Holt child care: School Aged Child Care | Holt Community Education

Midway Child Care | Holt Community Education

Making learning fun!

Snuggle Bugs

Pre-mobile infants

The infant room feature a wide variety of fun and educational experiences especially designed for the uniqueness of  infants. The environment is warm, nurturing, and accepting. Children build strong bonds and relationships with their primary caregivers. 

The infant classroom is tuition based, and offers full day options.

Cuddly Cubs

Mobile Infants

The toddler two room features a wide variety of fun and educational experiences especially designed for the uniqueness of 2 year old’s. The environment is warm, secure, and accepting. Children are challenged to explore the world around them, to express themselves, and to interact with other children. 

The toddler two classroom is tuition based, and offers full day options.

Owls Nest

1.5 year old room

The toddler one room features a wide variety of fun and educational experiences especially designed for the uniqueness of one year old’s. The environment is warm, secure, and accepting. Children are challenged to explore the world around them, to express themselves, and to interact with other children. 

The toddler one classroom is tuition based, and offers full day options.

Pig Pen

2 year old room

The toddler two room features a wide variety of fun and educational experiences especially designed for the uniqueness of 2 year old’s. The environment is warm, secure, and accepting. Children are challenged to explore the world around them, to express themselves, and to interact with other children. 

The toddler two classroom is tuition based, and offers full day options. 

Kangaroo Crew

2.5 years

The toddler two and a half room features a wide variety of fun and educational experiences especially designed for the uniqueness of 2.5 year old’s. The environment is warm, secure, and accepting. Children are challenged to explore the world around them, to express themselves, and to interact with other children.  

The  toddler two and half classroom is tuition based, and offers full day options.

Busy Bees

3 year old room

The three-year old room features a wide variety of fun and educational experiences especially designed for the uniqueness of the three-year-old child. The environment is warm, secure, and accepting. Children are challenged to explore the world around them, to express themselves, and to interact with others. The three year-old classroom is tuition based, and offers before and after preschool as well as full day options.
The children must be potty trained in this classroom.

Caterpillar Club

4 year old room

The four-year old room features a wide variety of fun and educational experiences especially designed for the uniqueness of the four-year-old child. The environment is warm, secure, and accepting. Children are challenged to explore the world around them, to express themselves, and to interact with others.

The four-year-old classroom is tuition based, and offers before and after preschool as well as full day optio

hild needs, each of our programs will provide the support and tools necessary for optimal growth.

Preschool | Holt Community Education

Click on a program to learn more!

Registration for 2022-2023 open!

Children born by Sept. 1 2018.

Early Childhood Special Education through Holt Public Schools.
(517) 694-2442.

MSU’s ELI Program

Not run through Holt Public Schools, contact the ELI at (517) 884-1882.

To begin registration for all preschool programs please click the link below:

www.inghampreschool.org

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You will be contacted once your application has been received.

Preschool Update

Registration for  2022/2023 school year will begin in the summer!

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Check out this video to see how fun,  interactive and educational  preschool can be. To find out more about programs near you or apply for your child today go to www.inghampreschool.org.

Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP)

Click here to register!

GSRP is Michigan’s state-funded preschool program for 4-year-old children with factors which may place them at risk.

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Qualifying factors:

• Must be 4 years of age on or before Sept. 1st, 2021, but not 5 years of age. (Age waivers will not be permitted until after Sept. 1st, if space is available).

• Must be a resident of the Holt Public Schools district or any Ingham County school district(consideration is given to in-district families first).

• Must meet program eligibility criteria as determined by the State of Michigan.

Contact

 4 Year Old Tuition Preschool

APPLY NOW

About Tuition Preschool

Our tuition preschool program follows the creative curriculum, a play based learning experience.    Our 4 year old pre-school will be 4 days a week with a full day and half day option.  Kids will attend pre-school on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

ECSE

Early Childhood Special Education

For more information contact our Special Education Director Melissa Stuard at [email protected] or call the Special Education office at (517) 694-2442.

Preschool Handbooks

Download Now

Tuition Preschool Handbook

To view our Tuition Preschool rules and guidelines please click the link below!

Download

GSRP Handbook

To view the GSRP rules and guidelines please click the link below.

Download

Heath Appraisal

If requested, have your doctor fill out and return.

Download

Natural learning or child development through the eyes of John Holt

The crazy pace of our lives has a very big impact on the upbringing and development of modern children. Indeed, today parents have to combine caring for a child with a busy schedule of the main job and often additional part-time work, with a schedule of household chores, with time that needs to be devoted to other family members and loved ones, and also with time that must be devoted to yourself (yes, yes, In no case should parents forget about themselves!).

In addition, parents constantly torment themselves with the question: are they doing everything to ensure that their child develops as correctly and better as possible? Maybe you need to apply not one, but two or three or four methods of early development? After all, there are so many of them today, and all of them, despite the fact that they are different, I promise tremendous results. Or maybe it’s better to leave the child alone, and give him the opportunity to develop naturally and enjoy a carefree childhood? Or maybe a combination of both? Moreover, this can be done using John Holt’s time-tested methodology, based on the philosophy of unschooling.

Who is John Holt?

John Holt is a famous American teacher and reformer of the school system, a developer of alternative teaching methods, the “father” of unschooling and the ideologist of homeschooling.

John Holt, who was born in 1923, received his secondary education at such elite schools as the Swiss boarding school Le Rosey and the Phillips Academy in Exeter (USA). And then he graduated from Yale University with a degree in … no, no, not pedagogy, but industrial engineering.

During the Second World War, John Holt served in the US submarine fleet and took part in the fighting, for which he was awarded a combat ribbon. After the end of the war, he worked for the United World Federalists, an international organization that sought to create a unified world government.

In 1953, John Holt took a job at a private school in Colorado, where he worked as a school cook – and this was the beginning of his teaching career. Later, he received a position as a teacher of mathematics and a second language. And in the course of his teaching activities, he was significantly disappointed in the school education system. And realizing that it was impossible to reform the existing school system, he began to defend home schooling.

As a result, already in 1971, John Holt founded Holt Associates, the main purpose of which was to disseminate information about alternative teaching methods. And in 1977, he founded the magazine “Growing up without a school.”

How is John Holt different from most other researchers in the field of pedagogy and child psychology? First of all, the fact that he, having no pedagogical education, watched the children in natural conditions of complete freedom, when they were not controlled by parents and teachers, as if from the outside. And as a result of his observations, he formulated the basic laws of the natural learning of children.

Features of John Holt’s methodology

According to John Holt, which is based on his personal observations, schools do not teach as much as teach how to find the right answers by any means. As a result, teachers evaluate not the real knowledge of students, but their ability to create the appearance of this very knowledge. In turn, the student does not get satisfaction from the fact that he correctly completed the task. He just feels relieved that he doesn’t have to think about doing this task anymore.

In order for the child to succeed and develop harmoniously at the same time, John Holt strongly advises parents, if it is not possible to completely switch to home schooling, at least pay as much attention to their children as possible. Read with them, talk, play, walk, cook, clean, repair, etc. That is, to fully involve children in everyday life, without protecting adults (in the opinion of adults themselves) from activities. And at the same time, take into account the following facts:

• Children do not learn because they will need this knowledge in the future. They are interested in what is happening “here and now”, and not what will happen sometime. At the same time, they do not consider that they are learning – they just do certain things.
• Children learn by imitating the actions of the people around them. For example, if parents read interesting books to their child every day, he starts reading faster, because he understands that this is an interesting activity.
• In the process of learning, the child moves from the general to the specific, and not vice versa. For example, if a child learns to brush his teeth, then he tries to complete the entire action at once, and not in parts. That is, he does not learn to first hold the toothbrush, then open his mouth, and then apply toothpaste to the brush. He just picks up and brushes his teeth. Yes, at first it may be clumsy, but at once the whole action as a whole, and not in parts.
• Children always learn from their mistakes. At the same time, they themselves notice their mistakes and strive to correct them. Parents who, out of good intentions, point out to the child his mistakes, are actually doing him a disservice. Thus, they make it clear to the child that he cannot cope with the task on his own, but they, the parents, can do it much better.
• Fantasy helps children to get acquainted with what they cannot experience in practice. For example, a small child cannot cook their own meals. However, while playing with a toy stove and children’s dishes, he pretends to be a famous chef. Such fantasies motivate the child to learn more about certain foods and how to prepare them.
• Children learn about the world by building mental models from which they learn new skills. And since mental models are built on the basis of their own experience, they are much more motivating for a child than adult persuasion. That is, the desire to learn about the world around should come from the child himself, and not be imposed on adults from the immediate environment.

How to integrate natural learning into the education system

Too many children do not like to go to school because their freedom is limited there. And freedom is the most important value of any person, even if he is still very small. Therefore, both parents and teachers should respect the freedom of children.

In the course of his research, John Holt often asked the question: what should teachers do to make their work more effective? And he found the answer to this question.

A teacher who wants to make his work as effective as possible should create free space in the classroom (both physically and intellectually and emotionally) in which students will feel easy and comfortable. Teachers need to know their students. And not thanks to personal files, which are most often filled out formally, but on the basis of their personal observations and analysis of the actions of the student.

John Holt lists the main reasons why schoolchildren fail:

• the fear of being punished due to poor grades and, as a result, losing the status of a successful child.
• boredom, which is largely caused by the modern school curriculum, where general tasks are divided into components that are studied by schoolchildren. And the child, as we mentioned above, in the course of learning moves from the general to the specific, and not vice versa.
• meaninglessness and lack of system of school educational materials

You need to understand that the desire to attend school largely depends not only on teachers, but also on parents. In particular, children will certainly not feel like going to school if parents overreact to the poor grades of their children, thereby provoking in them a sense of fear and the desire to avoid unpleasant moments.

And yet, in the course of his observations and research, John Holt came to the conclusion that the modern school system makes a colossal mistake by separating children from adults and from everyday life. In his opinion, the best school is the thick of events that happen every day around us.

Image sources: pepschoolv2.com

Vladi’s story: from boarding school to a loving foster family

How Bulgaria’s Childcare Transformation Changed One Boy’s Life.

Melanie Sharp

UNICEF/UN064150/Nikolov

18 July 2019

Petya Panosyana remembers well how she entered a large room, in which she saw small children tied by their arms or legs to their beds.

It happened almost eight years ago in a large boarding school for children in Shumen, Bulgaria. The children in this boarding school lay in iron beds with rubber mattresses. They had no pillows or blankets.

“And then I saw the baby that was supposed to be mine,” says Petya. “His right arm and right leg were immobilized because he was lying down the whole time,” she continues.

This little boy was Vladi, now he is eight years old. In 2011, Petya became the adoptive mother of Vladi, who at that time was barely six months old, and since then they have been living together.

Just a few days after his birth, Vladi found himself in a large educational institution for small children. During his entire stay there, relatives never visited him, and at the age of six months he could not sit up by himself.

UNICEF/UNI114866/Holt

Petya takes care of 10-month-old Vladi, who is standing in his new crib in their apartment in Shumen, Bulgaria.

UNICEF/UNI114866/Holt

Ten-month-old Vlady plays with his foster mother.

Long-term effects of the institutionalization of children

Just a few decades ago, the placement of vulnerable children in large residential institutions was the norm in much of Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia.

In many countries in the region, there are deeply rooted beliefs that in certain situations—when the family is in a vulnerable position or when a child needs specialized care—placement of children in large residential institutions is seen as acceptable, even ideal. However, the influence of these institutions on the development of the child is very serious, and its consequences can affect the whole life.

Institutionalized children are deprived of the social, emotional and intellectual stimuli that are critical to a child’s healthy development. Isolated from mainstream society, children in residential institutions are particularly vulnerable to violence, abuse and neglect.

Residential institutions in the Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia region continue to house thousands of children, but significant progress has been made in ending the practice of placing children in large residential institutions.

UNICEF/UN064161/Nikolov

Vladi smiles for the camera as he does some drawings in his home in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria’s success

Since 2000, UNICEF, the European Union (EU) and other partners have been supporting governments in the region, including Bulgaria, to move from large residential institutions to family and community care systems.

Between 2010 and 2017, the number of children in residential institutions in Bulgaria decreased from more than 7,500 to less than 1,000, while the number of foster families in the country increased tenfold, resulting in a network of approximately 2,500 families, raising more than 2,300 children.

“Child care has changed a lot,” says Aaron Greenberg, Child Protection Adviser, UNICEF Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. “By developing new legislation and improving family and community-based care, Bulgaria and other countries in the region have been able to place children who previously lived in harmful institutions in loving families or find other forms of community-based care for them.”
For all countries in the region, support from the European Union is key to ending the practice of placing children in residential institutions.