Hello World, This is Me

Hello!*

I want to start this blog to talk about early childhood education and my views on education in general.  I hope to answer questions from parents or others about child development and share some teaching ideas along the way.  I love young kids and have been working with them in various capacities for about ten years now.  I have a masters degree in early childhood education.  I've worked in a university laboratory preschool, a church-based preschool, a public elementary school, babysat at the children's and at my home, and help at the nursery at my church.  I am now starting my own home-based daycare/preschool, which is a big adventure and a lot of fun.  My professional interests include student teaching and new teachers, Reggio-inspired education, the Project Approach, advocacy and increasing respect for our profession, and teaching children with special needs (and letting them teach us!)  (My graduate thesis was on how early education students change and grow as potential teachers from their first year until their last student teaching experience.)  My education philosophy in a nutshell is that kids are open, curious, powerful, and amazingly rich and complex.  I believe parents are an integral part of the education process and their child's first and best teacher.  I want to be a facilitator of learning and use my classroom environment as a third teacher to scaffold children's learning.

Personally, I chose this blog's name because, well, I love Vincent van Gogh and I love play dough.  Lol.  No, really, I have always been a great admirer of art and I craft like mad, although I've mostly settled on making jewelry.  I'll try any craft once though.  I love coming up with new art projects and processes for children to experiment with.  As I have worked in a Reggio-inspired preschool and I actually got to visit Reggio Emilia on a study tour during grad school, I have a great respect for their work with art and young children.  I'll undoubtably be talking more about Reggio in upcoming posts, but for now, I'll just say that Reggio Emilia, Italy, is a place that got early education right.  And they do it well.

Personally, I love God, my family (still single), Impressionistic paintings, good jewelry, clothes, shoes, sweet tea, coffee breaks, vino, chocolate, good quotes, inspiring images, crafting of all sorts, and reading.  I'm also a bit of an internet/reading blogs and t.v. freak.  I'm an introvert until you get me around kids, then I'm crazy/silly/goofy.

If you have a question about child development, beginning teaching, Reggio-inspired curriculum, working with kids with special needs, or opening your own home daycare, please shoot me a line.  I want to make this a resource for both teachers and parents.

Hello, world, this is me.  I hope you'll visit me soon.  :)


*This was supposed to be my first post, but for some reason it didn't post.  I'm still figuring out this Blogger thing.