Learning is child’s play for IU East’s day program

By Susan Williams

If you live in the Richmond area, then you need to call KiKi Madison, coordinator of the IU East Child Development Center’s “Hands On Learning” program. Now finishing its second full year, the Child Development Center is housed on campus in Springwood Hall where Madison and her staff watch over as many as 45 kids: toddlers to 5 year-olds during the day program and 6 to 12 year-olds in a Summer Enrichment Program.

You won’t see a lot of memorizing alphabets or numbers here. But you will see a lot of fun going on. Exactly the point, according to Madison. A former first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, Madison earned a psychology degree from the University of Pittsburgh and an advanced degree certificate in early childhood education from Boston University while she was stationed in Germany. But she allows no saluting in the classroom.

“We could give the children workbooks and drill them and test them, but they’d be losing something,” she said. “Play is the work of children, and those who are rushed into reading and writing too soon miss important steps in learning.

“A preschooler may be able to sound out and recognize words, but they have little understanding of what they’re reading. If they haven’t been given time to play, they won’t have explored objects enough to know what words—like hard, harder, hardest—mean. If they aren’t allowed to string beads, cut, paste, pour, draw and dress up, they won’t develop the small muscle skills they need for writing.”

You don’t have to be an IU East student to use the Child Development Center. The program is open to students, faculty and staff at IU East, Purdue or Ivy Tech programs, and to members of the general community. Part-time and full-time care is available on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

And what’s summer without cool things to do? Madison’s Summer Enrichment Program, for kids from 6 to 12, is nine weeks of fun and games. Last summer included “Lotions, Potions & Slime,” a week with non-toxic chemistry experiments that resulted in stick-to-the-wall stuff like “gak” and “silly slime.” That was followed by “Passport to the World” complete with passports to stamp as the kids “traveled” different cultures through song, food, dance, customs and languages. There was “Fossils, Rocks and Dinosaurs” week and the chance to hike, collect rocks and fossils, and participate in an archeological dig. The summer was chronicled by The Kids’ Gazette, a kid-created, computer-generated newsletter with interviews, graphics, editing and a trip to the Richmond Palladium-Item.

“We give our kids plenty of time to play,” said Madison. “That’s how they learn to ask their own questions and figure out their own answers. They become responsible for their own learning, and they see themselves as explorers, discoverers, problem solvers and inventors.”

http://www.iue.indiana.edu/Departments/cdc/earlier.html