Supporting Learning in the Home

Supporting Learning in the Home

Randi Hopper: Thank you so much for joining today's webinar on "Supporting Learning in the Home." My name is Randi Hopper, and I'm a senior training and technical assistant specialist with the National Center Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning. Today, I am joined by my good friend, Victoria Prieto also from our National Center.  

So, today, we're are going to work on describing how parent-child interactions really support children's learning, go over some strategies for working with families to support learning in the home as well as share and use some resources that are going to support families to facilitate the learning of their children. This really is, like the title says, all about supporting learning in the home. We're going to get started with a poll to find out some of the key resources that you are already using to support parents in their role as the child's first and most important teacher, so when the poll comes up, select up to three resources that are on there, OK? 

So, the key resources: There's the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework; Effective Practice Guides; Home-based Curriculum; Relationship-based Competencies to Support Family Engagement; the Home-visiting Webinar Series; MyPeers Home Visiting Community; Home Visitor's Online Handbook; mobile tools such as ELOF@HOME at Text4HomeVisitors; and the In-service Suites.  

So, I'm going to push out our results to the audience. You can see here that a lot of people said the Framework and the Curriculum, Relationship-based Competencies, the Webinar Series. I'm so glad to hear that the webinar series has been super helpful for you, and we're going to talk about some of these moving forward, and some of these we've talked about in past webinars, and so we'll continue to use these in the future. All right. But to get us started, I'm going to hand it off to my good friend, Victoria Prieto. She's here really to discuss ... get us started on  "The Foundation of Home-Based" and really promoting parents as their child's first and most important teacher at providing those learning experiences within the home, so let's get started with Victoria.

Victoria Prieto: Thank you, Randi. So, as we all know, one of the cornerstones of home visiting is building and sustaining relationships with family. Think of relationship-building as the road that takes us to our destination. It is that positive relationship with families that help us to provide the essential support that allow parents to enhance their knowledge of our child development and facilitate learning in the home, not only when we are present but throughout the week, and that is when parents have a chance to replicate what we did on the visit. However, without mutual trust and respect, the family isn't going to feel comfortable opening up to you and sharing their hopes and dreams for their child, and certainly, without trust, they would not share their fears.

We discussed the parent process in the April 2018 home-visiting webinar that focused on parent-child interactions. The relationship a home visitor builds with a parent really influences the parent's relationship with their child. This process helps to foster positive parent-child interactions which in turn supports positive outcome for children, but a positive relationship is built over time, as we know, and so it is a relationship between the home visitor, the parents, their relationship with their child and especially for parents to get to know and understand what is expected of each other.  

You can explain to parents what the parallel process is perhaps many times, but truth is, it takes practice to do it. You could say to a parent: "It takes practice to respond to your child's needs for affection and attention." You can remind parents about this practice, the concept of practice to really put the parent process to work. When I was a home visitor, I used to talk with parents about how babies thrive, and I explained how the parallel process works between parent and child. It did the trick because parents do pay attention every time you talk about their child.  

The back-and-forth of interactions between the parent and their child is the foundation of learning. Parent-child interactions are essential to the home-visiting work, and home visitors provide support to parents as a joint partner. This means that parents and home visitors jointly plan learning opportunities for home visits and socializations and jointly select materials and objects to use during the home visit. Now, together, home visitors and parents discuss who will be present for home visits. You may want to ask: "Who supports you in caring for your child, and how do you feel about this person participating with visits?" It is up to the family as to who and how members of the household can be involved so that learning during the home visit and throughout the week can be supported and enriched.  

So, home visits that include the adults who live in the same home is an opportunity to get everyone on the same page in terms of care and nurturing of the little ones. You may want to reassure parents as well that children in extended families usually continue bonding with their parents first and foremost. Home visitors can find ways of involving family members. It is fun, and it contributes to the development of the child. Try asking parents what information they want or need to promote their child's development. The key words here are, "to promote their child's development." I've found that if I only said, "What information would you like?" I'd get all kinds of requests, so information and support provided to parents during home visits should focus on their development role as a facilitator of their child's learning. Now, remembering that the parent-child interaction is our focus to provide learning opportunity, parents need guidance and encouragement to expand their knowledge and skill.  

So, information that comes in a handout could sometimes be overwhelming to parents. We know parenting can be very demanding, and we want parents to read what we share with them during the visit. For that reason, it's advisable to give them what they really need or want and especially individual the information to what they are interested in and what you as a home visitor can discuss during the visit. If you have non-English-speaking parents, and you don't speak their language, it is essential to give them a translation of the material or assign a home visitor who will conduct a visit in their language.  

So, we're going to discuss a few steps that home visitors can use to foster parent-child interactions and support parents as facilitators of their child's learning.  

So, how do we encourage parent interactions that promote learning in the home? Well, one strategy is observing interactions between parent and child, as well as encouraging parents to observe their child. Let me stop here for a moment to emphasize this point. Learning to observe their child is the greatest gift you can give to a parent. Why? Why do you think I say that? In my opinion, it is because observing encourages responsiveness. It is hard not to smile back when you see a child smiling at you, right?  

So, home visitors can encourage parents by saying things like, "Your baby sees you, likes looking and smiling at you. Did you see how she stretches her arms to reach your face?" Statements like that that clearly translate into saying, "Look at your child," right? Another strategy is to pair development information with developmental milestones and stages of development of their child. Parents are usually very busy and don't have a lot of time to read long handouts. Our parent-home-visitor discussions are part of the essence of home visits.  

So, are parent-child interactions, all of that to say, reserve a good chunk of time of the visit to work on connecting the parent with their child. So, promoting parent-child interactions, that is so key for the work that we do. Home visitors can optimize their time with the family by taking advantage of a naturally occurring teachable moment that happens throughout a typical visit. That is known as teaching in the moment, and that means to be prepared so that when those moments occur, parents can learn from the experience. For example, addressing or pointing out the developmental needs of the child, you could say things like, "Your child is trying very hard to roll over. I love how you praised his effort. How do you feel about gently helping him to flip over?" That's a teachable moment.  

Also, teaching in the moment is noticing what the child is learning and how they are supporting it. So, you could say, for example, "Your baby is learning to drop her rattle to get your attention. It's a game for her. I see you picking it up to keep the game going. You're going to help her explore the world," and things that guide that teachable moment and giving the parents a chance to take a moment to observe what's going on. Recognizing parents' strengths contributes to their sense of confidence. 
 This is important for two reasons. First, identifying and acknowledging their strengths is the starting point for developing further strength. Secondly, when you value parents' strengths, you increase their trust in you, which in turn will make it easier for you to address challenges when challenges come up.  

So, as we've said before, discuss with the parent what was observed, and also, limit focusing on weaknesses by scaffolding to support areas of improvement. Pay attention to what the parent is doing, and if parents try on something of their own doing, something that is doable. Say, for example, "See what happens when you imitate your child? Try it again," or give side by side verbal guidance such as, "Does it sound like your baby is tired?" Or you could add, "Usually, if her eyes are closed, and she is restless, that means she's tired."  

So, that's side-by-side verbal guidance. However, if at any moment during the visit, you observe an unsafe behavior by the parent, you will want to do a direct intervention in a straightforward manner. OK?  

A word about family culture: Culture is the context in which children develop, and this context contributes to their overall health and well-being. It is also the context in which parents raise their children. As we know, culture shapes how parents care, nurture and tend to their children. 

These approaches are learned from their own personal experience and in their cultural communities.  

So, the moment-to-moment decisions that parents make about their caregiving practices are really driven by their own background knowledge and circumstances and also the expectations learned from families and friends on their own social network, of course. It is a network of context in which parenting is rooted. This is an important concept to remember, so then we avoid making false assumptions.  

We know it is vital for home visitors to consider and incorporate the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the children and families with whom they work, so especially when working with diverse families, it's really important to understand... to know first and then understand the cultural and linguistic background. And while everyone is rooted in culture, it is important to recognize that people are also individuals, so you will observe that within any cultural group, there may be differences in how children are raised, so most importantly, avoid making any assumptions, and you can do this by asking questions because asking questions demonstrates genuine interest in the family to expand your understanding of their traditions, their values, their routines. That means leaving your assumptions at the door when you walk into the home. 

So, this is central to developing that collaborative relationship with the families. Home visitors should also encourage parents to speak and support their children in the language they are most comfortable using. When they speak their native language with their children, they express rich vocabulary, and most importantly, they boost their children's sense of identity and belonging. Let's move forward to discussing what we know supports children's learning and development. I'm going to ask my dear colleague now, Randi, to take us there. Randi?  

Randi: Well, thank you so much, Victoria, for sharing that information with us, and, yes, I'm going to help us move forward through just learning in the context of relationships. We know that young children experience their whole world through the environment of relationships, and they learn through this, and they really affect virtually all aspects of child development. We know that a nurturing and stable relationship with caring adults builds secure attachment, which leads us to a love of learning, being comfortable and having a sense of oneself, positive social skills, multiple successful relationships later in life and a sophisticated understanding of emotions.  

So, as home visitors, you really promote that positive parent-child interaction as a way to support children's development and learning. So, these positive interactions within everyday routine provide key learning opportunities. So, this really brings us to the point of just the importance of using everyday routines as a way to embed these learning opportunities. The daily caregiving routines such as holding, and rocking, and bathing, and feeding, and dressing, and talking, all help to create these new connections in the brain and build positive parent-child relationships.  

Housekeeping routines involving tasks that just keep a household running smoothly, these may be laundry or cooking or general cleaning, and we need to remember that when children are involved in housekeeping routines that they learn within the context of their everyday environment and those experiences. They learn the expectations of themselves. They learn the expectations of the parents, and they make that connection. They make a meaningful understanding between contextual information and between a routine.  

So, these simple activities such as giving a child a duster, or a cloth wet with soap and water allows them to learn within their routine and environment. And also, when including children in things like cleaning, we want to make sure that we protect them from exposure to chemicals. So, things like a wet washcloth, you know, soap, we want to use those things, obviously. Little children with Windex and things like that, we don't want those kind of things, but we want them to have an ability to participate in that while learning.  

So, these everyday routines provide parents also with additional opportunities to plan activities and enhance their skills as the child's teacher. So, we're going to put up another poll, and this is what's going to happen, asking about including children in everyday routines also, and you're going to select as many as apply: "Encourages parents to be creative as they support the child;" Increases quality one-on-one time between parents and children;" "Puts learning into the context of what parent and child are doing together;" "Encourages language as the parent discusses what they are doing together;" and "Embeds learning throughout the day."  

So, select all that you think children, by including them in this process, that they are learning. Some of the things we already mentioned, and some of these things are things that we can encourage even as home visitors within the context of relationships and things like that, and you would be correct. Including children in everyday routines, it stimulates all of these things. By allowing them to help, by allowing them to have a feather duster, by allowing them to participate, they get so much out of it, and, yes, it takes a little longer, and you may have to sweep the floor a second time, but it really does make a huge difference in the context of learning. And this goes into the importance of using everyday materials.  

So, when a home visitor brings a bag of goodies to focus on, parents often think that learning can only happen with those special items; and so, when children focus on the items from outside the home, it limits their overall continuous learning opportunity. Our single 90-minute home visits is only equal to 0.9% of that child's learning throughout the week, so taking advantage of those materials in the home and how a parent can use them really spurs creativity. It focuses on the act of play and how you play with it, and it alleviates the expense of toys, and in addition to this, we really want to focus on the language that families are using. Language is essential to how a child is going to learn and develop, and language development refers to listening and understanding, which is the receptive language, and there's also the language itself in being able to be spoken, and that's the expressive language.  

So, how language might be present in the home, families need to be able to use descriptive and engaging to be able to tell children what's happening and connect them to actions in the home, so we're going to talk about some language strategies that home visitors can encourage with families. The first one is parallel talk, so parallel talk includes using the "you" statements to directly connect what the child is doing with words.  

This is sometimes called "sportscasting." So for example, a parent may describe a child's actions as they happen during a cooking routine. There is "self-talk." This includes "I," so these are the "I" statements that describe what an adult is doing, touching, hearing, seeing or thinking, and so for example, a parent may describe each step of a diaper-changing process as they happen. Language expansion includes restating what a child says to model appropriate speech patterns. 

So, for example, a child says, "Water gone," when the water drains from the bathtub. A parent may say, "Yes, the water is all gone." We also have language extension. So, this includes restating what a child says and including additional information; so, for example, a child says, "Juice," when they see juice bottles on the shelf at the store. The parent says, "Yes. That is juice. This one is apple juice, and this one is grape juice," when pointing to different bottles on the shelf. So, home visitors can support parents to learn about these strategies to support language in the home as well as intentionally with children to help them get some greater language. 

We also want to focus on when a parent is actively engaging in using this language, that we support them to promote the children's use of language in the home. And so, we also talk about listening and responding to vocalizations, pausing, giving children a chance to vocalize even if they don't say full words, but you want them to learn that there's a pause in a conversation, labeling objects, narrating play, and routines to give them direction, starting with simple and moving to complex as well as reading a story. Even parents who feel not comfortable with their literacy skills can still read the pictures in a story and provide their child with an experience of moving from left to right and sequencing, telling things in a direction.  

So, and, again, learning through play. Play is such a huge part of what we do with children, and just that exploration, the cause and effect, the material texture, all of that plays into how we learn with children. Children are attracted to items that they see adults using every day. There's a reason that they take things and try to put them into the door, or they try to put them into the car door to unlock things because they see parents with keys all the time. They know what parents do with them, but it's definitely around helping them to learn what they're used for and what they can learn with them.  

So, we want to help parents to express what they can be used for, positive emotions. Identify teachable moments. Focus on small interactions with children. Celebrate those small goals with them. Address developmental benefits of parent activities. Allow parents to understand the development of what's going on, the benefit of play, and using self-expression and cultural activities, making sure that culture is a part of play and that everything that they're taking into account is really great and what they're talking about.  

So, next we're going to watch a video, and we're going to take a look at a mother and a child who are engaging in an everyday activity. They're washing hands before preparing a fruit salad for snack, and so the home visitor suggests the mother take the opportunity to make hand-washing a learning experience.  
So, pay attention to the language that's being used by the mother during this activity. 

[Video clip begins]  

Mother: You want to wash your hands? Water. Ooh. Wash, wash, wash. Wash your hands.

Child: Wawa.  

Mother: Water. 

Man: Do it a little longer than you would just so I can get more insight. 

Mother: You wash your hands? Yeah. Your hand is warm. Ooh. Cold?  

Child: It's cold. 

Mother: It's cold? Child: Yeah.  

Mother: Can you rub your hands together?  

Child: It's cold.  

Mother: Yeah. Clean?  

Woman: Oh, you already did dinner.  

Mother: I'm working on it.  

Woman: Yes, she did.  

Mother: There you go, clean.  

Child: Clean.  

Mother: Yeah.  

Child: Go there.  

Mother: Mm-hmm. Clean.  

Child: Right there, Mom.  

Mother: Clean. You do it. Wash your hands. Wash, wash. Good job.  

Child: That's good.  

Mother: You wash your hands?  

Child: Yeah.  

Mother: Uh-oh. Can you rub your hands together?  

Child: Yeah. Yeah.  

Mother: It's nice and cool. It's cool? Turn the water off. Shake, shake, shake. Ooh. Dry. Dry. Good girl.  

Man: Let's go back in the room when you're done. 

Mother: OK . Come on. Ready?  

[End video clip]  

Randi: All right. So, that is just a cute little video, very short to demonstrate some language, and you can find that in the Home Visitors Online Handbook under "Structured Child-focused Home Visiting." The link is on the slide itself, but you can find it in that online "Home Visiting Handbook." And so, what we want to do is, we are going to push out our little polls check here, and I want you to select the green thumbs-up if you see these things and the red thumbs-down if you didn't.  

So, did you observe these strategies the mother used to support language? Talking, receptive language, asking questions, repeating and relating language to the routine: So, if you saw those things, press the green thumbs-up. If you didn't see those things, push the green thumbs-down. All right. And while you are doing that because we're seeing a lot of "Yeses," only a couple "Nos," but we did see the parent talk. We didn't do a ton of talking, but we do see the parent talking.  

We do see the parent repeating what the child says, especially when they said, "Cold." She repeats, "Cold," and so we also want to think about, if this is your parents that you've been supporting, how else might you support that parent to use more language and to incorporate it across the board? All right. So, I'm going to end our pulse check. We had an overwhelmingly amount of people say yes, that they saw those things, but I guarantee if you didn't see those things, take another look at the video, and you'll see at least one bullet. I'm going to push us forward because we're going to talk about strategies, which is why most of you are here, strategies and resources, I'm sure.  

And so, to get us kicked off, we're going to start with ... back with Victoria, and she's going to start us off.  

Victoria: Thank you, Randy. So, after you review this section, we would like you to also share strategies that you use to support parents as facilitators. So, please feel free to use the yellow idea widget on the bottom of your screen to share your ideas relating to the information we share, and following the webinar, we will be posting our collective list to the MyPeers Home Visiting community. 

So, we're going to be discussing strategies such as providing information about child development, creating a safe and healthy learning environment, supporting teachable moments, like routines, like Randy was talking about, supporting teachable moments with everyday materials, and we will also be posting ideas about extending the learning outside of the home. So, let's think a little bit about how we support parents. So, to support a parent's role as facilitator of their child's learning experience, home visitors must support parents to understand where their child is developmentally and where they are progressing in fielding their social and emotional development.  

The developmental progression outlined in the ELOF, one of my favorite resources, is a great resource for understanding infant, toddler and preschool development. Now, the home-based curriculum your program has selected should align with the goals of the ELOF and support parents as their child's first teacher. Acknowledging parents' expertise about their own child is key to promoting their own development and especially to promoting their sense of confidence.  

So, when you share information with parents about your curriculum and how it supports child development, you're effectively supporting the collaborative planning process that we were talking about, and you're allowing parents to explore ways of promoting their child's development. How? By identifying experiences within their home environment. Sometimes, all it takes is demonstrating how an object can be used for learning a specific content. So, parents need to feel confident that their home is full of learning opportunities, without the need to buy expensive toys.  

We also would like to remind you all of the mobile apps that we have. The ELOF@Home app is just like the ELOF2GO that so many of you are probably familiar with, but it is focused on the home environment rather than the classroom. This app can support you, home visitors, and can support parents who have a shared perspective about child development and shared information about the developmental progression. So, it's very helpful when working with parents to identify those teachable moments and start to provide encouragement to children.  

Now, we know that children learn within the context of their environment. So, when families are intentional about the nurturing and responsive spaces they create, they encourage children's learning and development all within the consistency and the safety of the home. Children really thrive when comfort and security at home scaffold their learning. They are constantly learning from their parents. That is why home visiting works because when parents are supported in their own development as parents, they can in turn support their children's development.  

So, some considerations to discuss with parents are, for example, including limiting TV and the use of other technologies, creating child-centered spaces, displaying pictures and books and using items that the child can explore safely. Randy is going to take us to safety practices in the home visiting environment.  
So, let me turn it over to Randy. Randy? 

Randy: Hi! All right. I'm back again. We are going to talk about some tips for keeping infants and toddlers safe, and what I'm actually going to do, is I am going to share my screen with all of you. I promise there's only safe material on here. So, what we're going to do is hopefully everybody can see my screen right now, and if not, it should refresh or make sure you press “F5” just in case you need it. When you get to ECLKC, the homepage, you're going to go up to the "Topics."  

At the Topics top, you're going to see "Safety Practices." When you get to Safety Practices and you scroll down to our "Explore Resources" boxes, you see the top middle box right here, and it's "Tips for Keeping Infants and Toddlers Safe." When you click on that, it's going to bring you to this particular box again. And so, we have "Young Infants, Mobile Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers." So, each one of these pages consists of tips for parents to use, as well as kind of the rationale behind why these are such good tips. We also want to see... We're going to go into our "Exploring Young Infants." Everything is set up very easily and organized. It gives you rationale of what they mean by young infants, as far as the age group goes, kind of some tips as far as what it means to consider that age group, what we mean by keeping people safe, and everything is broken down into "All Daily Routines," "Diapering and Toileting," "Feeding," "Napping," and "Play."  

So, no matter which age group you select, you're able to pick from one of those. So, for young infants, we're going to select Diapering and Toileting just to explore for right now, and you can see that there are two safety tips. "What does it mean?" So, stay hands-on and engaged, we're talking about preventing falls. OK?  

And then, so it gives a tip, as far as a changing table or raised surface, making sure that you keep a hand on your infant when you are changing them, that you're engaging in reciprocal play, such as singing or rhyming, to keep that child engaged and maximize the opportunities for learning, and it also gives you the rationale about why it works. So, it does say that young infants continuously explore their body. They may wiggle, which means that they are going to attempt to roll. They're going to attempt to scoot. Keeping that hand on them prevents them from falling, and also engaging the activity builds the relationship. That's exactly everything that we've been talking about today.  
And so, I think it's great that you have these opportunities, and their definitely very parent-friendly. So, this is available on ECLKC. I say take some time, go over it, see the little tips and tricks that you can share with or be safer. Go over these even with parents and see how you might be able to enhance an environment based on what's suggested here. OK? So, I'm going to stop sharing my screen and bring us back to our webinar. And so, I'm going to push us forward to our next slide, which is "Supporting Teachable Moments in Routines."  

And so, you do have this as an available handout to download, and what this does is, because it is very small to read, probably, on your screen at the moment, it gives you some basic routines that we kind of use every day: Feeding, Bathing, Dressing, Hairdressing, Diapering and Toileting, very much like the defined routines that are on the other resource I just shared with you, but it gives you an opportunity and tells you kind of what children can learn from those activities. It's a wonderful handout to share with parents, to be able to also pair it with the ELOF@Home app to be able to show them, "OK, so under a domain of learning, we're going to talk about this particular indicator, and we're going to pair it with a routine, and we're going to explore textures."  

And so, parents can really make that whole connection across to say, "Oh, it really is supported in learning and progression of development across, to be able to establish a routine to encourage the use of materials within the home," which really allows you to go into supporting those teachable moments. There's also a Using Materials handout which was available for you to download, as well.  

So, we also want to take a look at the fact that being ... These materials that are within the home, we want them to be able to be safe materials for children to use, but we also want to talk to parents and emphasize that when materials in the home can support play, then parents can interact with their children and get that greatest impact for learning, for language development, for integrating culture into learning, all of those go into it. So, the next thing that I'm going to talk to you about is about what happens when we extend learning outside of the home. So, our whole time, we've been talking about learning in the home and using materials in the home and routines, but we don't just stay at home all day.  

We go outside of the home. So, we definitely want to encourage parents to go to things like socialization that's outside of the home. So, there is a handout that's about using a socialization environment for learning, but you also want to encourage parents to then use the skills that they're practicing at home outside in the community.  

So, this may be scheduling home visits to meet at the library, at the park, to then talk about literacy, to talk about language, to talk about safety, but also encouraging parents. "How are you using language at a grocery store? How are you using language in the car ride somewhere or the bus ride somewhere or when you're waiting? What are you doing with your children to help them to understand and learn within the context of what it means to wait for something?" 

So, these are all things that we can encourage parents, to have meaningful conversations and opportunities to share ideas, and these do happen, and you're able to model these as socialization or at off-site home visits. All right. So, as we close out our webinar for today, we really want to share some resources that support home visitors in your ongoing work with families. The first one that really supports our content today is the "Home Visitor E-Institute, the Leave the Bag Challenge," which was promoted and started back in May. It seems so long ago, but it was back in May, and these are four micro-learning sessions.  

They're designed to take 10 minutes or less, but they're all about leaving the bag of toys at the office, away from your home visit and coming in and really talking more about using those routines, using home-based items and materials from the home and also those language strategies and incorporating culture and language.  
So, a lot of the things that we've said today are reinforced there, and it's in a no-fee-due format. So, you're able to get some information, see what's happening, practice, and it actually gives you a little bit of a challenge, and you're able to earn continued education units for it. So, I want to stress a poll because a lot of you are continuing members of this webinar series, and I want to find out from all of you, from those who are participating, how many of you have actually already participated in the Home Visitor E-Institute Leave the Bag Challenge? You're going to select one.  

All right. So, I'm going to push our results forward so all of you can see the great stuff that other people are doing, just like I can. I'm going to push it forward, but, oh, my gosh, look at all those people who are going to enroll as soon as we are done. I'm loving it, and I want to definitely see all of you on there. If you have any questions about how to get on it, then we're going to push through, and you can send me some ... your information through MyPeers, the Home Visiting Community, and we can help you definitely. So, we're going to push forward and, of course, we're going to share our Home Visitor's Online Handbook.  

This is a great resource for all of you. The link is right there, and this allows you to have some information about all the components of home visiting, anything you may have a question about, and it gives you videos and reflection on current practices and additional resources. It's a great tool, and I'm so excited to say that the Home Visitor Supervisor's Online Handbook is on its way, and we really anticipate this to be posted on ECLKC very soon.  

All right. We have "A Guide to Safety Conversations with Families," and I have not used this before, but I know my good friend, Victoria, has seen this and used it. And, Victoria, would you like to share some thoughts about this resource?  

Victoria: Sure, sure, I love this resource. I have used it because it gives examples of conversation starters that you can use with families when you need to talk about, for example, childhood injuries or barriers to improving home safety. I also like that it guides you in what to say if you notice a hazard in their home. Right? That can be a difficult conversation to have.  

So, if you notice a hazard and you need to address it immediately, it has good conversation starters to do that. Also, this resource guides you on how to choose a home safety checklist. So, I really encourage you to use it. Back to you, Randy.  

Randy: Thank you, Victoria, and let me push us forward to "Reflective Supervision." These are so important in order to be able to support home visitors and support supervisors, and this first one that's up here, this "Reflective Supervision: A Guide from Region X" is a newer resource.  

So, if you have not seen it already, please go in and see it. Its great information gathered from programs around Region X, as well as gives a self-assessment tool kind of guide, so you're able to use it as a companion tool to find some key information about assessing individuals' needs and having deep conversations when home visitors or anyone else are kind of struggling and supporting a reflective practice, as well as what makes supervision work, those recommendations from the home visiting field. I read this, and it was so great to read because it was the recommendations, and I agreed with almost everything that was in there because they were the same things that I had had issues with or struggled with as a supervisor and even as a home visitor.  

And so, it was really nice to hear and be confirmed that my voice was there. And so, we also have additional resources that will support our content for today, "Multicultural Principles," selection criteria for a curriculum. All of these things are really going to be supportive of our ongoing work, as well as our ongoing support of home visitors. All right. So, "Putting It All Together."  

So, we've come to almost the end of our webinar, but we really want to summarize our discussion for today, which is that we really described how everyday routines and interactions support children's learning and development. We explored how the inclusion of descriptive and engaging language can extend learning and development. We reviewed strategies for working with families to support learning in the home, and we shared these resources with all of you that support families' facilitation of learning for their children. So, we're really glad that you were able to join today, and we really want all of you to stay connected and to expand your learning through our MyPeers Home Visiting Community. If you are not already a member, please, please join.  

There are about 800 members of that community who love to share, and there's also... That's where we store the recordings of these webinars, as well. So, until they're up on ECLKC, you can only find them in our Home Visiting Community. The "iPD," our "Individualized Professional Development Portfolio" is on ECLKC. If you do not have an account yet, or if you need to go enroll for the e-Institute, you're going to find it right there. If you need any support, there is an e-mail address to gain some technical support with it on ECLKC, and again, our Text4HomeVisitors is the newer mobile app.

If you don't have it already, their text messages have been very, very helpful, sending out great resources, great tips, great tricks, and then finally, we are so glad to announce that we are going to have our "Dual Language Learner Celebration Week," and it kicks off actually next week. This is our "Spring into Practice."  

And so, much like our Home Visitor e-Institute, it is going to open one per day, and so you can see what's going to be highlighted starting on Tuesday, and then it will live on the iPD after that. So, when you go in to make sure that you're enrolled for our e-Institute, pop on over to the catalog and make sure you also sign up for our Dual Language Learner Celebration Week. 

Victoria, do you have any other comments to add about Celebration Week or anything else? 

Victoria: Celebration Week last year was a total success, and we are hoping that this year will also be a success.  
So, please join us, participate, be with us as we celebrate Dual Language Learners, and my other thought is please check out the resources that we have shared with you.

They are fantastic resources so —  

Randy: Absolutely.  

Victoria: And thank you for checking those out, yes. 

Randy: Absolutely, and thank you so much, Victoria, for sharing your knowledge and stories with us on our Home Visiting Webinar Series. I wish all of you the best in your upcoming home visits and socializations.  

If you have any questions, make sure to put them in the Q-and-A box. We're going to spend a couple minutes putting those out there, and then also join us for the Home Visiting Community. We would absolutely love to have you, and thank you so much for today.  

Now, I hope you have a great Wednesday and a great rest of your February, and we will see you again in April, on April 8, talking about "Behavior Has Meaning." This definitely will focus on behavior and how you can support parents with children's behaviors and development.