Children
Population Served
The child care program serves approximately 80 children ranging in age from 6 weeks to 5 years. Direct financial support from FPG and the University helps to ensure quality in terms of teacher qualifications and child:adult ratios. It also enables the use of a sliding scale fee schedule, thus making the program accessible to a wide range of families within the community.
Indeed, the diversity among families served by the program is one of its greatest strengths. In addition, the program is committed to the inclusion of children with disabilities, with 25-30% of the children within each age group have an identified disability. The types and severity of disabilities represented are diverse and include Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, other specific syndromes, children who are medically fragile, and autism.
Children
There are a total of 78 children within the FPG Family & Child Care Program, ranging in ages from 6 weeks to 5 years, including 20 children with special needs. Each fall, a new group of infants (6 to 12 weeks) is enrolled.
Classroom Configuration
| Infants | 2 Groups | (6 children each) |
| Toddlers | 2 Groups | (7 children each) |
| Twos | 2 Groups | (7 children each) |
| Threes | 1 Group | (14 children each) |
| Threes & Fours | 1 Group | (12 children each) |
| Fours | 1 Group | (12 children each) |
Children with Special Needs
At FPG children with disabilities participate in all classroom activities, at whatever level of ability they are capable, and provided with whatever level of assistance they may need. Sometimes a child's participation requires an extra hand, special materials, a piece of adapted equipment, or just plain old creative thinking on the part of a teacher or specialist.
Although a team of specialists is available to support each child's developmental progress and inclusion, children at FPG are not pulled out of their classrooms for therapy. Instead, specialists share their expertise through consultation with teachers and, less frequently, through direct intervention within the context of classroom routines (e.g., morning circle, meal times, outdoor play, pretend play, storybook reading, field trips). The role of specialists and the purpose of "therapy" are to further enable each child to participate in the regular early childhood curriculum and to support his or her membership in the group.
