Well Child Policy

The Alternatives in Action Home Sweet Home Preschool has a strongly articulated Well Child Policy aligned with State of California Community Care Licensing expectations. But a policy is a written thing and a practice is the reality of what transpires when a learning community of teachers, parents, youth and children collaborates to keep everyone healthy.

Home Sweet Home stresses the importance of the morning routine. Parents coach the children through sign-in, sunscreen, potty, hand-washing, and then verbally and visually check-in with a teacher. Why is this critical? It gives the parents and the teachers an opportunity to assess the child for wellness, observing for symptoms that may not have been evident in the rush to get the day started. When we put sunlotion on a child we are checking body temperature and looking for rashes. When we potty our child, we determine their healthy bowel movement. It also supports the clean hands policy for all children and parents to reduce germ transfer before handling objects, tools and materials. Why does Kathleen yoga stretch and sing with the children before going outside? To listen to lungs and observe them for fatigue, balance and flexibility. (Okay, it's also really fun to start the day with a rousing chorus of Old MacDonald!) This is also one of the reasons teachers sing children into their line-up walk from the playground to the classrooms.

Laughter is a tonic and has proven to increase immunities. A joyful child is often a well child. Home Sweet Home strives to maintain a developmentally appropriate learning environment to support young children as investigators and artists capable of constructing their own knowledge. What does this mean? Rather than have adults introduce isolated academic skills (that can increase children's anxiety), Home Sweet Home educators focus on intellectual goals recognizing the children’s inborn dispositions to make sense of their experience, to theorize, analyze, synthesize, predict, hypothesize, and try to understand cause-effect relationships, and other similar activities of the mind. The academic skill building becomes a natural process when children seek to replicate what is modeled by adults (reading, writing, math skills). When children need the skill as a tool to get their intellectual needs met they will seek this in a suportive learning environment that views them as capable. Adults observe their efforts and provide coaching and activities to scaffold these experiences, but always in sight of the child's intellectual goals. This supports children's Intrinsic motivation, they feel empowered to get their own needs well met, and Early Education is joyful.

Please review the Well Child policy in the Home Sweet Home Parent Handbook. Teachers will review this policy with parents at Back to School Night on September 22nd, focusing on how it is reflected authentically in the classrooms through strategies and routine caregiving.