Parent PlayShop - DuPage Children's Museum | Learn. Connect. Grow.

Pajama Party  | Friday, March 15 | 5–8pm

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Learn. Connect. Grow.

Parent PlayShop

If intelligence is defined as the ability to learn, two- and three-year-olds may be the most intelligent humans in the world. While this is an amazing time in a child’s life, it can also come with challenges. 

Parent PlayShop is a unique opportunity to come together as caregivers to learn about the developmental science behind your child’s behaviors, learn strategies for supporting growth, and also connect with others navigating the same stage of development.

 

This program is for caregivers with children ages 1 – 3 years old. 

It helps to see other parents and hear about similar situations as mine and learn to positively reinforce good behavior in an adequate manner with expert advice. I think the course was well-developed and the best thing about it was the inclusion of parental concerns and queries.

Parent PlayShop Participant
Pandemic Parenting

Pandemic Socialization

Sharing, taking turns, dealing with frustration, learning to communicate with peers, these are all important experiences for young children that generally take place in group settings such as preschools, library playgroups and museums. In a time when many are staying home and minimizing interactions with people outside of their homes we have to be more creative with providing opportunities for our children to work on mastering these important skills. Join me, the Early Learning Specialist, for a crash course on social emotional development and how to support it at home. You will walk away with fun ways to playfully build social skills at home and strategies to handle some of those challenging moments when toddler emotions take over.

Pandemic Parenting

Developmentally Appropriate Ways To Keep Your Child Busy While You Zoom

Working from home while taking care of a child under the age of 5 brings with it a unique set of challenges. If you are at your wits’ end trying to balance the needs of your child with the demands of your job, this is the course for you. In this course DCM’s Early Learning Specialist will walk you through strategies to support your child in understanding what is expected of them when you say, “I have a meeting”, how to arrange your environment to support longer periods of independent play, and activity ideas to keep them engaged.

Social Emotional Development

Feelings, Feelings, and More Feelings

Tolerating frustration, coping with strong emotions, controlling impulses, following limits and expectations, and the ability to balance others needs with your wants, are key components of social emotional development. They are highly ranked in important characteristics for school readiness. These are also some of the most challenging characteristics to support a child in developing and closely tied to brain development. These sessions will focus on strategies to support a caregiver in maneuvering through this exhausting time in a way that is setting both caregiver and child up for success.  Expect to walk away with strategies to prevent meltdowns before they happen and de-escalate them when they do.

Language and Literacy

Tell Me About It

We use language to think, solve problems, express our ideas, and connect with others. Strong language skills are essential for success in school and life. Language comprehension or receptive language, is the foundation of everything. A child’s experiences with the world allow them to make sense of the words that they hear. This understanding is not only important for language learning but also for learning to read and write as well. These sessions will provide caregivers with a crash course in how language develops with strategies to support little ones in becoming master communicators. 

Cognitive Development

To Infinity and Beyond

Cognitive development is the meat and potatoes of a child’s intellectual development. Reading, math learning, language acquisition, information processing, memory, classification, and problem solving – these all fall under the cognitive umbrella. Positive approaches to learning such as being curious, engaged, and persistent are the foundation not only for later academic success but success throughout life. The interactions a child has with their environment and with others plays a significant role in supporting and enhancing cognitive development. Join us in this course as we “nerd out” a little over how amazing and brilliant your developing child’s brain is and learn strategies to help them reach their full potential and beyond.

Thank you to our program supporters: