To paraphrase - no school is an island. Your school cannot exist in a vacuum and connecting with families and the community should be part of your DNA. You should understand community needs because you rely on families to send you their children and adolescents to become educated members of society.

With today’s technology, there are nearly limitless opportunities to engage with everyone around you. The neighborhood school has often served as a resource in the community. Let everyone in to see what you need and what you can do for them.

Spring Break is almost upon us. Does your childcare center have plans for the week? Many facilities, including school districts offering childcare, offer additional or different programming during the week of Spring Break, partly to set it off from the rest of the season and partly to accommodate added children. 

If you play your cards right, you may be able to entice a few new clients with your fun ideas.

Keeping things in their proper order when there are children around can seem like an impossible task. In the morning, everything is nice and neat. At pick-up time, the place looks like the toddler room in Toy Story 3. (Cue the discordant music.)

EZChildTrack offers calendar-based enrollment, where parents can enroll their child in your program or into a special activity online. Calendar-based enrollment allows parents to enroll through the Parent Portal. Automating the process means you can accept anyone into any class or program at any time with seamless, automated billing.

Brevard County Public Schools in Florida faced the challenge of providing childcare before and after school for 55 elementary schools, operating summer camps for eight schools, and administering 21st Century Community Learning Center (CCLC) programs for twelve different locations.

According to Nader, et al. in Pediatrics magazine, the preschool years are critical for obesity prevention. Dietary preferences are established at this age, and many children spend several hours in childcare each week. 

Teaching children about the world around them is one of the primary goals of early childhood learning. An excellent way to do so is to provide lessons around the wide variety of winter holidays, many of which celebrate light in one form or another, from the lengthening daylight to the birth or accomplishment of a deity.

The benefits of before school, after-school, and summer programs cannot be overstated. Community learning centers improve school attendance, behavior, and reading scores among a host of other contributions to the health and welfare of neighborhoods and cities.

Parents of small children appreciate the simple things, and you can offer them an effortless way to engage with your childcare facility from the comfort of their own home or office.   

There seems to be controversy surrounding the use of technology for early childhood education; however, as with anything, if you maintain a reasonable balance, technology is an effective tool for learning.