A welcome enrichment for licensed centres

If your child attends a licensed child care centre in Nova Scotia, whether it’s full-day or part-day, private or non-profit, chances are the centre has applied for a Program Enhancement Grant from the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services. Your child will benefit directly from this funding by having access to higher quality resources at your centre.

This grant, for the amount of up to $7,500, is designed to build facility capacity by offering high quality early learning environments. Every centre, in its application process, must consider their facility’s space and identify what areas would benefit the most from the enhancement of resources.

It’s up to us, the Early Childhood Educators, to identify how to best spend these funds by reflecting on the children's lives whom we serve and the communities where they live. For example, do our centres adequately reflect multiculturalism? Are our furnishings child-sized and sturdy? Is our play space uncluttered and well organized? Do we have appropriate materials for children with special needs? Does our space inspire creativity and exploration? Do we offer real-life toys and resources, such as anatomically correct dolls, lifelike play foods and utensils or telephones?

In our application, we’re asked to prioritize our needs and make selections based on these identified areas. Our regional Early Childhood Development Officers (ECDOs) are available for consultation to help us select appropriate items if required.

We may choose from several categories in making our selections. We can focus on furnishings to ensure that our centres have sturdy, child-sized furniture and storage areas, such as age-appropriate tables and chairs, cots, mats, cushions, shelving and storage units, couches and rocking chairs.

Enhance resources

The category of Classroom Learning Environment is divided into several sub-sections so every licensed centre can offer quality toys, play materials and resources in the following learning areas: art and music, blocks, sensory, dramatic play, science, language and literacy, woodworking and manipulative materials (puzzles, pegboards, shape boxes).

Teachers may also choose to enhance their professional resources by purchasing a digital camera or camcorder for documentation, a centre-based computer, overhead projector, software or professional books and journals.

Any items that do not fit in these categories can be listed in the final category of “Other” for approval from the ECDO.

It’s an amazing feeling to be able to flip through professional early childhood catalogues and make selections of items that you may have only dreamed about for your centre. Now we can move forward and make these purchases, whether they are new dolls and housekeeping centres for dramatic play, or puzzles and games for early learning. Upgrading our furnishings is also a major benefit for centres. It means we can all have sturdy tables and chairs for our children, plus comfy, soft sitting areas for quiet times and reading.

Our licensed child care centres deserve the best so we can offer top quality care for your children. Sometimes we need a little help and support from our governing bodies and now we have it, in the form of the Program Enhancement Grant.

So start observing some of the wonderful new toys and resources at your child’s centre in the very near future.

Lila Hope-Simpson is the Director of the Home and Heart Nursery School in Wolfville