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What Babies and Toddlers Need: Sensitive Care & Play Trump Early Academics , by Ruth Anne Hammond

What Babies and Toddlers Need: Sensitive Care & Play Trump Early Academics , by Ruth Anne Hammond

Understanding Principles of Child Development and Learning

Building Productive Relationships with Families

Family and Community Engagement

Play-Based and Hands-On Learning

About this webinar

This session is sponsored by the United Way Center for Excellence in Early Education


According to Infant Mental Health Experts, Babies + play and interactions = happy, healthy children!

Take the pressure off! Learn how to relax and at the same time make the most of infants' and toddlers' time in child care through the principles of Educaring®, backed up by the insights of top neuroscientists and infant mental health experts. By meeting young children's deep needs for security and safety, we don't have to teach academic concepts, but rather we allow them to learn all they need to know during self-initiated play and meaningful interactions with adults and peers in an appropriately appointed environment. A secure, happy child is a child who is ready to learn!

In this affirming webinar, you will learn how explain to families how play will provide the basic tools for lifelong learning more effectively than drilling academic concepts. In this webinar, infant/toddler expert, Ruth Anne Hammond will describe developmentally sound and joyfully free ways to foster intelligence, psychological well-being and optimal brain development in the earliest years. Emphasizing research from cognitive and affective neuroscience, she will correlate Attachment and Regulation Theories (Bowlby, Schore, etc.) with the time-tested Educaring® practices developed by Magda Gerber and Dr. Emmi Pikler.

Families expectations are often not in line with what the youngest learners need.  As the professional in the relationship with parents, you  can articulate the importance of peaceful, secure and consistent relationships with caregivers, and the value of child-initiated play. If your intentions and practices are well-described,  parents will feel confident that their children's needs are being met in childcare programs…and everyone will be more relaxed and joyful in the time they spend together.

NEW: We are testing session length. This session is 2 hours long, and will include a brief announcement from our sponsor.

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM Eastern Time.

Can’t participate in our webinars at the appointed time? Never fear! All of the webinars are recorded. To view the recording, simply register now and you will receive an email with a link to the recording when it is ready to be viewed. You can still download the certificate by watching the recording to the end when the certificate link is announced and displayed on the screen. *Please be advised that you will only be eligible for the great door prizes if you participate in the live session. See the schedule of upcoming webinars.

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By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and consent to receive updates about new webinars and announcements.

Stay in the loop on all things ECE

Join 300,000+ other early childhood professionals on our weekly newsletter.

By signing up, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and consent to receive updates about new webinars and announcements.