For the past two-decades, the Cabrillo College Children's Center & Lab School is proud to partner with Casa Pequeña Early Educators to offer our community free or low-cost child care funding for families who qualify based on their need for child care and their income. The Center receives funding from the California Department of Education, Early Learning & Care Division to host this exemplary network of home-based educators to provide an additional delivery system for child care that is desperately needed for student parents and working families with limited income.

Casa Pequeña is a Child Care Network comprised of 10 home-based programs facilitated by highly experienced, well-trained professional staff (referred to as Early Educators) who currently serve 108 families throughout Santa Cruz County. Each home-based program is fully licensed through the Department of Social services, Community Care Licensing and offers a year-round and full-day program for infants through school-age children. Enrollment capacity varies between each provider depending on their operational license.

Casa Peqũena Philosophy

We believe that a child matures most successfully in a warm, comfortable, thoughtfully planned environment that respects individual differences and supports each child's opportunity to learn through play. Therefore, each Casa Pequeña Early Educator carefully plans curriculum activities and creates learning environments around the developmental needs of each child. We closely observe caregiving routines such as eating, diapering/toileting, washing, and napping and believe they are important learning opportunities in settings where children can learn about self-concept, health & safety, and positive interactions. These routines also allow children to develop trust, autonomy, physical skills and a sense of self-competence. Routines are seen as vitally important parts of each child's daily experience.

Research validates that "play" is a child's most effective way to learn, explore, think, talk, and create about the world around them. Exploration through play supports each child's physical, intellectual, and social/emotional development. Through children's play, they learn important and essential skills to assist with the development of social competence, building strong relationships, working through conflicts and concerns, develop their minds and their bodies and build their understanding and ability to feel success and optimism, as they make their own choices. The focus on play-based curriculum is a known stress release; it is often linked to child wellbeing.

Respecting a child's ability to make their own choices, our Casa Pequeña Teacher/Providers offer a rich daily schedule for children to make choices of curriculum activities that interest them the most. Planned curriculum supports a child's intellectual development through social interaction and a variety of learning opportunities. The activities are age-appropriate and may include cooking, building with blocks, being read to, exploring different textures and shapes, carpentry, gardening, puzzles, manipulating educational materials, observing nature, singing and dancing, creative arts, as well as large muscles developing activities such as running, jumping, climbing and crawling. Many of these activities incorporate (school readiness skills) pre-reading and math skills, such as beginning sounds and symbols, letter recognition, counting, classifying and sorting.

Our Casa Pequeña Teacher/Providers offer many opportunities for children to practice and refine their social emotional skills such as mutual problem solving, cooperation, communicating individual needs and helping others. A big part of the philosophy focuses on building an anti-bias program to positively respond to the challenges facing children and families in our highly diverse and inequitable world. The anti-bias approach builds children's critical thinking skills, focuses on observation, listening, asking and answering questions, and creating an authentic learning environment that ensures diversity (in all its forms) is present, while also affirming a child's reality and value.

Casa Pequeña Network Providers/Teachers have a wide variety of responsibilities to ensure that each program provides the highest quality of home-based care. In addition, to be a part of the Network, Providers/Teachers must also do the following activities to meet the program guidelines:

• Participate in on-going professional development to increase and maintain professional skills. Attend monthly meetings and provide support to others in the group.

• Implement the use of the Family Child Care Environment Rating Scale (FCCERS) to ensure learning environments incorporate high-quality options for children.

• Implement the use of the Desired Results Developmental Profile Assessment System (DRDP), which includes observing and documenting each child's development and conducting conferences with each family.

• Create individual developmental portfolios for each child as a way to document and assess their developmental progress.

• Survey families for their feedback to establish annual improvement program goals.

• Maintain enrollment procedures that meet the funding guidelines

Maintain each family's need for confidentiality. *Details of children/families personal information is never shared among providers.