The Prouty Voice: September 2022

The Future of Child Care is Now

Awareness about the important role child care plays in economic development has reached the point that a critical mass of people understand why we should all care about child care. The pandemic certainly helped amplify the message as essential workers struggled to provide services when their children were not able to be in school; child care became understood as essential, too.

We are over two years out from the start of the pandemic and there has been some success towards investing in child care at the level required to match its value to our communities. Some of it has been temporary support, like one-time funding that has been used to pay teacher bonuses and give grants to programs to cover lost revenue during the pandemic. Continue reading


Resources & Events for Families

COVID vaccine booster shots

Rescue, Inc. is hosting a series of walk-in vaccine clinics for both booster shots and initial series of the COVID vaccine. Wednesdays 10:00-1:00 and Saturdays 1:30-4:00 in the parking lot of Brattleboro Union High School. More info

Prouty Presents – Oct 1st

Come join us for an afternoon of live music on the fields of the Winston Prouty Campus! The event is free and open to the public. Picnic plates (hamburgers, hot dogs, grilled corn & chips) will be for sale by donation. The Bookmobile will be onsite for visitors to enjoy as well. Performances will start (roughly) on the hour, beginning at 1:00pm. We are pleased to present (in this order):

  • Vermont Jazz Center Sextet
  • Windham Philharmonic
  • Galera de Samba
  • Ukulele 128
  • Stella Kola

Learn more about these bands

You First Program – Screening & Support for Heart Disease, Breast and Cervical Cancer

You First is a one of a kind, free program. You First helps Vermont women and anyone with breasts or a cervix in three ways:

  • Covers the cost of breast and cervical cancer screenings and diagnostic follow-up.
  • Connects you with a You First team member to help you navigate the health care system—from answering questions, to sending reminders, to scheduling appointments, to arranging transportation, to interpreting results.
  • Covers healthy lifestyle perks for members 30-64. Members can get heart health screenings and receive benefits like one-on-one health coaching, fitness memberships, nutrition and weight-loss programs, passes to Vermont’s state parks, coupons for local farmers markets—and much more.

Learn more about this program


Early Learning Center News

ELC Open House & potluck dinner next Wednesday, 9/21!

Professional Development in the ELC

This month during our in-service time the teachers will be digging deeper into Emergent Curriculum, and thinking through the next steps in their own classrooms for what this might look like.  We will be looking a particular tools that they can use to help focus observations and guide their planning process.  We will share observations across classrooms and practice looking at how those might develop into a line of inquiry for the teachers that might eventually lead to an ongoing curriculum plan.  Many of the teachers already have thoughts in mind and we are excited to have this cross-classroom time for the teachers to collaborate with their colleagues and continue to experiment with this way of teaching.

Acorn Room

The month of August we spent it as much as we could with our incoming Acorns and now are the younger toddlers in the Willow room! It was a great first year even with the pandemic and it brought all of families and children closer! We say our ‘see ya laters’ not goodbyes as they are all next door to visit with! 

Looking into September, we welcome our new acorn friends, Reighlynne, Silas, Declan, and Lyra who has been with us for a couple months now! We are very excited for a new group of children ranging from 3 months up to 12 months! 

Willow Room

The month of August has been busy and adventurous for the Willow classroom! We spent a lot of time exploring the woods this month. Not long ago, we discovered a wonderful spot in the woods that we have started to refer to as our woods spot. This spot in the woods has flat areas, a few slight inclines, plenty of logs to climb on, and a stream that we love to throw rocks into (when it’s not dried up)! The children in the Willow class of 2021-2022 have become quite the explorers! As explorers do, that cohort of children have moved on to their next adventure and are now members of the newly reopened Elm classroom! We were sad to say goodbye, but we are still in the next classroom over, so it was more of a see you later. We now have a new group of friends that we are so excited to have as our Willow class of 2022-2023!  We are continuing to build relationships with our new Willow friends and look forward to sharing more about our adventures together in next month’s Prouty voice.

Elm Room

There have been exciting things happening inside and outside of the Elm Room this month with so much more to come! We have been exploring the woods, experimenting with paint, Homemade moon sand, and Playdough, and engaging in music together through out each day. As the Weather gets colder and we enter fall in the coming months, we hope to start doing some baking in the classroom and collecting things from nature from our wood’s walks. See you next month!

Oak Room

This month, we continued meeting with other classrooms and mixing up. At all school sing, the Oak room requested Akin Drum A LOT. We spent some time watering the garden and discovered some caterpillars. We put them in the caterpillar cages and came back about a week and a half later to the monarchs escaping when the cage blew over. We are hopeful the others will hatch and we will get to watch. We had a power outage due to a tree falling and some of the Oak room was extremely excited to see the construction workers when coming in with their parents. Luckily, it was our Outdoor exploration day with Alfred and we got to watch what they were doing to the powerlines (from a safe distance). We found this strange red thing that appeared on our logs. Turns out it was slime mold and it only lasted a day. We continued exploring at the pond on Friday’s and the bookmobile every other Friday. At the end of August, we said goodbye to summer friends that went back to school and Teacher Jack, who moved to the Elm room. We also welcomed our new friend Amani. 

We have started writing our own story for a felt mouse that Molly made. In September, our plan is to bring these characters to life. We will be making the characters, and we will continue to build the story. Stay tuned for the rest!

Birch Room

August was a fun month in the Birch Room! We continued with our outdoor exploration activities such as going to the playground, visiting Barry the Flamingo in the woods, heading to the “Swimming Pool,” and playing in the parachute on our “Monday Funday” with Alfred! We also continued to enjoy All School Sing with our Acorn, Willow, and Oak friends on Tuesday’s. On rainy days, we enjoyed time in the classroom visiting different choice centers such as dramatic play house, reading area, puzzles/games center, and the writing table. We also spent time on the Gross Motor Room working on our balancing, riding cars, playing soccer or “hustle” as we call it in the room, and building forts!

The month of August we said goodbye to our friends Aiden, Aiylah, Archer, Byron, Grayson, Madelyn, Omid, and Tuscan who will be heading to Kindergarten this year. We are certainly going to miss them and wish them all the best on this new adventure. We look forward to welcoming our new friends who will be joining the classroom as well as our new Assistant Teacher Asma. Here’s to a great year full of learning and fun!


Celebrations

  • September 4 – Happy Birthday Asma, Assistant Teacher
  • September 7 – Happy Birthday Yuan Yuan, Assistant Teacher
  • September 9 – Sophie is 1!
  • September 13 – Eliza is 1!
  • September 26 – Happy Birthday Vanessa, Teacher Associate
  • September 29 – Happy Birthday Mary Coogan, Early Interventionist

Congrats to Emily Bunzel in our Early Intervention team on becoming a Developmental Educator!

Dates to Remember

  • Wednesday, September 21ELC Open House and Family BBQ
  • Saturday, October 1 – Prouty Presents!
  • Friday, October 7 – ELC Closed for parent-teacher conferences
  • Monday, October – ELC Closed for parent-teacher conferences
  • Friday, October 14 – Center closes at noon for in-service