When the Child Care Resource Center and Lending Library opened in Conway in November 2014, it had 2,000 items to loan and a small office. Today, the facility has 5,500 items and has doubled its space.
“I just can’t believe where we are from where we started,” said Carol Crockett, manager of the Conway satellite office of Child Care Aware of Northcentral Arkansas. “It’s pretty amazing, and I feel like we’ve been so blessed by the community, and God has blessed us.”
The resource center and library in Olympia Plaza, 2115 E. Oak St., Suite 3, in Conway, was created to assist licensed preschool and child care providers with books, curricula, lesson plans, manipulatives for fine-motor skills and other resources for free, as well as provide professional development. The organization teaches the mandatory pre-licensing class required to open a child care facility and provides a database of all licensed child care providers in 14 counties, including Faulkner, Cleburne, Conway and Van Buren counties and has access to all others in the state.
An open house was held in October for the center’s new 3,200-square-foot space on the opposite end of the plaza.
“People in the community are starting to benefit more and realizing we are here to stay,” Crockett said.
The center primarily serves Faulkner County, but it also includes Perry, White and Conway counties. Its headquarters, in Batesville, just celebrated its 20th anniversary.
The Conway office is growing by leaps and bounds, Crockett said.
Crockett ran an in-home day care for more than 30 years and worked for two years to get the facility ready to open, operating it out of her bedroom before it moved to Olympia Plaza.
“We’ve made stronger partnerships with AETN (Arkansas Educational Television Network), the Conway Regional Women’s Council, Special Olympics and the state Health Department. We’ve just been growing and feel like we are doing good,” she said.
“Part of us not really getting out there so much in the general public is we serve them in a backward way, through the child care provider … but we are partnering with some people, too, who are able to use our facility for parenting classes,” Crockett said.
“The folks that we partner with, Curricula Concepts, go into day cares and meet when parents can attend,” she said. “They call them Parenting Cafes and discuss things that are needful in families, like discipline and healthy eating, just anything. Parents can have that meeting here; they might not have room in the day cares to have that meeting.
“Besides having those items, we have more experience with professional development and a training room that people in the community who service childhood early education can use to do those trainings.”
In the previous space on the opposite end of the strip mall, there was only room for about 15 people. The new space can accommodate 40 in one area, plus 15 people in another room.
“If there’s something specific that a classroom needs, they can ask us to house a training like that and come here …, Crockett said. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful service for the community.”
Those trainings include baby basics, for example.
“A new [child care] staff member might need social emotional training or classroom development … everything you can think of,” she said. “We will have training or connect them with someone.
“We have yoga classes for them. We get other people to come in and do that training.”
The resource center has a contract with the Department of Education to do specific training.
“If someone wants to open a preschool or day care, we are their go-to people,” Crockett said. “They have to come get training through us.
“People are using our library more, and we’ve increased the number of those curricula we have.”
The resource center has each curriculum printed off and has supplemental books that go along with it, organized in topics and units, that child care providers can use. Crockett said the items can be checked out for two to four weeks at a time.
Displayed on one table are animal puppets and books for a unit on the zoo. Tall bookshelves filled with books, divided by age levels, line the walls of the main room.
In a backroom, shelves are lined with clear plastic storage tubs full of specific lessons or curricula, such as healthy eating. That container included a Cookie Monster puppet, who has to learn to eat better, Crockett said, and a curriculum, as well as a DVD about healthy food choices.
Plastic bags called topic bags are filled with education items on a particular topic and hang on metal rods.
Child care directors or teachers can grab a bag and go.
Crockett said something new is the state-approved curriculum for infants.
“It teaches teachers why a child needs to learn in a specific way and how brain development happens. That’s pretty awesome; we’ve never had one.”
Jamisa Hogan, owner of Kids World Child Care Center in Conway, said she gets a lot of curricula from the resource center, “lots of music, lots of books, lots of stuff that has enhanced our program.”
“Sometimes we’re limited on our budget, and to come into a library and check out some things is just awesome.”
Hogan said the books and supplies are “quality items” that stand up to the wear and tear of children.
She was part of a gathering of educators at the center last week to share resources across the state “so that we can understand what resources and trainings are out there for everyone,” Crockett said. “Everyone comes with information about their programs, and we try to encourage what they’re doing, and we help spread the word.
“We are information; we just want to give out information to everybody and have trainings they need for their teachers.”
Hogan said it was a useful meeting.
“It was important for me to be here because I feel I’m a resource to other child care centers,” she said. Hogan has operated her business for 24 years, so other day care providers often call and ask her for advice. She’s happy to help them.
“Let’s work together to be the best we can be to make preschool really good and provide quality child care,” she said.
Crockett said that’s exactly the goal of the Child Care Aware Resource Center and Library.
More information is available at www.ccana.org.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.