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Spring Newsletter

Vol. 4, March - June 2022

Welcome to the latest edition of the Baby Steps Buzz, your source of information, highlights and activities of the Baby Steps program. Baby Steps is a family education program that provides a safe, nurturing, and supportive environment for all families with a child/children aged birth to four and expecting parents in the Newport County area.


This edition features the spring-themed activities that our families participated in and some new changes we are excited to announce!

Meet Our Staff

Lexi Lewis - Baby Steps Coordinator


A big welcome to our new Baby Steps Coordinator! Lexi is a passionate educator who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Human Development and Family Studies, as well as an Early Childhood Education Certificate from the University of Rhode Island. As a former preschool teacher, she has always known she wanted to work with children and support families. Lexi also has a 1-year old son named Charlie. Before working with Baby Steps, she was the Senior Parent Educator with the evidence-based Parents as Teachers, another EBCAP program. She finds great pride in supporting families in the community.

Kimberly Remington, COTA/L: Baby Steps Assistant Coordinator


Kimberly has been working for Baby Steps as the Assistant Coordinator for 3 years. Kimberly joined Baby Steps to help expand the program to include the Thursday evening session for our families. She has been working as a COTA/L, Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant, for 15 years with families and children from Birth to 3 in the Early Intervention field, as well as school-aged children from 3-21 in the Outpatient Clinic and school settings both in the US and overseas with the Navy. Kimberly has 3 grown daughters and lives in Newport where she enjoys walks, boating, yoga, and all the wonderful things that beautiful Newport has to offer.


What's New

Moving Up to Age 4!


Starting this Summer, Baby Steps will expand our age group to service children ages 0 to through age 4. We are excited to welcome new children into our program! Our goal is to ease the transitions for families who have children going into pre- k and kindergarten. We understand the difficulty of these transitions, so we want to offer our support for as long as we can. Our other fellow EBCAP family development programs, run through age 4, so we will find fluidity in all programs.

New Location!


Baby Steps will now be holding sessions at our new location at EBCAP’s Head Start building, located at 8 John H Chafee Blvd, Newport, RI 02840. We cannot wait to show you all our new space!

March-June Re-Cap

Thursday Session: March 24th via zoom


Our March session focused on positive parenting with a presentation from Dr. Jennifer Berton. Dr. Berton addressed the importance of emotional literacy.


Theme- Weather

Book- Hello World- Weather by Jill McDonald

Craft- Kite

father_son_flying_kit.jpg

Saturday Session: April 4th at Florence Gray


Our presenter, Courtney Horley, who is a speech language pathologist, shared important information with our families on communication.


In the above photo, Avenly, Justin and Connor are shown creating a colorful coffee filter butterfly with our advisory group member, Cathy Lind. This craft allowed the children to practice their visual motor and fine motor skills by using the dot markers and clothes pin to express their creativity. It tied perfectly with our theme “spring”!

Saturday Session: May 7th via Zoom


How Does Your Child Learn? Part 3

Theme- Making Music

Book- Hello World- Music by Jill McDonald

Craft- Decorative Bead Shakers

Presenter: Christopher Carbone


Presenter Highlight- Christopher Kavi Carbone

Christopher Kavi Carbone, musician, performing artist, and expressive arts facilitator, directs “Arts-in-Celebration!” & “Music Together of Newport County” with his wife Katherine Carbone, has been offering creative programs in music, movement, yoga and more, for families and people of all ages in the Newport Area for over 20 years and in New York City and Italy for 10 years before that. He also serves on the faculty of Salve Regina University in the Department of Counseling, Leadership and Expressive Arts graduate programs.


From "Mr. Christopher" Kavi Carbone- “I love participating in Baby Steps!

As a music educator and creative arts therapist, I see how starting early can make a world of difference, giving children the gift of music that they can grow into for a lifetime.

So it's a joy to share this musical presentation at Baby Steps, with families who are already committed to guiding these first steps in so many other areas of development.”


“In our Baby Steps session, I lead an interactive experiential lesson: Music and Your Child share in a playful way with parents and young children.

Music education in early childhood is based on four key ideas:

1. Children are born to be musical: Tone and Rhythm are actually part of a child's first language!

2. Children can develop their musical skills and fluency over time, when given the opportunity to explore, and music can support them through many other non-musical challenges of life.

3. The participation of parents and caregivers is so important to a child’s musical growth.

Just like with reading and speaking with children, in early childhood, the children pick up their cues and skills from those closest to them.

Parents: Yes, have fun singing and playing home-made instruments and dancing too:

your children will get that enthusiasm and interest through you.

4. This growth is best achieved in a playful and interactive way - accessible to the child’s participation which happens in many learning styles. Some children will observe and listen, others will move, others will sound in response. With these keys in hand, music-making also becomes an enjoyable way for parents and children to connect and bond together, building positive attachments together.


Looking forward to sharing music with the Baby Steps families again in upcoming seasons!”

Photo: from left,

Rita Capotosto- Vice President of Family Development, Lexi Lewis- Baby Steps Coordinator, Amintha Cinotti- Advisory Board Member, Lissa Fernandez – Advisory Board Member, Kimberly Remington- Baby Steps Assistant Coordinator.


Baby Steps Group Attends EBCAP's 17th Seaside Gala


The 17th Seaside Gala fundraiser was held at Castle Hill Inn in Newport on Thursday, June 2, 2022. In addition to celebrating the community spirit that helps support EBCAP’s programs and services, the event also honored the career and achievements of  EBCAP President and CEO, Dennis Roy. In recognition of his more than 30 years of distinguished work and dedication, EBCAP presented its 2022 Vision Award to Dennis Roy during an award ceremony with featured guests and speakers. 

End of Year Celebration

On June 4th, we held our end of the year celebration at the Florence Gray Center, outside by the gardens. We completed a craft, played with bubbles, handed out resources for school transitions and gave flyers for all the fun things happening in Newport County this Summer. We had lots of fun in the sun! We had a visit from Imagination Library and Visiting Nurses. A big thank you to all who attended and made an amazing end of the year celebration.

Carson, age 19 months, playing with bubbles at our end of the year celebration.

Logan, Ariana, Wes and Ellesyn playing with their new beach buckets and bubbles provided by Baby Steps.

Summer Programming

Conexion Latina


We are so excited to collaborate with Conexion Latina this summer. We are looking forward to our launch, where we will meet with new families and explain all our program has to offer.

Summer Session - August 20th


This Summer, Baby Steps welcomes you to attend a summer session on Saturday, August 20th! We are excited to show all of our families our new location. We are hoping to get together outside, complete a craft and let the children play on the playground as families connect with one another.

Thank you for your continued support of the Baby Steps Program!


Your generous help and participation makes it possible for Baby Steps to provide a strong community resource to increase early childhood literacy and support family development.

DONATE

Baby Steps is a program of East Bay Community Action Program


Contact Us


Lexi Lewis: (p) 401-474-2032 (e) alewis@ebcap.org


Kimberly Remington: (p) 401-533-1160 (e) kremington@ebcap.org

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