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We had our quarterly inspection by the staff from the Region's Home
Child Care Program. Licensed child care providers participate in
quarterly home safety inspections, as well as scheduled and
unscheduled visits. I really like the vast resources that are
available to us as licensed providers. For example, only licensed
providers are able to employ programs for special needs children from
K-W Hab or Community Care Access Centre. All the resources and
community programs that are made for daycare centres, can be accessed
through the Region's Home Child Care Program for those that are
contracted child caregivers with them, but may not be available to
unlicensed providers. We have made good use of these resources over
the years. My favourite is NOT having to pay a cent for caregiver
workshops that would otherwise cost $$$ to attend. Yep. works for me.
Ok, so back to the inspection. Not much to tell, as I always pass
with flying colours. If you remember, I was actually one of the
first caregivers in the region to be chosen to pilot a quality
control program designed to help caregivers self-evaluate and improve
on their skills. We were chosen to pilot this program, because the
caregivers in Kitchener & Waterloo who are with the Region's Child
Care Program are considered (by the federal child care association -
hope I have that name right) to be among the best on all Ontario.
Bragging rights are great, aren't they? And since I forgot to blog
and tute my own horn for Child Care Appreciation Day, why not now? I
always forget about the caregiver appreciation day, since it falls
usually the week before Mother's Day, and we all know how busy I am
that week... I'm so glad you all liked your gifts! The children put
so much effort into them!
The only suggestion I was given during this quarterly routine visit,
was that the children may be forgetting what towels are theirs in the
bathroom when they wash and dry their hands.
This wasn't a mandatory change, but as we are trying to help the
environment, we opted for a new strategy rather than to use paper
towels.
I'm sure the kids would love one of those hot air blowing machines,
but I just don't see that happening any time soon.
So... here's what we did:
Got different coloured micro fibre cloth towels with cute little
characters on each of them. The children got to pick which one was
theirs, and we used a marker to put their initial on each towel.
The markers are washable, but this means we can reinforce our letter
recognition every Monday when we put our letters back on.
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