahoon & Co.
