Creating Affirming Environments

Imagine that you want to open your own Family Child Care Home. Reflect on what your setting would look like, what elements you think you might want to include and for what reasons, and the various ways that you will strive to ensure that every child and family feels welcome and respected.

In creating my own Family Child Care home, I would want to be sure that my center makes my families feel comfortable and welcomed. The setting would be inviting and reflect the different cultures and backgrounds of the families and children in our community. I want to ensure that I create a learning environment that is secure and supportive for all families. In order to do so I will make sure that I provide my parents with a school/family handbook that will explain the inclusive approach of my program. In our text, they mentioned the idea of creating an equitable enrollment form. Using these forms would remove and "replace the usual labels Mother and Father with more open-ended and inclusive ones (Derman-Sparks &Edwards, 2010)"
The text also suggest finding out how the various families in your program refer to their immediate and extended members. Taking the time to get to know your families individual helps make them feel appreciated and welcomed. I would provide my families with resources and referral materials and also make sure that the classrooms are accessible.

In thinking of how it would look, my entrance would have a photos of the different children and their families. I would also have children's art work displayed all throughout the center. The classes could be filled with multicultural materials that will help provide an anti-bias learning experience. I would use family photos to create materials for students to use in housekeeping and block area. I would provided photos of children and families of different cultures that can be found throughout the world.

Derman-Sparks, L. & Edwards, J. (2010) Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. Washington, DC. NAEYC