Our Philosophy
Bright Starts Educational Daycare seek to educate, empower and nurture young children as they grow and develop socially, intellectually, physically, emotionally and spiritually. We believe in providing all the necessary attributes that are required for the growth and development of young children. We believe the best early educational experiences comes from developmental, age appropriate practices, discovery, and hands- on exploration within a loving, fun, and safe environment. Our desire is to create joy and an interest for learning in our young children that will last a life- time.
Our Mission Statement
Our mission is to promote, motivate and empower your child for life through enriched activities that are geared towards their growth and development in all domains.
We strive to ensure that this level of quality care is maintained and carried out on a daily basis.
At BSED, safety and quality are our priorities. We adhere to provide our families a high quality childcare environment. One that promote the physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development in young children. Bright Starts is a place where children can develop bright minds as they grow and blossom.
Bright Starts Educational Daycare is the place where a bright mind starts developing and bright future begins. We seek to promote an inclusive and stimulating classroom environment that accommodates a range of abilities. We also welcome the participation of parents and their family members. Every child is unique and has the potential to learn and develop using their own learning style.
Our Program
Hello Parents,
Our program follows a faith – based teaching philosophy which helps to promote our children to practice godly morals, which develops their social, emotional, cognitive, and language skills.
We know that you may be concerned about the care and educational needs of your children and having your child enrolled in a safe and caring environment. At BSED, we strive to ensure that your children are placed in a warm, loving and caring environment, where all of their academic, physically, social, emotional, needs are met, as they learn the skills necessary that will aid them to become successful adults in society, providing age appropriate activities that are designed to promote growth and success as they develop social skills through interactions between leaders staff members and peers.
In order for children to grow and develop, they need to be placed in a stimulating environment. We believe each child is an unique individual who needs a safe and stimulating environment in order for them to grow and develop. Children learn best when their learning environment has multiple age appropriate resources, activities and care are tailored to meet their needs. To ensure that this is done we have decided to incorporate valuable resources such as the Creative Curriculum and the Abeka Bible and reading Curriculum that will foster a supportive and structured environment that is conducive to learning. My responsibility has the provider is to ensure that the children are safe, learning and having fun.
Education is the key to success. In order to meet our children’s unique needs, BSED has developed an innovative approach to learning where our children can gain the skills they need to improves their lives as we provide care in a safe and stable environment.
We seek to provide a program that focuses on:
- health
- safety and care
- providing children and their family assurance
- creating a positive environment for children
- offering opportunities for hands-on activities and discovery that will help build life long critical thinkers and foster confidence in children
- teaching experiences that will be adapted according to the abilities and needs of each child
- promoting self-confidence
- critical thinking skills
- cognitive and language development through exploration
- structured activities
- child initiated activities and hands-on-learning
The appearance and overall learning environment reflect the philosophy and mission of the program. This is featured by the curriculum, activities, staff and care that we offer. The appearance of the building is clean, appealing and classroom area is nicely designed, colorful and attractive.
The Classroom Environment is designed to reflect the age group that it serves also to promote creativity and learning and is conducive to the needs of the children through stimulating resources that support a high quality childcare program.
Storage: Materials are stored in bins, containers and on low shelves that children can easily access.e shelves are child accessible, walls are decorated with colorful charts. Materials and toys are age appropriate, and there is adequate space for interaction and play.
Labeling: In my daycare all interest areas are labeled with pictures and words where necessary, so children can see interest areas while learning new words and associating them with the objects presented.
Labeling is especially imperative because labels provide children visual cues to the location of where items are throughout the classrooms. Having visual cues give students who are younger, non-verbal, or lack the confidence, the opportunity to be independent and move comfortably. It also add to the appeal and the organization of the classroom. Children are also given the opportunity to associate words with pictures.
Children will work on early literacy, Bible, Math, Science, Social Studies, Phonics, Music, and Physical Movements.
- Activities are teacher directed and child initiated.
- Create a diverse community where children feel valued and welcome.
- Foster an environment by intentionally and consistently reinforcing safety in a warm and loving environment that is conducive to learning. I want you to feel comfortable and have confidence in us. Your children are in a safe place where they will be cared for and nurtured by a loving staff. We seek to adopt the highest standard and is willing to maintain it.
Structures and play- based activities
Children develop confidence, build self-esteem, develop independence, and problem solving skills while making choices and assisting with activities.
Curriculum
We certainly believe that God has given each child the ability to learn and explore. It is our desire to see all children maximize their God given potential and so we seek to provide our children with Christ-centered educational program and care that will enable them to become all that God desires of them to be. To accomplish this we decided to use the Creative Curriculum for Family Child Care home which is developed by Teaching Strategies and Abeka Bible Curriculum. The Creative curriculum are designed to support the Maryland early childhood standard for Accreditation.
The Creative Curriculum is a comprehensive research- based curriculum that helps teachers understand developmental appropriate practices and how to offer nurturing daily routines and meaningful experiences that meet children’s strength, interest and needs embedded with developmental approaches, activities and tools that are geared towards learning.
The components are designed to help build a supportive and engaging program. It provides teachers the content and tools that support learning and development in all area. Provide a rich collection of resources that are designed to foster learning.
The creative curriculum provides an overview of everything needed to help support high quality responsive care and teaching for children. Every day the teachers can offer the children nurturing language- rich routines and meaningful experiences for the children.
Provide a variety of tools and opportunities for the Director and teachers to engage with families through communication and resources to support learning at home.
The curriculum supports English and Dual language learners, the creative curriculum, reading books, and a collection of resources are written in English and Spanish as well. Books are available in paperback and audio.
For more information about the curriculum. Please visit online at Teaching Strategies.com
Centers, otherwise called “Interest Areas,” Learning centers are a vital part of a daycare setting. Classroom as it set the stage for learning and give children an opportunity to decide which activities they would like to participate in, they have more control over the environment and learning process. As educators, we should use learning centers to give children the hands-on experiences and play opportunities that they need. Learning center promotes language skills, build motor coordination, help to develop a sense of community with a complete environment for circle time and music movement activities and expose them different educational experiences/. These used to enhance children’s physical, social and cognitive development. Ensure that they have enough opportunity for exploration and have fun.
During center time children learn the rules of how to play cooperatively while having fun in the centers and nicely put things away when finished.
Observation: Children are observed, findings are recorded for measureable assessment, so the appropriate help can be administered where needed.
Resources: Children can easily get bored from using and playing with same toys and materials over and over again. We are dedicated to providing our children with clean toys, materials and resources that are durable, functional and fun filled, ones that will stimulate them as they explore learn, and grow. Toys and materials will be rotated periodically so children have the chance to explore different toys, colors, shapes and sizes of toys throughout their time at the daycare. Children will learn the guidelines of how to organize, clean up and store used toys and materials away after used.
Bright Starts provides the following interest areas or centers for our children to explore, learn and have fun and discover new ideas and information on daily basis.
Dramatic Center: Is an essential area for playing and learning as children make connection to real life experiences. It is an imagination and inspiring space that is filled with opportunities for toddlers, preschoolers and school agers to act out their thoughts, ideas and feelings, symbolic thinking and cooperative play among their peers. It helps children to explore different roles and situations as children play with items and tools that adults used in everyday situations. Role play also helps children learn about their community, their surrounding and a variety of careers. It also promotes development in four domains such as social development, problem solving cognitive and language development.
The component of dramatic play center is very imperative for the growth and development of young children. During this time they are able to make believes, share responsibilities as they take turns and solve problems during social interaction with each other, and act out the social behavior they observe in everyday life such as grocery shopping, role play and many more.
Dramatic play also helps children to develop stronger vocabularies, learn to think abstractly, practice, solving problems, and develops their ability to empathize and work cooperatively with others. BSED provides a well-stocked dramatic environment for toddlers and preschoolers with a wide variety of props and costumes that children need to role play. such as: self-contained play area that keep toys, vehicles, play food, dishes pots and pans, plates, play refrigerator, play kitchen set, utensils sets, grocery items, career clothing, hats, shoes, purses, dress up props, dolls, baby strollers, baby carriers, clothes that represents children from all over the world, plus table and chairs for pretend mealtime, doll play area, ironing board set, storage and classroom carpet, miscellaneous items: push button play phone, sun glasses, camera, and much more.
Neat and tidy space where they can easily find the things they want to play with in that center.
Props and themes are aligned with the children’s interest, and also coordinate with our themes and curriculum topics.
Community Helpers: Dramatic play costumes, career dress-up, firefighter, doctors, police officers, nurses, pilot, veterinarians, hats and tools used by community helpers.
Role play activities stimulate creative thinking and is a good way for children to see the view point of others.
Puppet Theatre: Puppets, for puppet theatre, pets, wild animals, sea animals, forest and farm animals, dinosaurs,
Shop Play: Shopping chart, play cash register, play money, variety of supermarket items, handbags, purses, clothes of children from around the world
Carpentry: Wooden work with age appropriate tools. Skills development- sensory, cognitive and fine motor skills.
Block Center: Children improve their motor skills, practice problem solving while learning to work with their classmates. Block plays enable children to explore their creative by building unique structures and communities with blocks, block people, and block animals. It also provides them an opportunity to learn about engineering and architecture concepts.
Build simple structures, roadways, for creative play.
There are many practical ways of managing a daycare classroom environment. Establishing an effective system in my daycare helps me to ensure that my children are able to select centers fairly and cooperatively wide of blocks that they need to stack, build play and learn.
The block center features a variety of blocks and play figures that encourage children to experiment with different types of constructions as they build skills across multiple domains from math, and language to social emotional development. Classroom has shelves and baskets and bins to keep blocks very organize and comfortable carpet. Sensory blocks, washable alphabet blocks, soft and safe building blocks, ABC blocks, hard unit blocks, foam blocks, Bristle blocks, tubs of cars and trucks, soft and safe community helpers,
Science: Children learn about their world through experimentation, imagination and exploration. magnifying glass, objects from nature such as twigs, stones, seeds, leaves, shells, specimens, dinosaurs, animals- soft and squeezy animals for infants, animals for toddlers and preschoolers- wild, farm, forest and ocean, plastic mirrors, Science relating books.
Sensory and Water Play: Sensory play stimulates young children senses, facilitate exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific process while they play, create, investigate and explore. Sensory play is not a structured learning environment. During this time children are excited as they experiment with different objects, colors, textures, weight etc. It is basically a table full of materials that get children to use all five senses. It helps children to learn and engage their senses by interacting with everything that is present to them. Sensory table helps children to develop the following skills.
- fine motor skills,
- cognitive skills- Children are provided games and items that cause them to engage cognitively. During this time children interact with items that get them to count, organize, match and label objects.
- Language skills: They develop an opportunity develop language skills, attaching words to objects, it serves as a good conversation opener as children express themselves.
- Socially and Emotional skills: During social activity the children play together as they engage with each other in a positive way as they use their senses of sight, sound, touch to explore.
Art and Crafts: This center serves has a creative outlet for kids to express their emotions and ideas. Develop their fine motor skills and improved hand-eye coordination. Children can cut, create, color draw, and paint things.
Manipulative: Manipulative can impact children’s development. Tons of hands-on activities to boast brain development and refine little ones motor control as they touch and discover. We selected products that will aid our children in the development of grasping, twisting, and pulling things apart. Manipulative promotes hands-eye-coordination and strengthens their hands., language development, self-talk, spatial awareness, and creativity. Our easy to reach shelves are filled with a variety of manipulative activities designed to help children develop problem-solving skills, fine motor skills as they sort, peg, build, lace, grasp, twist and pull things
Manipulative Center: provides: storage unit- wild collections of age appropriate puzzles, lacing set, dressing frames for lacing, linking animals, counting bears, bristle builders, crystal builders and more. There are plenty of space for children to move about and play. Some of the most common skills children learn by using manipulative include:
- Fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and visual discrimination
- Recognition of shapes, colors, and textures
- Comparison of similarities and differences, matching, classification, and pattern recognition
- Following directions, following sequences, and concentrating for completing tasks
- Chances to practice creativity and problem-solving
- Language development and spatial awareness
Learning Wall: meeting place for circle time.
Learning Corner: Materials, puzzles, learning cards, game cards, to reinforce concepts taught throughout the day
A welcoming space for math, writing and language exploration. This area is filled with developmentally appropriate opportunities and materials for both independent and teacher-guided learning. Accessible shelves and bins are in place and are filled with interest resources for children to explore and acquire basic concepts and learn new skills including, counting, sorting, matching, identifying numbers, letters, colors shapes, blending matching words with pictures, letters, numbers and objects and lot more. .
Music and Movement: Music supports children’s developments across several different domains such as: language development, social development as they interact with other children, cognitive development, which stimulates their though patterns and imaginations as they learn new words in songs, and listening skills. provided in our children’s routines from sing along to movements activities-promoting development in language and literacy skills, social interactions and motor control.
Area include: Classroom CDs, wide collections of age appropriate musical instruments for infant, toddler, and preschoolers, cassette player, head phones and headphone station.
Gross Motor Development: Indoor & Outdoor Play time
Jump and Learner/ Bounce and learn: Provide physical exercise and motor development, while keeping baby safe.
Provide exercises’ that strengthens gross motor skills. We ensure that our children have enough space and opportunities for muscle-building active Play both inside and outside.
School Agers: Fun games, puzzles, Books, Art & Crafts, outdoor activities, limited screen time, home work help
Meal Time: Toddler/Preschool
Promoting Healthy Eating Habits: Bright Starts seek to follow the USDA food program that governs childcare programs in the state of Maryland. The USDA provides a guide that we follow which enables us to serve nutritious meals to our children. We incorporate a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, whole-grain foods, milk, and protein choices.
Children need to maintain good eating habits in order to learn, and grow healthy. The foods we provide give children the vitamins and nutrition they need to grow and play.
BSED strive to provide our children a clean and well-equipped space to eat as they established positive mealtime routines. Promote good health and nutrition while they are learning table manners and building self confidence as they practice feeding themselves with the help of adult supervision.
Throughout the year children will participate in meaningful activities that promote good eating habits activity sheets, newsletters, and tips regarding eating healthy foods, nutrition and wellness will be sent home for parents to help their children at home as they get into the habits of providing healthy foods for their children.
Feeding table consists of: chairs with removable trays, clean table adjusts to their height and child-sized chairs that allows them to comfortably sit with their feet on the ground. Children’s bowls, plates, forks and spoons will be placed on place mats while they are eating. Their mealtimes will turn into enjoyable social experiences for children and their caregivers.
Parents who wish to end food and snack are welcomed to do so.
Extra Curricula Activity: Spanish
Types of Blocks: Mega blocks, Cardboard blocks, Giant Building Blocks, Foam Blocks, Sensory Blocks, Wooden Blocks, Soft washable alphabet blocks etc.
Reading Program: Teaching young children to read is my passion. My goal is to inspire our children to develop a love for reading and promote their language and literacy skills. The curriculum has a wide collection of high quality children’s books in English and Spanish that are designed to promote recall, comprehension, critical thinking, language skills, vocabulary development through books in English and Spanish.
Play Time: Play has a very useful role in children’s life. Children learn best in a play-based environment. Play is a part of their learning process. It gives them an opportunity to explore, identify, negotiate etc,
Bible Time: Bible time is every morning, right after breakfast. It is a collective time of worship for the staff and children. During Bible time, children will listen to Bible stories being read and emphasizes the moral values that are in the stories and express themselves in songs, pray and say the pledge of allegiance, take risk and create meaning
Classroom area:
Teacher respond to each child’s development by describing actions, expanding vocabulary, engaging them conversation, about everyday activities, reading stories, and singing songs.Getting into group as part of the daily routine. Set schedule ensure consistency. Each child should receive individual attention.
Infant area: Is full of stimulating toys to support the mobile infant development of motor and exploration skills. We encourage self- help and social skills, self feeding. Their space is specially designed to create a warm and secure environment. A child responds best to face interactions, singing of songs, reading of stories, and talking to them with a focus on repetition to encourage language acquisition. Planned games develops motor skills, and spending time cuddling and talking to them to instill trust and promote comfort.
Toddlers: They experience their world in an exciting new way as they begin to talk, exploring on their own playing with others. The Creative Curriculum is tailored to meet each child’s growing interest. Language development is encouraged through music, enriched program activities, stories, fine and large motor skills and cognitive development
Routines and daily activities are designed to foster growth in all areas as they acquire social and self- help skills that foster independence. The combination of an enriched learning environment with personalized care will help them learn and grow with confidence, by building self- esteem that will support successful learning in life.
Preschoolers: They are engaged in exciting activities around a monthly theme where they learn about different things in our environment such as, children around the world, transportation, etc…
At this level children gain self-confidence as they independently explore learning centers for dramatic play, blocks, creative art, science and music.
They are provided resources, games and activities that promote language development that extends thinking skills and problem solving, building self-esteem and socialization skills.
Each day the class comes together for circle time activities.