Our Program | Hempfield Family Child Development Center

Philosophy

HFCDC’s goal is to provide high quality care and education where each child’s holistic development is the focus. We focus on nurturing and growing each child’s physical, social, and cognitive skills in developmentally appropriate ways because each child develops at their own rate. Since we focus on children as individuals, we keep a low teacher-to-child ratio in order to successfully meet each child’s individual needs. We enroll children from 6 weeks to kindergarten.

We are a multi-age program that is play responsive with a balance of large group and small group exploration. We choose to be a multi-age program because there are numerous benefits and advantages. These benefits are not only ones that we see in our center, but are benefits that have been recognized through research worldwide. The first and most noticeable advantage is the rate at which children acquire social and language skills. When children of different ages are placed in the same setting, the setting becomes a unique language rich environment full of various stages of development that has great potential to build each child’s language and social skills.

Another key benefit of the multi-age program is that children interact and naturally assume empathizing and nurturing roles toward each other. A multi-age program also benefits siblings. When siblings are placed in a new environment together, it reduces fear and separation anxiety. An additional advantage of this type of program is that there are a limited number of transitions during their years of attendance. By keeping an open classroom where all children, parents, and staff know and relate to each other on a daily basis, attachments are made and children do not have to transition to new rooms and teachers as they get older.

Infant care

Introducing our new infant care program! Some highlights of the program are listed below.

Ratio is kept to 1 caregiver for 4 infants and group size is kept to 8 infants at a time
Routines are slowed down so primary care giving can help infant develop attachment and trust
Inspiration comes from both the Reggio Emilio and RIE approaches to early care and education
Home-like environment is designed to be comfortable for infants, teachers, and parents
Learning materials and toys provide a variety of open ended play opportunities
Our in-house food service is offered to ensure a healthy start towards baby-led weaning
Many eco- friendly materials are used, including changing pad, crib sheets and wooden toys
Guaranteed Start date

Curriculum

We use NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) and Pennsylvania State academic standards as a framework for curriculum planning, implementing, and assessing. We assess children with our developmental checklist to guide our planning and inform parents of their child’s developmental progress.

Our curriculum is an emergent curriculum in that we explore new interests weekly and sometimes biweekly depending on the children’s interests. Children have an active role in the planning and implementing of our curriculum. Countless research has shown that when children are involved in the planning of the curriculum they not only take ownership in what they are learning, they learn at a faster pace, and remember what they learn because it is meaningful to them.

Environment

The environment acts as a “teacher” in the way it is designed and prepared to stimulate and enrich children’s play. The environment is meant to be aesthetically pleasing with natural light and provide many opportunities to observe what is happening in the natural world. Although technology may be used at times, its use is minimal. Children are encouraged to develop creative thought with open ended materials rather than directed activities or videos.

Discipline

We believe children learn to become self disciplined through adult modeling and guidance. By providing a caring, safe, and secure environment, children can practice decision making, problem solving, and conflict resolution. Emphasis is placed on building a child’s self esteem, which in turn increases their independence, self confidence, self control, and ultimately self discipline.

Our staff uses various positive guidance techniques including redirection and logical consequences. We believe it is important that children have clear and consistent boundaries in order for them to learn to eventually set their own boundaries. Choices are given when appropriate and in many cases, children are redirected to an alternative activity that enables them to engage in positive interaction with peers or individual play. If necessary, children are given a natural or logical consequence with an explanation. We believe it is important for children who can reason to make a connection between the cause and effect of their behavior.

Communication

Parents are an essential part of our program at HFCDC. We strive to keep communication ongoing and open in several ways.

Arrival & Pick up: Teachers and parents often exchange daily greetings and conversations whether it is at arrival or pick up.
Procare: Teachers also communicate to parents through an app that includes a summary of the child’s day, what the child ate for lunch and snacks, length of nap, as well as, the toileting details of the day.
Whiteboards: We also have whiteboards for each classroom on which the teachers write a brief note about the day that are meant to stimulate conversation between parents and their child.
Parent Conferences: Bi-annually parent conferences are offered to give parents the opportunity to talk to our staff about their child’s progress. Parent conferences can also be scheduled more frequently, upon the parent’s request or the teacher’s discretion.
Parents are free to call during the day or visit at any time to check up on their children.

Tuition

We offer 2 day, 3 day or 5 day tuition rates to best accommodate each family’s budget and schedule.

Sibling discounts are given and CCIS subsidy is accepted.