The teachers at the Ridge Kids Academy, Inc, child care center in Barboursville, West Virginia, used to be responsible for creating a curriculum for their early childhood classrooms.
Center leaders provided them with time out of the classroom daily to plan lessons, which spurred a new problem – classrooms of course needed to be staffed during that prep time.
So the center had to pay for extra employees to teach while the regular teachers were out – between $300 to $400 a week, said Sarah Miller, the infant/toddler director who has held various positions in the child care field for 22 years.
The staffing costs were high and so was buying the paper curriculum. Ridge Kids paid around $6,000 for a startup program of books, then had to train employees how to use the program. And when the books were revised, they had to buy more – sometimes at $100 a book, Sarah said.
“It was very hard to follow, for one,” Sarah said of why her teachers didn’t like the paper curriculum. “It had a basic setup, and it would give you ideas, but a lot of it you had to come up with on your own.”
What Procare Early Learning Can Do for Early Childhood Education
In early 2022, Sarah’s center agreed to be part of a group of early users of the Procare Early Learning powered by Learning Beyond Paper digital curriculum program.
This new offering blends Procare’s classroom management features with a 100% online curriculum developed by Learning Beyond Paper, a leading provider of digital curriculum designed for early childhood education, within one platform.
Pre-made lesson plans are ready to go for your teachers. Here’s what a weekly plan looks like:
Procare Early Learning offers:
• 52 weeks of lesson plans for five age groups, from 6 weeks old through pre-kindergarten
• Over 4,000 daily and weekly activities
• Developmentally appropriate lesson
plans and daily activities.
• Learning areas including STEAM, language and literacy, physical development, music and movement, cognitive and interactive reading
• Tips and tools teachers can use in real-time
”The time savings have been huge,” Sarah said. ”Teachers that had been spending up to five hours a week preparing lessons now are spending about an hour to accomplish the same goal.”
The integration with Procare, which is used by two out of three child care businesses that use child care management software, makes this program easy to use — new content, training and tools arrive automatically!
Teachers have everything they need at their fingertips. Plus, new teachers will appreciate knowing immediately where students are on their learning journeys.
Children get access to a high-quality online curriculum with focus on STEAM learning—science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.
Here’s a sample of a STEAM activity:
This structured early childhood education solution includes a digital curriculum that prepares children for kindergarten with lesson plans and daily activities that are carefully crafted to meet the unique development needs of each child. In addition, every activity is linked to early childhood standards for each age group.
Learning Beyond Paper’s research-based and classroom-tested approach aligns with Head Start, National Association for the Education of Young Children and state curriculum standards.
Learn How Procare Early Learning Can Help Your Center!
A curriculum hidden in a paper-stuffed binder or aged textbook isn’t how best to meet the needs of children in the 21st century. And relying on paper, without the help of a comprehensive child care software program, isn’t the most efficient way to run your center.
Procare is the only solution that can deliver the entire early childhood education ecosystem — lesson planning, lesson delivery within the classroom as well as assessment and parent engagement. Being able to do all of these with one platform simplifies classroom management and planning!
With Procare Early Learning, you can:
• Equip your teachers with state-of-the-art online curriculum at their fingertips
• Dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on lesson planning each week
• Offer your children a high-quality curriculum that doesn’t grow stagnant
• Save your center money with this cost-efficient solution that’s integrated with Procare’s child care management software
Learn more about our early childhood education curriculum offering here.
Want more early childhood education resources?
Download our free eBook: What An Integrated Digital Curriculum Can Do For Your Child Care Center.
And check out our press release with more details on Procare Early Learning!
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