Educational Resources: 
Videotapes & Packages

From Theories to Play:
Providing a “Creative” Developmentally Supportive Environment
for Young Children (1990)

This training videotape is for adults working with children from birth through five years. It covers the stages of children’s development from infancy through toddler hood to the preschool years in a way that leaves caregivers feeling competent about developing relationships with young children and setting up environments that provide successful play activities.

"From Theories to Play" is a training program which includes a 35-minute videotape (1/2”-VHS Format) and highlighted color overheads/handout masters.

Food, Fun & Family-Style Meals:
Making the Most of Meal Time (2003)

Ms. Susan Brooks, Director of the Creative Pre-School program planned and narrated this excellent training video. This video package is in high demand for early childhood educators and their families. The sharing of food is basic to all of our social events -- children need to experience language-filled, pleasurable mealtimes. Too many of our children only know meals alone in front of televisions or on-the-go in the back seat of the family car! This videotape provides a view of what a well-planned meal experience can offer a developing child.

"Food, Fun and Family Style Meals" is an 18-minute training videotape (1/2”-VHS Format) with color overheads/handout masters.

A CD containing the Head Start Child Outcomes and the Florida Performance Standards for three, four and five year olds that are supported through the meal experience is also available.

Beyond Building Up & Knocking Down: 
Scaffolding the Block Experience (2003)

Piaget suggests to us that construction play opportunities for young children help them develop skills that will support their later academic work.  Blocks, like other structured construction play materials (those with a predetermined shape), dictate how children put them together to make a product.  For all of our lives we will be judged by the products we create.  Therefore, this videotape was designed to demonstrate how to pre-organize and arrange a high quality block experience for young children.  With Mr. Chuck Alexander from the Creative Pre-School staff as the star player, teachers will become confident about how their ideal block center should be organized, maintained, and operated on a daily basis for the benefit of all children.

Beyond ABC's & Writing My Name: 
Scaffolding the Pre-Literacy Experience (2003)

Sylvia Ashton Warner taught for 24 years in a Maori school in New Zealand.  Her philosophy states that children's first words must be meaningful to them, part of the child's actual being.  First words and first books have to be made from within the child; these become their key vocabulary.  This videotape illustrates how to view emergent literacy and the child. In order to have quality emergent literacy teachers need to understand children's abilities with oral language, phonological awareness, print recognition and alphabetic knowledge.  Dr. Laura  Stannard narrates the video with her expertise and years of experience as a kindergarten teacher at the Creative Pre-School.  Once teachers preview this videotape they will be able to equip, organize and understand what every child needs to be successful in an emergent literacy area.