Health and Safety
Helping Every Child Unpack Their Emotional Backpack
This 4-part Housman Institute series focuses on how we can help young children unpack thier emotional backpacks, and help ourselves in the process. It provides us with the tools, language, and techniques we need to help kids through every part of processing their emotions, including: identifying what they are feeling, understanding them, expressing them appropriately, and regulating them when they are strong.FREE COURSE: Protecting Children – Using Social Stories to Introduce Emergency Preparedness & Drills
In this free course, the Institute for Childhood Preparedness and Autism Little Learners teamed up to create a series of social stories to help children prepare for safety and emergency preparedness drills. The social stories are for all children to enjoy, but they are also aimed at helping children with Autism understand, learn, and communicate new concepts. This course can help you prepare all of the children in your program ahead of time for the changes in routine that come with performing safety drills.Maintaining Safety with Fresh Eyes
When it comes to making observations about the environment, it can be challenging to look with fresh eyes. We may notice a glaring safety issue immediately, such as a spill that needs to be mopped up, but smaller issues may fade into the background until they are no longer as noticeable as they first were. When it comes to maintaining a safe environment, it is essential that early childhood educators consistently look at the environment with fresh eyes. Here are a few suggestions for how to keep safety top of mind.
Active Supervision
The most important way that caregivers can ensure children are safe is through active supervision. But what does active supervision actually mean?Multilingual Trauma Resources from Child Mind Institute
The Child Mind Institute has prepared free trauma resources to help parents, educators, and other caregivers. No matter how concerned or overwhelmed you may feel, as parents and caregivers you have the power to help children recover. Your comfort, support and reassurance can make them feel safe and secure, guide them through their fears and grief, and prevent them from suffering lasting effects. These resources offer simple tips on what to expect, what to do and what to look out for. There are general suggestions as well as age-specific information, and now they're available in 16 languages!Place Matters: What Surrounds Us Shapes Us
The environment we create shapes the foundations of early childhood development. Every environment is infused with a combination of influences, which can have positive and negative impacts on health and development. This infographic illustrates how the influences from a child’s social, built, and natural environments—as well as the systemic factors that shape those environments—interact with each other to shape early childhood development and lifelong health.Did you know that drowning doesn’t look like drowning?
Drowning doesn't always look as you might expect. In ten percent of child drownings, an adult actually watches the child drown without having any idea of what is happening. Here's what parents and caregivers need to know and watch for.
10 Facts to Share with Parents About Seasonal Allergies
Seasonal allergies can start at almost any age, though they usually do not develop before a child is 2 years old. The symptoms happen during certain times of the year, usually when trees, grasses, and weeds release tiny pollen particles into the air to fertilize other plants. Even kids who have never had seasonal allergies in years past can develop them. Find out more about the signs and symptoms of seasonal allergies and share this infographic and 10 facts with parents this spring.Regulation Activities for Kids During Mental Health Awareness Month
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and to set the tone for the season and beyond, we can focus on an important part of our own mental health and well-being and the mental health and well-being of children: emotional regulation. Many children are currently navigating emotional meltdowns, social conflicts, chaotic transitions, and difficulty focusing or paying attention at school. But how do we meet children where they are now and support children’s mental health through emotional regulation? Why is it so important to do this? What strategies can we use? Here are the answers to these questions and some fun emotional regulation activities you can start doing with children right away!Emerade® auto-injector recall
| Do you have any children with life-threatening allergies in your program? If so, please be aware that there has been a recall of the Emerade® 0.3 mg and 0.5 mg auto-injector devices in Canada. If you have any of these auto-injectors for children in your program, please visit Health Canada for details. |