For this past week, we have been celebrating the National Association for the Education of the Young Child’s Week of the Young Child. Week of the Young Child was started in 1971 and we are excited to help promote a week celebrating children and their caregivers, including parents and educators. This week also serves to bring attention to some of the unique issues surrounding early childhood and to highlight children’s incredible ability to learn while promoting young children’s need for bonding, love, and emotional support.

Since each day of the week has its own unique theme, we have decided to compile some of the resources that we used throughout this week in the hope that you will find these resources interesting and inspiring.

Music Monday

SEEC believes in the importance of music and movement, which helps to promote language, literacy, motor skills, and more! We even have our own music teacher who visits all of our classes.

Here are some other resources related to music:

• Teacher Feature: Four Year Old Class Explores Music Composition
• Support Math Readiness Through Music
• 10 Ways Babies Learn When We Sing to Them
• There’s New Evidence That Music Lessons Boost Kids’ Cognitive Skills

Tasty Tuesday

Eating may seem like a simple, everyday task, but children are expanding new horizons while consuming meals together. They have to practice navigating new social experiences and also have the opportunity to be introduced to unfamiliar tastes and textures.

Here are some other resources related to eating and preparing food:

• Teacher Feature: Toddler Class Explores Setting the Table
• Teacher Feature: Infant Class Explores Farm to Table
• 10 Things You Can Do Right Now with Your Child in the Grocery Store
• Healthy, Fit Families
• Let’s Eat (Well)!

Work Together Wednesday

At SEEC, we embrace play as a crucial form of learning. We encourage children to interact and work together to develop their social-emotional skills and believe that when young children work together they will develop novel solutions to any problem which may occur.

More resources related to working together:

• Book Club: Free to Learn
• Pondering Play
• Teacher Feature: Preschool Classroom Explores Architecture
• What Is Big Body Play and Why Is It Important?
• Five Essentials to Meaningful Play

Artsy Thursday

Even the youngest of children benefit from the opportunity to create. These enriching, multisensory experiences help them make sense of their world.

More resources related to creating:

• Why Should We Care About the Arts? (or Let’s Create “Both/And” Schools)
• Teacher Feature: Twos Class Explores Alexander Calder
• 5 Things I Learned About Art From Children
• How Process-Focused Art Experiences Support Preschoolers
• Preschoolers as Eco-Artists

Family Friday

We were lucky enough to have Family Friday and SEEC’s Grandparents’ Day fall on the same day. We love having the grandparents visit – almost as much as the grandparents love visiting our SEEC classrooms and going on museum visits with their grandchildren!

More family resources:

• SEEC Weekend Family Workshops
• Family, Love, Traditions – SEEC Quotes
• Culturally Appropriate Positive Guidance with Young Children
• Am I Really My Child’s First Teacher?