Here’s the link to Metro’s main “Green Child Care” page:
www.oregonmetro.gov/childcare

Here’s the link to Metro’s featured “Child Care Centers” page:
http://www.oregonmetro.gov/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=38689

It’s an honor to be recognized for something that we believe is a core value at ChildRoots!

Toxics-free child care: featured facilities

Hear from local child care providers that took simple steps to reduce the use of toxic cleaners, helping kids and the environment.

ChildRoots, A Center for Young Children

Southeast Portland

ChildRoots, A Center for Young Children makes sustainability part of everyday business. The noticeable absence of plastic and disposable products. The use of natural materials blending seamlessly with a color palette that brings the outside in. Upon entering the southeast Portland child care center, it’s clear things are a little different here.

Executive Director Christina Unga considers health and environment when making purchasing choices for ChildRoots. Materials are chosen for their safety and life span, with preference for items that can be repaired and reused. The center has had the benefit of being designed from the ground up with safer building materials and a ventilation system that keeps air fresh. Beyond the built environment, ChildRoots also works to keep toxins out of its cleaning products, personal care products, art supplies and food.

Unga has learned to be more environmentally savvy by researching, “asking lots of questions” and hearing from inquiring and informed parents, many of whom chose ChildRoots for its environmental commitment. She admits it can cost more to be eco-friendly but notes, “Not every green choice comes with a higher price tag. When we find ways to reuse items or to eliminate waste, we are saving money.”

Through simple cost-cutting steps such as replacing paper hand towels with T-shirt scraps, using chalkboards instead of paper and markers and sourcing the nonprofit School and Community Reuse Action Project for art supplies, Unga has kept costs down while finding new ways to make ChildRoots environmentally sustainable.

read the full article here

The Oregonian “FoodDay” Article:

And, as part of our focus on sustainability, ChildRoots was thrilled to be featured in a recent article and video in The Oregonian, with a front page piece in the “FoodDay” section, about our school’s commitment to healthy eating, training our children’s palates at a young age and acquainting children with a variety of healthy foods so that they can learn about the individual taste, texture and look of every vegetable.

Below is the link to The Oregonian article and video:
http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2011/07/taking_a_fresh_approach_to_day.html

Since the article ran this summer, social media efforts via Facebook and Twitter launched the article nationally and globally.  Food bloggers, fitness bloggers, childcare bloggers and sustainability bloggers from San Jose, CA, to Washington D.C. to London, England have reposted or Tweeted the article.  One of the most notable Tweets came from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) which is the world’s largest organization working on behalf of young children.  NAEYC Tweeted the article to all of its 8,022 followers.

CR Alberta Annex – nestled in the heart of the Alberta arts neighborhood

CR Burnside Annex - just a block from our original center

The original ChildRoots Annex opened September 2010, providing the same high quality care in a more intimate, in-home style, childcare setting. Unlike the original CR Annex, located just blocks from the Kennedy School, these new locations are slightly larger and will provide care for up to 16 infants and toddlers.

Each location has 4 full time teachers, trained in the ChildRoots way, who will provide primary care to 1/4 of the classroom group.

Most policies and procedures are commensurate with those of our main location and can be read about by clicking here, or check out our Annex blog: theCRannex.blogspot.com

For more about the specifics of each location, to find out about openings or to schedule a tour, contact Robert, our Annex Educational Director at: creducationaldirector@gmail.com

]]> http://www.childroots.com/blog/2011/09/introducing-two-new-childroots-locations/feed/ 0 http://www.childroots.com/blog/2011/07/childroots-food-featured-in-the-oregonian/ http://www.childroots.com/blog/2011/07/childroots-food-featured-in-the-oregonian/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:11:40 +0000 childrootsnews http://www.childroots.com/blog/?p=208

Taking a fresh approach to day care meals that kids will actually eat

Published: Tuesday, July 05, 2011, 6:00 AM     Updated: Tuesday, July 05, 2011, 3:20 PM

BETH NAKAMURA/THE OREGONIAN Charlie Newcomb munches fresh salad at Maryam Darabi’s home-based preschool, where students regularly eat a multicourse Persian lunch.

It’s just shy of noon at ChildRoots day care center, where six barely 1-year-olds sit Buddha-like at a low table. Lunch today — bowls of steamed grains, black beans and dark purple beets minced into slivers — looks like it escaped from the nearest college co-op, but the little eaters dive in. Some push fistfuls of black beans into mouths sprouting new molars. Tiny fingers pinch beet shards. A wobbly young lad gums a wedge of fresh orange. The lesson, framed with encouraging chatter from their teachers, is the same in each of the center’s 10 classrooms: Food is a kaleidoscope of textures, colors and tastes. Eating is pleasurable, and what you put into your mouth matters.

ChildRoots At ChildRoots, a Southeast Portland child care center, owner Christina Unga decided to make healthful eating a pillar of the curriculum. Watch video

At a growing number of child care centers, building healthful eating habits is as important as learning to make friends, share toys and count to 10. Some commit to scratch-cooked meals with ingredients from local farms, while others plant gardens. When Christina Unga opened ChildRoots in the Kerns neighborhood four years ago, she decided to make healthful eating a pillar of the curriculum, building menus around simply prepared whole foods and creating a culture of exploration and choice. “Food,” Unga says, “is one of the pieces that bring people here. It’s important.”

“I think the (food) industry is approaching food by hiding it, to trick kids into eating healthy,” says Unga, a veteran teacher. “Our approach is to show them whole foods so they know that eating them is delicious.”

The idea is not to hide healthful ingredients like beans and grains in other dishes but to highlight them. It’s called Take 5, where daily menus offer five food groups, and children take as much or as little as they want. Lunch, served in classrooms family-style, with teachers joining in, might be bowls of cooked white beans, polenta, steamed carrots and strawberries; another day it’s red beans, brown rice drizzled with olive oil, roasted cauliflower and apples.

There’s no coercion, no minimum required bites; instead, teachers prompt and ask questions, saying things like, “I notice that there is still milk and carrots — are you interested in either of these things? Have the pears made it down to you? Do you plan to try the corn first or the tofu fritters?”

“The kids learn right from the start to pass bowls, help themselves,” says Lisa McKerlick, whose son Will, 4, started at the center when he was 1. “The very little ones don’t have sippy cups. They drink from recycled glass baby food jars. Most of us think, ‘that’ll never work,’ but it does.”

Unfamiliar fare

Over at Maryam Preschool, the meal looks different, but the goal is similar: shaping young palates and modeling a healthful approach to food. A dozen-plus 2 1/2- to 5-year-olds sit down each day to a multicourse Persian lunch — typically fish, lamb or chicken, herb-scented rice, vegetables and always fresh fruit. “This is the way I show my culture,” says Maryam Darabi, who opened her school in her Lake Oswego home 21 years ago. “When the kids like the food and eat the food, they become familiar with other kinds of vegetables and fruit.” Some parents are hesitant at first, she says, wondering if their picky eaters will fit in. “I ask my parents to give me at least two to three weeks. After a week, they become a fan of the food, just because they’re sitting and eating together.”

Recent research backs up what these child care providers are saying: Healthy eaters are both born and made, starting from even before infancy.

“Taste is innate, but we know that learning and environment can influence taste,” says Nancy Findholdt, associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University’s School of Nursing in La Grande. Findholdt’s research focuses on obesity prevention and environmental influences on children. “If kids are exposed to a wide variety of flavors — even if fetuses are exposed to certain flavors in the amniotic fluid — they can appreciate those flavors once they begin to eat solid food. That lends evidence to how important it is to start very early in exposing them to healthful foods.”

Parents’ backup plan

McKerlick, a nurse, says that though she doesn’t typically cook this way at home for her preschooler, by now his lunches of legumes and grains, with fruit as a treat, are entirely unremarkable. “It’s become so normal to us,” she says. “I ask him, so what did you have today. He’ll say, ‘Couscous, peaches, quinoa.’ They send us menus but at this point I don’t even look at them. I never have to question it.”

Besides that, the school’s meal program provides well-meaning but busy parents a backup plan. “If I feed him something horrible the night before,” McKerlick says, “I know he’s going to get the right food there.”

Although she’s heard parents complain that their kids aren’t eating as much as they should, most parents fall somewhere between content and grateful for the food served at the center.

Kari McGee, a mother of two, has seen both sides. Her second-grade son “has always been an adventurous eater” and remains so, she says, because the ChildRoots experience reinforced it. Her 4-year-old daughter is much more typical. “Vegetables for her are hard. But I know she eats more vegetables at school because they’re doing it as a group. That doesn’t always translate at home, but over time I think that will stay with her.”

As for the kids who’d rather not eat what’s offered, Unga says staffers encourage, not cajole. “We try for that peer-to-peer education. We do ask that every child come to the table, for the experience. Even if a child was to choose not to eat anything, they can talk about the colors, flavors, textures, where does it come from, how does it differ from yesterday’s meal, how does it taste today?”

Shaping eating habits

Child care centers embracing food education is good news, say experts. The preschool and toddler years present a powerful opportunity for shaping eating habits.

“Based on research, it’s a really good time to introduce foods — when children are ready and willing, and they also have a lot of peer support, says Lynn Brann, a Syracuse University dietitian whose research focuses on feeding practices of family home day care providers. “Even though we think of peer pressure as happening later on, if a young child has other examples, it makes them more daring and apt to go out on a limb.”

The more times a child tries a new food, the better — not just 3 or 4, Brann says, but as many as 10.

Ellis Casabar, the chef at Children’s Relief Nursery, has seen it firsthand. When he joined the Portland therapeutic day care center a year and a half ago, he brought with him the idea of scratch-cooked meals. The children at the center, ranging from 18 months to 4 years, now breakfast on Cream of Wheat with fresh apples; lunch might be a barbecued chicken breast with roasted zucchini, yellow squash and red peppers. But when he started serving fresh vegetables a year and a half ago, they weren’t so sure. “The kids at first were, ‘Ooh, it’s green. I don’t want to eat that. Now it’s become where I can’t make enough of certain vegetables. They like broccoli a lot, and they used to hate it.

“Sometimes I’ll do a sauté with other vegetables, aromatics or garlic or sesame oil. Of course, they’re going to have their likes and dislikes, but if you introduce it to them enough, they will learn to eat it.”

Cost of quality food

Back at ChildRoots, Unga shows a visitor into the kitchen, where crates of green beans and gallons of organic milk crowd the refrigerator. Polenta, rice and dried beans line the shelves. The only nod to processed food is a bag of organic cereal, brought out sometimes as part of the morning snack. For the daily lunch, the full-time chef uses little more than an oven for roasting vegetables, an industrial-size rice cooker, some knives and a few deep stock pots for cooking beans. Asked whether providing young children with gold-standard food costs more, Unga emphatically says no.

“We are a certified eco-friendly child center, and our rates reflect our commitment to that. But our rates aren’t any higher than the fair-market rate. (FOODday confirmed that they are comparable to downtown Portland child care centers.) That’s the irony that the world needs to understand. If schools spent less on packaged processed foods and just spent money on a bag of organic beans and local fruits and vegetables … it doesn’t cost any more. I think they’d be surprised.”

Though it probably wouldn’t be any more surprising than, say, a toddler who gobbles up beets.

– Leslie Cole
Follow @lesliecole1

© 2011 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.

In fact, CR has been getting quite a bit of press lately about our holistic approach to children’s diets. Click on the link below to watch Christina’s interview.

Christina on OregonLive.com

Then check out our Food blog to learn more about our unique menu plan.

The Annex is dedicated to providing superior childcare, in an in-home setting, to children ages 2months – 3years.

The ChildRoots Annex will follow the principles of ChildRoots Way. Embracing elements of RIE and Attachment Parenting, our teachers are dedicated to creating strong, consistent and healthy bonds with the children in their care.

The Annex will also follow many of our current eco-mitments including the use of cloth diapers, reusable hand towels and maintaining a bleach and aerosol free environment.

Located in NE just a few blocks from the McMenamin’s Kennedy School, this remodeled home has a large fenced yard with ample space to explore and garden.

Slated to open June 2010, we look forward to welcoming infants ages 2-8months into the inaugural ChildRoots Annex cohort!

To learn more about the Annex, tours, and rates visit the Annex blog for more details.

The basics: As you know, we now commute to nap rooms where the individual needs of
your child can be best met. After nap we return to our ‘Homerooms’ for snack and
afternoon centers. Starting in mid-February however, we will break back up into
small groups after snack (3:30-4:15).

The groups will include children from all three classrooms. There will be seven groups corresponding to seven new specialized
classes or ‘ateliers’ that will take the place of afternoon centers. The groups will range in size from 6-12 children depending on the class.

The ateliers will be: Baking, Science, Art, Mechanics, Cooperative Games, Dramatic Play, and Movement.

Ateliers will last for one week and will be led by one or two teachers giving lots of opportunity for focused learning and one-on-one interaction. Although groups will be teacher assigned (based on our experience of each child’s current interests and
learning style), every child will have the opportunity to experience every atelier!

The big picture: The main goal of this new program is to create more opportunities for children to creatively explore the learning topics that are the focus of their morning circles throughout the remainder of the day. The new ateliers will facilitate
this goal by creating more small group time and lending more focus to our afternoon work and play. Importantly, although the activities that take place in the afternoons will now be more structured, they will still be child-directed, consistent with our overall philosophy.

This balance will be struck by using the “Research-Plan-Do-Reflect” strategy of education. This means that each week long atelier will begin with children and teachers sitting down together to decide on a common interest related to one or more of the ongoing learning topics in the preschool homerooms. Together they will then do any necessary research, plan an activity or project and execute it.
The last day would be spent reflecting on their endeavors (the focus should remain on the process rather the final product) or sharing them with another group. This final stage of the process will allow children to internalize the experience and encourage community spirit.

Additional benefits of ateliers: In addition to expanded ‘academic’ opportunities, ateliers will provide lots of opportunity for social/emotional growth and development. Preschoolers will now be able to form meaningful bonds with like-minded
children (and teachers) from other classrooms. With each new atelier (i.e. each week) they will also be challenged to communicate, cooperate and compromise within the context of a new group dynamic. The social and emotional skills that this will exercise will be invaluable preparation for the larger class sizes and more frequent teacher and peer group shifts that children will encounter in school beyond childroots.

Most importantly, because children will be taking the lead in directing their own work -playful but purposeful learning- they will develop not only independence but a sense of empowerment as they become capable and confident self-educators.

click here to read about Ateliers in action.

So we began to observe and investigate the root of the problem – what we found was that in each preschool classroom there are nappers, sometimes nappers, and never nappers.

We thought – hey, what if we let all the nappers nap and all the never nappers not nap and gave all the sometimes nappers more support – each in sepperate environments designed to meet there needs!

So now, just before nap time you will see groups of children being escorted down the hall to their “nap rooms.” All the nappers sleep peacefully in the darkened East classroom. All the sometimes nappers receive the back patting they need to help them fall asleep in the West Classroom. And the non-nappers are allowed to wiggle through their state required 20min rest period and are then offered quiet activities such as reading, writing in their nap journals and engaging in quiet provocations.

Nap time is now a much more restful experience for all.

The purpose of my role in the preschool is to support our community’s inquisitive and expressive development. In our science curriculum, I aim to create an environment that can challenge and support each individual child’s observational skills, their ability to follow cause and effect, and finally to draw conclusions about their observations. There is a beautiful simplicity and clarity in these skills that supports our child centered theory at Childroots and allows for a great explosion of joy and curiosity in our scientific exploration.

The movement curriculum is different. My purpose in the movement curriculum is to support each child’s opportunity and ability to express their own story through the first tools they have, their body and their voice. Story is how we understand the world; how it works, where we belong in it, and what kind of power we have to change this world. In order to support that story telling, I aim to create an environment that helps support their strong growing bodies and enhances their understanding of all of the different ways their body can move. And, eventually this facility with movement will be the tools they can refine in games that incite their great storytelling capacity.

It excites me that my consistency as a part of the Childroots community allows for the provocations for both my movement and science curriculum to come out of what the children are already exploring with their primary care teachers.

It excites me that we as a community have the resources to offer this kind of focused curriculum in respect of the children’s inquisitive and expressive potential. Thank you all for the love and support you offer these fantastic little individuals as they go about figuring out how to be people in this great big world. I wish you all the best in the coming New Year!