Laurier Heights Out of School Care

03/08/2026

Happy International Women’s Day to all the amazing women who fill the world with beauty, strength, and inspiration. Today we celebrate the courage in your hearts, the kindness in your actions, and the love you share every day. Women are the quiet heroes who support families, lift communities, and inspire future generations to dream bigger. May your light continue to shine brightly, just like the beautiful flowers that symbolize growth, hope, and new beginnings. Thank you for making the world a more compassionate and wonderful place. Tag a strong woman who inspires you and remind her how truly special she is today. Happy Women’s Day! 🌸💐

02/15/2026

We are worrying about the wrong thing when it comes to “kindergarten readiness.”

Many adults are concerned with whether a child can read, write, and meet "academic expectations" by the time kindergarten begins. Those questions feel responsible. They are also incomplete.

The more important question is this: Am I willing to compromise my child’s ability to regulate, attend, and remain emotionally available for learning in exchange for early academic exposure that research shows does not improve (and can undermine) long-term outcomes?

Kindergarten has shifted from a developmental bridge to an academically intensified environment. Increased sitting, constant direction-following, early benchmarks, and reduced play are now treated as normal. Developmentally, they are not.

Self-regulation, attention, working memory, and cognitive flexibility are still wiring in early childhood. These systems develop through movement, play, autonomy, and co-regulation—not through pressure or performance demands.

When academics are pushed before these systems are ready, stress increases, regulation stays external, and learning becomes fragile. Any early gains fade, while the long-term costs show up as disengagement, weaker executive functioning, and poorer academic persistence.

This is why research on delayed kindergarten entry consistently finds stronger self-regulation, attention, and emotional readiness for learning. Not because children missed academics, but because their brains were given time to build the foundation learning depends on.

In our upcoming webinar, How Early Academics Backfire, we break down the research, the brain science, and what actually supports long-term learning—without sacrificing development.

📅 Wednesday, Feb. 25 (12:00 PM EST)
🎥 Free recording sent to all registrants

FREE REGISTRATION: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__wzssxv6SzyAmv_YFdOQ6w #/registration

WITH CERTIFICATION: weskoolhouse.com/store-webinars

11/19/2025

09/29/2025

09/09/2025

We do children a disservice when we reduce early childhood to colors, numbers, shapes, and letters. These concepts will come, but when we fixate on them too early or too narrowly, we risk turning learning into pressure, rote drills, and forced lessons that dampen curiosity. Instead of opening children up to the joy of discovery, this approach can make learning feel like a performance or a checklist to get through.

What often gets overlooked are the skills that matter most for long-term cognition: problem-solving, persistence, self-regulation, creativity, language, and the ability to connect ideas across experiences. These are the foundations that make colors, numbers, shapes, and letters meaningful later on. When early childhood is reduced to surface-level academics, we rob children of the chance to build the deeper capacities that allow true learning to stick.

Early childhood is about so much more. It is about building the brain through play, strengthening the body through movement, wiring for empathy and regulation through relationships, and developing a love of learning that lasts far beyond preschool. When we allow concepts like numbers, letters, shapes, and colors to be discovered in meaningful, everyday contexts, children connect with them naturally and deeply.

08/23/2025

To meet in spaces of difference asks us to step into the unknown without a map. It means setting aside certainty—about who others are, what an encounter should look like, or where it should lead—and allowing meaning to emerge in the moment.

In early childhood education, this might mean pausing our plans, listening more than speaking, and being willing to be changed by what unfolds. It is an act of humility and curiosity, where learning is not about arriving at answers, but about staying present with what is becoming.

Quote from Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education by Pacini-Ketchabaw, Kind, & Kocher.

08/19/2025

In just one generation, childhood has moved indoors. Away from playgrounds, backyards and neighborhood woods, to desks, couches and screens📱

And the kids are missing out. On sleep, play, movement and seeing other people face to face. On forging a connection with the natural world🌿

I believe we can turn this around, but the fix isn’t more tech. It’s not another app or reward chart. It’s right outside the front door🌳
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08/02/2025

“Oh well, a little dirt is good for the stomach.”

Growing up in Sweden, that was the adults’ go-to phrase whenever they caught a child shoving their mouths full of dirt or failing to wash their hands before dinner.

Turns out… they might have been onto something!

In this Finding Nature News feature, Linda Åkeson McGurk (Rain or Shine Mamma) shares her childhood moments coming home with mud-caked hands and dirty feet after a day of playing outside. She also shares how, as a new mother, she then set out to see if there was any scientific support for her parents’ relaxed attitude toward mud and mess.

As Linda learned, “Playing in dirt is literally building children’s immune system from the ground up.”

Read more in our latest feature!
https://bit.ly/46toivm

07/27/2025

“A community needs to ask itself some tough yet important questions: Who are we in the lives of these children? What do we value? How do we want our values to be visible in our school? How will families and school work together to contribute to our shared ideals?”
– Lynn T. Hill
Innovations in Early Education: The International Reggio Exchange, 10(1), p. 9