Week of the Young Child events to bring interactive education to kids
Taking care of and teaching young children can be a full-time effort. A Butler County organization, through its annual celebration of the Week of the Young Child, seeks to bring attention to the crucial period of early childhood development and provide resources for children and families.
The Butler County Early Care & Education Council, a community collaboration to support school readiness coordinated by the nonprofit Lifesteps, is offering free resources and activities to families to promote future school success by raising awareness about the importance of learning and healthy social-emotional development during the early years.
Established in 1971 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the Week of the Young Child takes place from April 2 to 8, and promotes the needs of young children, their families and the early childhood programs that serve them.
The theme of this year’s celebration is “Exploring Our Colorful Feelings,” and is designed to promote social and emotional health, said Julie Thumma, coordinator with the Butler County Early Care & Education Council.
“Children’s social-emotional health has always been an important focus for our collaboration, but the impact of the pandemic has made it an increased priority,” she said. “With the impact that COVID has had on families — increasing family stressors through losing jobs and working at home and childcare closing — families have dealt with a lot of change.”
Families can pick up free “Exploring Feelings” activity bags, while supplies last, at Butler County libraries. The bag includes the book “I’m Happy-Sad Today,” which discusses emotions for young children.
“There are 500 bags that were sent out to all libraries in the county,” Thumma said. “(The book) talks all about how you can have different emotions, or more than one emotion at the same time. At the back of the book, it has a section for parents, and has a section about how they can support their children in exploring feelings and finding healthy ways to talk about them.”
The event also features a month-long virtual classrooms activity that can be accessed for free by families. Families are encouraged to preregister for the activity, but can access it throughout the month.
Tiffany Harkleroad, youth services librarian at Butler Area Public Library, designed the virtual classrooms activity using software purchased by the library for use with reading challenges. She explained the activity is aimed at both children and their caregivers and parents.
“There’s different areas of child development that are covered in each area, there are different tasks they can do,” she said. “We want to have fun things for the kids to do — it’s sort of like ‘sneaky learning,’ where they’re doing these fun things and don’t realize they’re learning while they do it, but then there’s also all these resources for parents.”
The virtual program includes multiple “classrooms” worth of activities, Harkleroad said.
“There’s one that is specifically about colors and emotions, but then there’s another that deals with music and movement so they can work on their gross and fine motor skills,” she explained. “There’s a room that deals with speech and language skills, one that deals with general child development, so what benchmarks you can expect for different ages, and one that focuses on early childhood literacy, so how to engage them on everyday activities that will build their vocabulary.”
An additional room uses USDA MyPlate resources to discuss childhood nutrition, she added.
“We try to cover all age ranges,” Harkleroad said. “We provide resources that are specific to the ages of infants and toddlers, then resources more aimed at preschoolers and at early elementary age kids. We have a little bit of everything — something for all of the age groups.”
Moving forward to future years’ celebrations of the Week of the Young Child, Harkleroad said the library is still evaluating what balance of virtual and in-person activities to include.
“We’re finally returning to in-person things, but we are maintaining some level of virtual things as well,” she said. “It reaches people who might not have been able to come to the in-person things.”
Butler County Human Services is lead sponsor of the event.
For further information about the event, parents can reach out to their local library.
Mars Area School District will also hold a diaper drive in honor of the Week of the Young Child.
The annual Mars Area Primary Center “Stuff the Bus” Diaper Drive to benefit The Lighthouse Foundation in Middlesex Township will take place Monday through Friday.
The school will accept donations of new, packaged diapers, which will be “stuffed” into a school bus provided by A.J. Myers & Sons bus company and transported to The Lighthouse Foundation. Donations can be dropped off at the school’s main office during school hours.
