Happy 2021 and it's already February! We hope you and your family are off to a good start in the new year. Persimmon Early Learning of YWCA Boulder County is here to help, with child care and parenting resources to help you make the most of the new year.

We are also moving this Persimmon Grove Parent eNewsletter to a quarterly schedule this year. For current parents, we look forward to continuing to communicate with you through COR Advantage, to share information about developmental milestones for your child.

As the COVID-19 vaccine is distributed and pandemic restrictions hopefully ease this year, we will be here for parents looking for affordable, high-quality child care options. We have ongoing enrollment for child care and are also hiring additional early childhood educators to open our other newly remodeled classroom soon.

Don't hesitate to reach out - we would love to share more about what's new at Persimmon Early Learning!

With gratitude,

Kate Hise, Persimmon Early Learning Teachers & YWCA Staff

The children in the Infant Development Center (IDC) have been busy exploring and finding different ways to use the materials in the classroom. While our youngest infants work on holding their heads up and holding objects in their hands, our older infants are busy expanding their skills. They love to shake rattles and bells to make music and to turn the pages of favorite books. All of these activities are helping the infants develop their large and small muscles and are so important to their development. To continue this learning at home, try to provide your infant with different items to explore that encourage them to move their hands and bodies in different ways.

Some examples are:

The children in the Toddler Room love to play with masking tape! In the activity shown above, they were using the small muscles in their hands to peel masking tape off of the table. This activity is great for increasing finger strength and dexterity, and is also incredibly engaging for the toddlers.

Other ways masking tape is used in the toddler room include:

These activities can all be done at home as well! A few things to remember when using masking tape at home with toddlers - masking tape left on the floor for more than a week or two will become more difficult to remove. Also, toddlers should always be supervised while using tape (or any items that could be a choking hazard) to ensure they do not put it in their mouths. 

The children in our preschool classroom have been exploring the book "Corduroy" for their most recent Storybook Journey activity. As the children examined different concepts from the story they became interested in learning more about stores and shopping. So, with the help of their teachers, they set up their own classroom store! This activity led to great hands-on learning in many domains. The children used language skills to ask for what they wanted, tell the “customers” how much items cost, and negotiate the prices. They used math skills to count out money to pay for their items and identify the numbers on the price tags, and social studies skills, including using money and thinking about the jobs of people in the community, were incorporated throughout the activity. 

To continue this learning at home, help your child become more involved in household shopping when possible. Children can help make shopping lists (with either words or pictures), can check things off of a shopping list as items are put into the cart or basket, and can notice the cost of items by looking at the labels in the store. You could also make some play money (numbers on cut pieces of paper) and play store at home, taking turns both selling and buying. 

People who often drink sugary drinks are more likely to face health problems, such as weight gain, obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney diseases, non-alcoholic liver disease, tooth decay and cavities, and gout, a type of arthritis.

Limiting sugary drinks can help you maintain a healthy weight and have a healthy diet. Many people don’t realize just how much sugar and how many calories are in their drinks.

Adapted from: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/healthy_eating/drinks.html