By Amy Hoffman Have you heard the news? The Program Quality Assessment (PQA) team at the Pennsylvania Key has a lot to offer to programs. You may already know that we (usually) conduct external assessments to support early learning and school-age programs; this involves an assessor visiting your program and observing a wide range of...Read More

Aimee Currier When I was a classroom teacher, every year we would read Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert. It was a great book to use across the curriculum from math to science. We would talk about how seeds grow and how some plants needed to be started indoors before being transplanted (great new vocabulary...Read More

By Aimee Currier Apple pie, applesauce, apple juice, apple cider, apple jelly… what’s your favorite way to eat an apple? With Fall upon us and the air crisp and cool, we begin to see apples everywhere. October 21st is National Apple Day, a great day to celebrate these healthy fruits with the children in your class....Read More

Natalie Grebe Its 9:00am in a preschool classroom. Two teachers have successfully orchestrated their class of 17 children to clean up their morning centers. One of the teachers calls out 9 names and asks those children to join her on the reading rug. The other teacher tells the remaining eight children to sit at their...Read More

Kelli Harris National Friendship Day was originally founded by Hallmark in 1919. It was intended to be a day for people to celebrate their friendships by sending each other cards. By 1940, the market had dried up and the holiday fizzled. It was first proposed in Paraguay in 1958. In 1998, Winnie the Pooh was...Read More

Michelle Mallonee Long First things first, relinquish control. Stop trying to control everything in the environment, the learning, the movements of the children. Open up your heart and mind to allow room for creativity. For many teachers, this is easier said than done. The fear of chaos as a result prevents them from loosening up...Read More

By: Lisa Mulliken     Think about yourself as a child. Most likely, much of your time was spent exploring natural materials in your environment: digging for worms, lifting rocks in the creek to find salamanders, climbing trees, playing with your dog, building a snow fort in the backyard. These experiences engaged our senses, helped us construct...Read More

Submitted by Tracy Walter Early in 2019, the PA Key Program Quality Assessment team began orientations in partnership with the Branagh Group to introduce the LearnERS platform. LearnERS helps guide programs through a quality improvement process using the Environment Rating Scales. LearnERS is an online platform offered to center-based programs through a limited number of...Read More

Amy Hoffman A few weeks ago, a friend commented that her 5-year-old had been “feeling all the feelings” earlier in the day. He was reacting to those feelings by crying when she left his sight, yelling at his younger sister, and refusing to follow directions. And how did my friend react to this? She set...Read More

Quality Tips by Pam Schaffner  The assessment team in PA is often asked if they have any tips to make meeting quality standards easier. Since they have experiences visiting many programs in their professional careers, they have seen many programs employ strategies to make things easier, more efficient, and more effective. Implementing quality can be...Read More