Family Guide

The ECC is open to children and families between the hours of 8 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The ECC does not offer an extended care option beyond these hours.

9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. is the primary part of the school day. Drop-off hours are 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. and pick-up hours are 3:30 p.m.- 5:30 p.m. We ask that families honor these times and do not consistently drop off after 9:30 am or pick up before 3:30 pm. Each classroom will distribute a schedule to you and will also have a daily schedule posted for families to view in the classroom. We ask that families honor the classroom schedules to avoid disruption. If there is an occasional need to drop off late (after 9:30 a.m.) or pick up early (before 3:30 p.m.), please let your classroom teaching team know.

A $10 charge will be assessed for the first 10 minutes children or families remain after 5:30 p.m. A $2 per minute charge will be assessed for every minute children or families remain after 5:40 p.m.

As a courtesy, if you are detained, please call (970) 491-7082 to alert us to the situation.

Please note that excessive late pickups, 3 or more, will warrant a meeting with the director and is grounds for immediate dismissal at the discretion of the director.

When dressing your child, please provide simple clothing that is free of complicated fastenings. We often use art supplies and materials like mud and sand that get messy at times, so please make sure that your child wears washable clothing to school. Colorado weather is often unpredictable so provide sweaters and jackets for your child even on sunny fall or spring days. Our playground is shady in the morning and often a little cool. It is always better to have too much clothing than not enough! Extra clothes may be stored in your child’s cubby. Put your child’s name on everything. We get quite a collection of unlabeled, unclaimed clothing and other personal items each year. Please also check, from time to time, the “Lost and Found” located in the ECC main office.

Please provide an extra set of clothes and two pairs of extra underwear for your child in case of accidents or spills. These clothes will be stored in your child’s cubby bin.

We discourage bringing toys from home except for a stuffed animal at naptime. Toys can get broken, lost, or cause conflicts between children at school.

At the ECC, teachers and administrators support each child as they develop their social-emotional skills. Teachers set classroom norms and expectations to give children the structure needed for successful engagement in the classroom community. Teachers use a variety of positive and responsive guidance strategies based in observation and an understanding of individual children’s needs to support children in the classroom.

We never use physical punishment at the ECC. As stipulated by NAEYC, ECC staff may never use physical punishment, psychological abuse, or coercion when disciplining a child

The ECC uses the “Pyramid Model” and best practice for supporting social-emotional competence in young children. Supporting these skills helps children develop school readiness, positive peer relations, effective self-regulation, and problem-solving skills. The Pyramid Model is an approach that emphasizes:

• Effective Workforce
• Nurturing and Supportive Relationships
• High Quality Supportive Environments
• Targeted Social Emotional Supports

Why Pyramid? The pyramid represents the idea that all children (bottom rows of the pyramid) need help in social and emotional development, but some children need extra support (e.g., because of a family change such as birth of a sibling). Higher levels of the pyramid involve higher levels of support, which are needed by fewer children (so the top of the pyramid is smaller). Pyramid is not a tool for diagnosis and does not provide therapy. Rather, it is a framework for supporting social emotional development and for helping teachers and families find effective approaches to help children with social and emotional skill development.

In addition to daily journals and documentation boards that keep you apprised of your child’s development, the ECC utilizes an authentic assessment tool called Teaching Strategies Gold. At parent-teacher conferences, your teachers will be sharing with you information about your child that they have been documenting with the aid of Teaching Strategies Gold.

Teaching Strategies GOLD® is an authentic, ongoing observational system for assessing children from birth through kindergarten, proven to be valid and reliable by extensive field testing. It helps teachers observe children in the context of everyday experiences, which is an effective way to get to know them well and find out what they know and can do.

Teaching Strategies GOLD® is grounded in 38 objectives that guide teachers throughout the assessment cycle. They are based on research, include predictors of school success, and are aligned with the Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework and early learning standards for each state. The 38 objectives are organized into 10 areas of development and learning:

Social-Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Literacy, Mathematics, Science and Technology, Social Studies, the Arts, and English Language Acquisition.

With Teaching Strategies GOLD®, teachers:

• use a variety of tools to gather and organize meaningful data quickly.
• create a developmental profile of each child to answer the questions, “What does this child know? What is he or she able to do?”
• understand how their observations relate to important objectives for development and learning and use that understanding to scaffold each child’s learning.
• determine if a child is making progress and compare the child’s knowledge, skills, and behaviors to those of most children of his or her age or class/group.
• recognize children who might benefit from special help, screening, or further evaluation.
• generate reports that can be customized easily and shared with family members and other stakeholders.

The ECC is committed to close working relationships between home and school. Parent/Teacher Conferences are held each fall and spring session.

Teachers send a link directly to parents to sign up for Parent/Teacher Conferences via SignUpGenius.

Additional conferences may be scheduled at the request of the parents or teachers.

Parent involvement is actively encouraged at the ECC. One way parents can become involved is through participation in Parent and Teachers Together. PATT is a forum for parents, teachers, and ECC community members to communicate ideas, discuss issues, and provide support to the ECC. Over the years, PATT has been instrumental in planning and implementing projects and events at the ECC including the ECC Homecoming Pancake Breakfast and the bi-annual Family Picnics. Additional ways you can become involved might include sharing your culture, participating in a circle time activity, or reading to the children.