Lucretia Brown
Published: November 9, 2005
Students and instructors who wish for their small children to have a head start in education may want to sign them up for enrollment in the PJC Child Development Center, according to Director Sheila Banks.
Camp Fire USA PJC Child Development Center is a learning based facility. There is a daily routine for the children according to their age groups.
Sheneka Dozier teaches pre-K at the center. She comes in at about 7 a.m. At 8 a.m. the children have breakfast. Right after breakfast, Dozier takes her group into their room for “circle time.” Circle time is when the children review everything they learned the day before.
The children move from circle time to the learning centers.
“Centers are basically our library, computers, housekeeping blocks, writing center,” Dozier said.
After about 30 minutes of working in the centers, the kids will go outside for about 30 to 45 minutes.
They then come in for lunch. When lunch is finished, the children have naptime for about an hour to an hour-and-a-half. Once they wake up, the kids review what they have learned that day. At the end of the day, they go outside and play until it is time to go home.
“If it is raining, we have a rainy day activity. The centers will be extended for a longer period of time. Or we do artwork; and on some days we usually get up and exercise to exert some of that energy,” Dozier said.
The PJC Child Development Center is accredited by the National Accreditation for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). They have a creative curriculum that is age appropriate.
“The children are seeing letters and words,” Banks said.
The center accepts children from six weeks of age all the way up to 5 years old. All the teachers have lesson plans, even the ones who look after the infants.
The infants learn motor and language skills. The teachers of these small children move their legs and talk to them so the babies learn basic sounds. The teachers build language skills by “saying the words of everything they are doing. For example, ‘we are changing diapers, we are removing tape’,” Banks said.
The center is tuition-based. When it comes to fees, the center works like a regular day care center. Parents have until 10:30 a.m. to drop their children off.
“If the parents want to bring them in at 10 o’clock and pick them up at noon, they can do that too. But they do have to pay for full-time tuition,” Banks said.
Even though the child development center is a learning-based facility, the children still have fun. Every week there is an activity centered on some kind of theme. Every morning the teachers tell the children what they will be doing that day, according to Dozier.
On Halloween, the campus police officers take the children around to different buildings for a parade.
Throughout the year parents can come in and do an art project or read a story with their kids.
“This is so the kids can show their parents what they have learned,” Banks said.
There are other parent/child activities.
Each of the classes has a little song or two that they do in a Christmas pageant. In addition, they learn about the holidays in different cultures.
There is even a graduation ceremony when the children leave the center.
The most the building can hold is 100 children. The infants to 2-year-olds section is full at this time. Each age group has a waiting list that can change from one day to the next.