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21st Annual Fremont Child Care Providers Conference Planned

Saturday, September 19, 2009

As adults, we eagerly await babies' first words-we smile, we babble, we echo children's sounds to get them started talking. But then what? How do we keep children talking and expanding their language skills throughout the early years? This may seem a simple and automatic developmental task. However, research tells us that by the time they are five years old, some children have 10,000 words; others only a tenth as many words at their command. These differences affect every aspect of children's lives-social, emotional, cognitive, linguistic and aesthetic. Using humor, stories and plenty of practical examples Dean Kostelnik's presentation will trace children't oral language development and how adults can help children acquire the strong oral language skills they need.

Dr. Marjorie Kostelnik, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Dean of the College of Education and Human Sciences, will present the opening keynote "Now You're Talking" sharing hints and techniques that adults can use to help children in the development of their communication skills. Dean Kostelnik's presentation will open the 21st Annual Fremont Area Child Care Providers Conference. The conference will be held on Saturday September 19 from 8:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. in the Kimmel Theatre at Midland Lutheran College. Child care providers and early childhood development professionals will earn six hours of in-service credits for attending the entire conference. Registration for the conference will begin at 7:30 a.m.

Pre-registration materials are available from area UNL Extension Offices or by calling Kelly Vanness at 402-564-0815 Ext. 1028. Licensed child care providers have received a copy of the pre-registration in the mail and registration materials are available at local UNL Extension Offices. Those planning to attend the conference are asked to pre-register for the conference by September 15. The registration cost of the conference is $20.00 per person. Make checks payable to: Fremont Area Child Care Providers Conference and send them to Educational Service Unit #7, 2657 44th Avenue, Columbus NE 68601.

Participants will be able to attend two additional breakout sessions. Topics for the workshop sessions will include: "Emotion Talk: A Great Way to Support Children's Emotional Development"; "Communicating with Families"; "Body Image and Food Attitudes"; "Safe With You Series-Shaken Baby Syndrome"; "EXPLORE-DISCOVER-LEARN"; and "I am Moving, I Am Learning".

The Fremont Area Child Care Providers Conference is co-sponsored by Fremont Area Child Care Association, University of Nebraska - Lincoln Extension, Platte Valley Early Childhood Professional Development Partnership, Midland Lutheran College, Department of Health and Human Services, Provider's Network and Family Service CCFP.

Joyce White of the Dimensions Foundation will present the closing presentation on Nature Explore. She will highlight the life-changing benefits for children who make the conection with the natural world as part of their daily learning.

Web Site Can Help You Repay Debts

For people who have financial troubles, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Web site can help users reduce their debt.

Kathy Prochaska-Cue, a UNL Extension family economic specialist, proposed the original idea for the Web site, known as Pay Down Debt. The site, located at Pay Down Debt , contains a simple-step system and worksheets to help users plan to work toward reducing debt and increasing savings.

"The ultimate bottom line goal of the plan is to help people start saving for long-term goals," Prochaska-Cue said.

Pay Down Debt uses a 10-step system with a road to pay down debt motif. Each step gives advice on how to work out of or prevent debt. The site also offers worksheets that can be saved online with security and privacy. The worksheets allow someone to record and analyze his or her own financial situation.

For the three years that the site has been up and running, Prochaska-Cue said people responding from the Web site have had an average of $18,000 in total debt. The site has been able to help people plan to get those debts paid off. Prochaska-Cue said she has received good comments on the Web site verbally and from evaluation forms available at the site.

Prochaska-Cue recently held demonstrations on the Web site before two meetings of the University of Nebraska Office Professionals Association.

"There's some good worksheets on there," said Peggy Jeffries, a project assistant for 4-H, who attended one of the demonstrations. "You can go become more aware of what your debt is or isn't."

Other main contributors to the site were Leanne Manning and Sandy Preston, extension educators. Gary Zhu, a software design specialist in UNL's Communications and Information Technology unit, programmed the Web site.

Prochaska-Cue said she hopes to find funding for another Web site for use in conjunction with Pay Down Debt that concentrates on savings.

UNL Extension is in the University's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Contacts:

Kathleen Prochaska-Cue - Ph.D.
Family and Consumer Sciences
Associate Professor
(402) 472-5517

Sandi Alswager Karstens
IANR News and Photography
(402) 472-3030

Department: Child Youth and Family Studies

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NebGuide 1682 - Care and Conservation of Heirloom Textiles

Textile heirlooms and keepsakes require special care to preserve them for future generations. Controlling the environment (light, temperature, humidity, insects, and storage) is the most important way to ensure the long term preservation of heirloom textiles.

To view this NebGuide, please click on NebGuide 1682 - Care and Conservation of Heirloom Textiles.

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This publication explains potential Internet hazards and how to protect children from them.

Web Version of G1878 - Protecting Children Online

PDF Version of G1878 - Protecting Children Online

Outside Play Helps Children Learn & Grow

Play is an essential activity of children. Research shows that nature play provides opportunities for creativity, expression, social interaction and imagination and improves cognitive functioning, critical thinking and self-esteem. However, with television, computers, video games, organized activities and continuous fears of "stranger danger," kids spend most of their time indoors. Recent studies have linked an increase in childhood obesity, Attention Deficit Disorder symptoms and childhood depression to this phenomenon and shown that time in nature can actually relieve some of these symptoms.

Creating opportunities for play in nature, both at our homes and in public settings, is important to the health of children. Natural play spaces are outdoor areas that incorporate natural elements for explorative play such as hills to run down, water to manipulate, loose parts to move, places to dig and, of course, plants.

Plants are the backbone of our environments, providing respite and habitat for animals. They give a sense of place, stimulate our senses and mark the passing of seasons.

"Plants are intrinsically interesting to children," writes Robin Moore, natural playground designer and researcher at North Carolina State. "Vegetation stimulates exploration and discovery, fantasy and imagination, and provides an ideal setting for dramatic play, hide-and-seek games, and orienteering activities. Specimen plants provide important orienteering elements. Vegetation is the ultimate interactive playing and learning environment – and is virtually cost-free once established."

Incorporating plants into children's spaces is a simple way to enhance a child's play environment.

Here are five plants to stimulate a child's sense of wonder:

1. False Blue Indigo – Known also as "rattle-pod," its bundle of black seed pods, each filled with hundreds of little seeds, create an opportunity for children to create music. When the seed heads are shook it sounds like a rattle or maraca.
2. Milkweed – It is beloved by children for its white milky sap and the array of caterpillars and butterflies it attracts. Milkweeds are essential to every children's garden. Use butterfly milkweed in dry sites and swamp milkweed in moist sites.
3. Succulents – Their thick, waxy leaves and imaginative shapes are attractive to children. From hardy sedums that can occasionally overwinter in pots to "exotic" succulents that can be taken inside for the winter these are sure to delight.
4. Prickly Poppy – This is not a plant to be handled lightly because of its barbs. However, the bright orange sap or "prickly poppy paint" it excretes when cut open is sure to get oohs and aahs. Used by Native Americans in ceremonial dress, it is safe to paint on the skin.
5. Grasses – Native grasses, especially tall ones, give feelings of "enclosure," seeds to gather and fibers to create structures and art from.

Robin Moore, internationally recognized natural playground designer and researcher, will present "Natural Play Spaces: Their Value for Children and Families" in a free public lecture  Sept. 11, 7 p.m. at Kimball Hall, Lincoln. To learn more visit Healthy Families Play Outside .

Christina Hoyt, Nebraska Statewide Arboretum, Design Assistant, (402) 472-2971

Winter, 2009 Issue of Parenting Education Practitioners (PEP)

Meth-affected children, bipolar disorder in kids, kids who are grieving, and how to support single parents are among the topics in the Winter 2009 issue of Parenting Education Practitioners (PEP) Talk, the professional quarterly published by Parenting Press.
Other articles discuss how anxiety drives some people to perfectionism and how the four "P's" of marketing can be applied to parenting education and early childhood programs.

"Children in Meth-Addicted Families" is based on a presentation made by Jackie McReynolds, a faculty member at the Vancouver campus of Washington State University.

"How Parents and Professionals Can Identify, Understand and Treat the Bipolar Child" is drawn from "Is Your Child Bipolar?", written by Mary Ann McDonnell, A.P.R.N., B.C., who lives in Scituate MA, and Janet Wozniak, M.D., who practices at Massachusetss General Hospital at Harvard Medical School, with Judy Fort Brenneman of Fort Collins CO (Bantam Books, 2008).

How to use stories such as the Harry Potter novels and "Charlotte's Web" with bereaved children is the topic of a review of "The Children Who Lived: Using Harry Potter and Other Fictional Characters to Help Grieving Children and Adolescents," written by the sister-brother team of Kathryn A. Markell and Marc A. Markell (Routledge, 2008). Both teach in Minnesota, she at Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and he at St. Cloud State University.

"What Single Parents By Choice Need to Know" was inspired by the memoir of Mary F. Pols, a San Francisco Bay Area film critic, "Accidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake I Ever Made" (Ecco, 2008). It includes parent educators' comments on avoiding stereotyping single parents and providing support for those who co-parent outside romantic relationships.

"If You're Using Perfectionism to Avoid Anxiety, Just Say No" uses excerpts from Naperville IL psychologist Margaret Wehrenberg's "The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques: Understanding How Your Brain Makes You Anxious & What You Can Do to Change It" (W.W. Norton, 2008).

"Applying the 4 P's of Marketing to Parent Education and Early Childhood Education" discusses how product attributes affect the cost of ECE programs, and how to promote programs easily and inexpensively. It's based on a presentation Seattle consultant Linda Carlson made at the recent conference of the Washington Association for the Education of Young Children.

More information about PEP Talk is available online at http://www.parentingpress.com/peptalk.html, or by calling (800) 922-6657, Ext. 105. Articles can be reprinted or excerpted from at no charge if Parenting Press is credited and its URL is printed.

January, 2009 Issue of News for Parents

If your New Year's resolutions include spending less, and buying local when you do shop, you'll want to read the January issue of the Parenting Press "News for Parents."

Besides how-to's on tracking down free and inexpensive family activities and a review of "Eat Where You Live: How to find and enjoy local and sustainable food no matter where you live," by western Massachusetts mom Lou Bendrick (published by Skipstone, an imprint of Seattle's Mountaineers Books), you'll find tips on dealing with the in-laws when you're a stepparent, and counsel for the parents, teachers, child care providers and counselors who suspect a child may be bipolar.

How kids can earn community service credit by proofreading old census records and how parents can handle manipulative tantrums and children's sleep problems are among the other stories that you can reprint in total, excerpt from, or use to inspire your own articles. There's no charge; Parenting Press asks only that you credit it and include the newsletter URL. (Oh, yes, and send the Press a copy of the publication in which you use its information.)

For more information about "News for Parents" or Parenting Press, contact the Press at marketing@ParentingPress.com, or phone (800) 992-6657, Ext. 105.

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