Children's Center Preschool Serving the Los Feliz, Hollywood, Silverlake , Atwater communities
  • From the Director

  • Sep12

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    Kindergarten Presentation and Discussion

    Posted in: From the Director, Parenting, Upcoming Events

    Dear Parents,

    For some of you, Kindergarten is a reality next fall; for others, it is longer away. On Wednesday, Sept. 21st  at 7 pm.,  I will be giving a presentation about the kindergartens in our area, ways to figure out the best schools for your child, timetables for orientation meetings and applications, and some of the tricks of the trade for kindergarten entrance.  I am also asking a few parents with experience in some of these schools to come and speak with us. It should be an informative evening. Families who have children who will be in the preschool for two or more years more may wish to wait until next year, as I will do it every year. Schools change from year to year.

    FYI, the public school deadline for your child’s age for kindergarten admission is Oct. 1st for 2012 enrollment. There is a possibility of a public Transitional Kindergarten for children whose birthdays fall between Sept 1 and Dec. 1st but it is still developing. I will tell you the current information at the meeting.

    In Sept. 2012, CCP will begin offering an afternoon Pre-K/ Developmental Kindergarten program for children who will be attending kindergarten, or maybe first grade,  in Fall 2013. It is particularly intended for the children with fall and early winter birthdays who will be attending CCP for the third year. The children’s morning classroom placement would remain the same. Details to follow.

    I look forward to seeing you at this meeting and to sharing about the variety of schools available. We are fortunate to have an interesting mix of schools from which to choose.

    Warm regards, Deborah

  • Sep5

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    Green Room Beginning Sept. 9th

    Posted in: From the Director, Newsletter

     Dear Green Room parents,
    I hope you had an enjoyable Labor Day holiday. I wanted to share a few things with you in anticipation of the first days of the Fall Schedule. Please bring in all remaining forms as we can not admit a child who does not have all of their forms on file; this is the Department of Social Services requirement. 
    SCHEDULE
    We will begin this Friday, the 9th, for any child who normally attends that day. It is a morning only- 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.. No afternoon session. 
    Monday, the 12th, begins the regular full day schedule for all of the returning children and the regular morning schedule for Sept. starting children. Please see the separation process discussion to understand the timing of afternoon children who are beginning in Sept.. 
    Parent Coffee- Friday, Sept. 16th at 9 am. Parent Coffees are a parenting discussion group that talks about the topics parents are interested in. For all GR parents whose children attend on Friday. 
    Parent Coffee- Thursday, Sept 22nd at 9am. Parent discussion group for all GR parents whose children attend on Thursday. 
    SEPARATION PROCESS
     The process begins with a visiting day ( for the fall families) and the gathering before the regular session begins. One or both parents are welcome and it allows the child to meet the teachers and children without any concern about their parents leaving.
     Then, on the first day of your child’s regular schedule, only one parent will remain with him/ her for the whole morning even if your child is going to remain for the afternoon in their regular schedule.  We have found that children have a successful separation process when it is broken down in small steps. All September starting children leave at 12:15 on their first day.
     As parents, you will be there for support and encouragement and we will have chairs set aside for you and we ask that you remain there.. It is important that you be there for support but not as your child’s playmate. This provides the opportunity for the teachers and the other children to begin to create relationships with your child. Also, it supports separation as it is easier to say goodbye to a parent when they have not become a playmate at the school.
     After the first day, you and I  in conjunction with Aracely will meet or speak on the phone and discuss how your child’s separation process will go forward. Every child is different; some have had day care or preschool experience or had a regular sitter whereas some children are doing this for the first time. The goal is to help each child feel comfortable in the goodbye process and develop a goodbye routine.
     Your child’s separation often takes just two or three days  with you leaving for increasing amounts of time. For children with little or no experience being cared for by others, it may take a bit longer. However, every child is different and not always predictable. We will be there to support you through it and find a way that suits your child and family.
     Children who are scheduled to stay in the afternoon will begin staying after they have completed the morning separation process. We often begin the afternoon transition by having the child stay for lunch on their first long day and then go home. Usually they are ready to stay for the whole time the next day.
    Please don’t hesitate to talk with us about the process. We want to create a positive experience for both you and your child.
     PARENT HANDBOOK
     The school has a parent handbook that covers a wide range of information. Please read it through as it contains the policies and procedures of the school. It will also answer many of your questions about birthdays, etc. The handbook is online at www.kidslovepreschool.com
    FORMS, PHOTOS, CHANGE OF CLOTHES, SWIMMING SUIT, EARTHQUAKE KIT
    Please bring in any outstanding forms, changes of clothes( 2 complete sets), swimming suit, and earthquake kit ( please refer to the email listing the requested items.) Licensing requirements forbid us from starting a child without the proper forms completed. If you need one or need help, please ask us. We have extras on hand. Please make sure that the physician’s form is in your child’s file. Thank you so much for you help. We would really, really hate to turn a child away. 
    We look forward to an exciting year together and will see you very soon.
    Warm regards,
    Deborah, Aracely, Esme, and Allison

     

     

     


  • Jul19

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    Winnie the Pooh- a great choice for preschool kids

    Posted in: Family events, From the Director, literacy

    I am so delighted that the Winnie the Pooh movie this summer is not only appropriate for preschool age children but also is faithful to the books and the characters. I have loved A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books since I was little, with their hand-drawn characters and wonderful stories of friends and foibles. Many of the children at the preschool love the stories,especially one girl who is devoted to her Pooh Bear.

    The director, producer, art director, and head of story went to visit Ashdown Foret in Sussex, England to traipse around the real place that inspired A.A. Milne’s wonderful books and capture the feel of where his son, Christopher Robin, played with his stuffed animals. They stayed away from all of the new technologies and realized the best way to retain all of the charm and character of the original characters was to continue Milne’s concept of beautifully drawn yet simple pen and ink illustrations.

    The movie is based on three Milne stories and takes place over the course of one day in the Hundred Acres Woods. Each character has his own story but it is always the collection of friends together that makes the stories so great.

    Have fun this summer with one of literature’s enduringly great stories for children. You will also  enjoy reading them to your children as they grow older.

  • Jul18

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    BIG 3 tips for an Easy Start to Preschool

    Posted in: Child Development, From the Director, Parenting

    September is around the corner and 20 new children will be starting at CCP and thousands will join preschools  around the city. Over the years, I have noticed there are a few things you as parents can do to make your children’s transition to preschool go more smoothly. I offer these ideas not only as a preschool Teacher/Director but also as a mother of 4 children.

    Basically, it is the BIG THREE that helps children enter the classroom with their A game.

    • Sleep
    • Breakfast and an orderly morning
    • Supportive routines

    SLEEP

    Enough sleep every night is a key element. As you all know, when children are tired , they have a harder time with anything. Starting preschool, while it is a positive and supportive experience, has a lot to cope with and learn about. Everything is new; the teachers, the environment , the children around them, the routines and eventually separation.
    They need an uninterrupted, good night’s sleep. Actually you need one too to be at your best in support of your child. Start the shift from summer bedtime to school bedtime early enough in the summer so your child is into the new bedtime before preschool starts.

    BREAKFAST

    A good breakfast, with sufficient protein,  is the fuel that keeps children in good shape in the morning until snack. Combined with enough sleep, their bodies have what they need to focus on the preschool experience. Hungry children or ones who start out with just cereal run out of fuel and coping skills before snack time.
    Being tired and hungry makes everything in life harder; preschool is no exception. It isn’t always easy to get out the door in perfect shape but we have found that supportive bedtimes and morning routines help ALOT.

    SUPPORTIVE ROUTINES

    Children are never at their best during transitions and that is what bedtime and morning time are. Each time also leads up to  separations issues as they cope with falling asleep or getting ready to say goodbye to you at preschool. Children benefit from our use of  supportive, clear, consistent routines at preschool to help them  go from one experience to another.

    Bedtime Routine

    Children find bedtimes routines very helpful and calming. As they move through the steps, they are psychologically letting of of the day and preparing for sleep. The book, Goodnight Moon ,  is a classic story of a child saying goodnight to her daytime world as the light gets dimmer and dimmer and she snuggles with her mother.
    The steps of getting ready for bedtime are familiar. Bath, teeth brushing, PJ’s, stories, lullabies. Each family has its own unique twists but the order does matter as each step should calm the child and helps them be ready for sleep. Wrestling, tickling, chasing games, scary TV, etc make getting to sleep harder. Observe what works for your child.
    The more consistent you are, the more helpful the routine is in getting your child relaxed and ready to sleep.

    Morning Routine

    There is a lot to do in the morning to get ready for preschool and your own day too. And now there is this new  place to be on time to. A routine helps.
    From the time a child wakes up, it helps for them to know the steps involved to be ready to walk out the door.  These are familiar as well. Get dressed, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, comb your hair, and gather your belongings.  The order is not so important here but having a consistent order for your family helps your child, and often you,  settle into being a cooperative participant and makes the morning more fun for everyone.
    A few suggestions.
    • Prepare a health breakfast of food your child likes. This is not the time for experimentation. If you can, join your child and model good breakfast eating.
    • If clothing choice is a trouble spot, have your child choose their outfit the night before.
    • Limit the choices of play clothes to 3 rather than allowing the whole closet to be a possibility. I still find it hard some mornings to make choices and that is why you will often see me in black and white.
    • TV only when everything else is really done. It can create a problem for getting out the door, however. It seems like they are always in the middle of a show.
    • Don’t negotiate everything; you will make yourself and your child crazy. Young children can’t handle that much freedom or choices but they will push anyway if you are inconsistent.
    • You have rights too. Expect a child to allow you to get yourself ready; help them to know how they can do that.
    I hope that these ideas allow you  and your child to have a  successful start to preschool, or for that matter, any grade level. If you are a CCP family, don’t hesitate to talk to me.

  • Jul16

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    Nearby Summer,Small-Town,Family Fun

    Posted in: Family events, From the Director

    My husband and I just came back from a wonderful Saturday lunch and  stroll along the 3 blocks of tree-lined Honolulu Avenue in historic Old Town Montrose. Montrose is a 15- 20 minutes drive  from our preschool area of Hollywood, Los Feliz, and Silverlake and very convenient for our Glendale and Burbank families, but feels like the small towns of my childhood.

    It has everything you need to enjoy a delicious lunch and afternoon with your children. One end has a Color Me Mine and a baby and breast feeding store, and the other end has Doris’ Sweet Shoppe store with soft sugar- free”frosties”, McConnell’s Santa Barbara absolutely not- sugar- free delicious ice cream, and cupcakes.

    Across the street, at 2207 Honolulu Ave.  is the Once Upon a Time family book shop with half of the store dedicated to children’s books.  Tom’s Toys has a good selection, friendly help,  and many quality items with real play value. Outside of Critters, there are  two of the old-fashioned moving cars that you put quarters in. My brother and I loved those when we were little; there were never enough quarters.

    For summer fare, it has easy-going,  outdoor seating in restaurants  that offer appealing food for both parents and chldren. For Mexican, there is Pepe’s and Joselito’s;  for really great barbeque, Zeke’s is the place;  the Black Cow serves excellent breakfasts as well as lunches.

    On Sunday morning and early afternoon, Montrose has a fabulous Harvest Market with organic produce, flowers, and interactive cheldren’s collectables. At the east end of the market, there is a bounce house and hand-led pony rides. There is live music to listen to.

    Montrose is a great place for families to spend time, especially during these summer months. Enjoy!

     

  • Jul14

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    Eating & Planting Seasonally at CCP

    Posted in: From the Director

    We are so fortunate to have a school in Southern California, which has one of the most hospitable growing climates in the world. The farmer’s markets and a variety of stores give us  access to a delicious array of foods during the course of the year as does our garden.

    We decided as we founded the school to try eat seasonally and to maintain a low carbon footprint with the foods we serve. We do our best to support local farmer’s markets as well as to select produce and other foods that have not been shipped long distances. Organic food is also a goal and often achievable.

    One of the best ones to utilize farmer’s markets and to lower our carbon footprint is to eat seasonally. We try and create menus that live within the season, albeit the Southern California version. During the winter, we ate lots of different varieties of apples, pears, tangerines, and oranges.We really enjoyed our garden with the blueberries from our bushes and the sugar snap peas from the vines.

    The apricots that burst into flower and then gave us delicious fruit (our first crop) were the beginning of change as Spring came. The strawberry plants liked the warmer weather and started producing. We planted summer garden with herbs, tomatoes, beans, squash, and gourds for harvesting in the fall.

    Summer has come and we are so happy to be serving its bounty. Our menu is filled with ripe plums, peaches, grapes, and  melons, who by now have had enough heat. There are fruit smoothies, berry parfaits, fruit ice cream and yogurt pops to fill the hot days. We will enjoy the tomatoes and beans as they start producing

    Los Angeles doesn’t have the sense of season that most of the country has but we have our  own version.  By the time children leave us for kindergarten they will have grown two winter and two summer gardens along with spring bulbs. They will have cyclical change in their snack diet and experienced a variety of foods. By honoring our seasons of planting and eating, we help children to live within nature’s rhythms and learn from them.  It is a very satisfying way to live.

  • Jul13

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    Favorite Books- Green Room Request

    Posted in: From the Director, literacy

    The Green Room had its first parent coffee (an every other week chance for parents to get together and talk about raising children). There was lots to discuss but one subject lead me to start talking about some of my favorite books, especially the ones that deal with children’s emotions. Not the big issues like divorce or death( I have those too) but rather the ones about more routine life things like sharing, bedtime, anger, and separation. They asked me to share some of the titles. Amazon has them all except perhaps the Badger series.

    While I could talk for hours about why books help children with their feelings, I am going to confine this article to the books themselves.

    1. The Bear Who Shared ( delightful take on sharing) by Catherine Rayner
    2. The Llama, Llama series starting with Is your Mama a Llama?, Llama, Llama, Misses Mama (separation), Llama, Llama, Red Pajamas ( bedtime separation anxiety), Llama Llama, Mad at Mama. by Anne Dewdney
    3. Big Wolf, Little Wolf  (friendship and sharing) by Nadine Brun- Cosme
    4. Knuffle Bunny, Knuffle Bunny Too, and Knuffle Bunny Free by Mo Willems, 3 wonderful stories about a girl and her special bunny. She grows up from toddlerhood to girl who is old enough to give away her bunny to a new baby that needs it.
    5. Diary of a Worm, Diary of a Fly, and Diary of a Spider, books by Juanita Hill about friendship and appreciating differences.
    6. The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown about separation and trust between a parent and a child.
    7. Badger’s Bring Something Party, Badger’s Parting Gifts, and Badger’s Bad Mood by Hiawyn Oram and Susan Varley. These  are fabulous books about friendship and coping with feelings and loss. Hard to find but so worth it.

  • Jun16

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    The Green Room is Open

    Posted in: From the Director

    On June 10th, the Green Room opened at the preschool. With Aracely Jimenez as the Head Teacher and 6 families, it was reminiscent of the beginning of the preschool when 4 families trusted us to provide a quality, developmental program to their children. This year, we will graduate the remaining children from that group and send them off ready for kindergarten.

    Aracely was a wonderful find. All of us liked her from the moment we met her and she has excellent education and experience with preschool children. Her bio is posted on this site.

     

    The Green Room looks great and for those of you who have visited, it has been transformed. Cubbies with children’s  pictures and names greet the children as do the balloons with their photos and birth dates. The reading area has book covers of some of our favorite books  along the back wall and a comfortable rug and pillows. The window wall is filling up with art supplies and science activities. The center table is always changing from animals and people with magna tiles to bristle blocks to wooden “blocks” made from tree branches.

    The most recent art project was very big paper  and green and blue paint rolled on with brayers. Aracely cut them to create an earth and our diverse group of  children are talking about their families and their backgrounds. They also have made handprints to go around the earth in the many shades of skin. There is chocolate, caramel, ivory,coffee, tan, copper, almond, cream and many more.

    They have read a great book to go with the project. Shades of People by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly. The book has many beautiful photographs of children and families of all shades along with the message that “our skin is just our covering, like wrapping paper. And, you can’t tell what someone is from the color of their skin. ”

    This new group of children have banded together and with Aracely and are having a great time. In the fall, they will be joined by other children to make 17 children per day. In November, we will be up to our  limit of 19.  There may be a space or two left and we have a couple of spaces for 3 or 4 year old girls, and perhaps 1 boy,  in the “original” Yellow Room. We look forward to sharing the Green room with them.

     

  • May8

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    Mother’s Day- an Inclusive Way

    Posted in: Child Development, From the Director, Holidays, Parenting

    Happy Mother’s Day!  We are going to have a Mother’s Day celebration at the preschool on Monday. Here is the note sent home explaining to our  parents how we celebrate Mother’s Day in a more inclusive way.

    Dear Parents,

    Below you will find our plans for tomorrow morning.

    First, though we wanted to explain why we are celebrating this day and later Father’s Day in a more inclusive way.  We have invited mothers, grandmas, aunts, and other important women in children’s lives to be with us.

    One of the most important  goals of Children’s Center Preschool is to help children to understand  and appreciate not only their own family’s heritage, culture, and makeup, but those of other children’s families.  We want to develop more than tolerance in children, which is a passive state.  In addition we seek to develop understanding, acceptance, and appreciation. When a child sees the value of his or her family as well as the value of families  who live differently , they develop an active belief that each person matters and that there are many different ways to live life positively.

    Mother’s Day was originally a Hallmark Card marketing opportunity that seems to have evolved into a National holiday. But life is not the same as it was 50 years ago, and our children and their families need to find new ways to approach this holiday (because it is so ubiquitous). Children are no longer raised only in traditional mother and father households.  They are also being well raised in single parent, same sex parent, adoptive parent, grandparent, or other caring people households. They also have several other important women who participate in meaningful ways in their upbringing,  nannies, babysitters, grandmas, aunts, neighbors, and friends.

    Tomorrow we will celebrate them all!  We hope that celebrating in this way, we will help your children redefine Mother’s Day in a new and more inclusive way and value the many women who enrich their  lives.

    We look forward to celebrating with you.

    The Morning Plan Read More | Comments

  • Mar5

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    March Book Sharing

    Posted in: Family events, From the Director, Fun with Preschoolers, literacy, Monthly Classroom Themes, Projects, Upcoming Events

    We are having great fun at the school this month; it is book sharing time. We have asked our children and parents to pick their favorite books and share them with us.  We are also celebrating Dr. Seuss’ birthday in conjunction with Read Across America. We will have the  birthday celebration on March 15th at a parent/ child morning gathering of reading, All about Me book making, and other activities.

    For the month of March,  our morning meeting every day with the children will  feature  the children sharing with each other the books they love. When the meeting is over, they can join the reading area where teachers and parent volunteers will read the many wonderful selections during choice time.

    We have learned about lots of new books, everything from Sharks vs. Trains to Good Boy, Fergus. At the end of the month, I will publish a list of our new finds.

    Why celebrate Dr. Seuss birthday? Firstly, it will be great fun witht Cat in the Hat and Greeen Eggs and Ham. On a broader level, Read Across America, an event that brings together Random House, publishers of the Dr. Suess books and the National Education Association  believes that “when we celebrate Dr. Seuss and reading, we send a clear message to America’s children that reading is fun and important.”

    We send that message to our children every day as we read a wonderful range of children’s literature but this month we will have  another delightful way to bring books alive for our children.

    Because, In Seussville,

    You are never too old, too wacky, too wild

    To pick up a book and read to a child.

    I hope you enjoy many great books with your child this month.

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