Reflective Analysis of Portfolio Artifact

Rationale/Reflection
NAEYC Standard:
STANDARD 2. BUILDING FAMILY AND COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS
Candidates prepared in early childhood degree programs understand that successful early childhood
education depends upon partnerships with childrens families and communities. They a) know about,
understand, and value the importance and complex characteristics of childrens families and
communities. They use this understanding to b) create respectful, reciprocal relationships that
support and empower families, and c) to involve all families in their childrens development and
learning (NAEYC, 2010)
Brief Description of Evidence:
In the spring semester of 2014 during my ECED 233-Emerging Literacy course, I created a
literacy kit that consisted of A House for Hermit Crab, by Eric Carle and The Duckling Gets a Cookie, by
Mo Willems. To go with A House for Hermit Crab I included a water bottle, funnel, blue food coloring,
plastic sea animals, sand, and blue glitter. These items are for families to compose their own ocean in a
bottle, while counting them out loud together. For The Duckling Gets a Cookie I put brown circles,
sprinkles, markers, and buttons for families to make their own cookies. I also asked them to practice
writing the letter C for cookie with the markers and then let the child write their C on their cookies.
Analysis of What I Learned:
Through this literacy kit I learned how important it is to have a good partnership with childrens
families and their community. By involving all families in their childrens education, I now understand
and value complex characteristics of childrens families and their communities, similar to
Bronfenbrenner beliefs on a person's development being affected by everything in their environment.
The books in the kit can be borrowed from the public library, and by creating the literacy activities with
these books, parents are now aware of this community resource if they were not before.
How This Artifact Demonstrates my Competence on the NAEYC Standard:
I am competent in NAEYC standard 2 because, I understand that successful early childhood
education consist of involving all support systems in childrens lives. By creating an overnight literacy
kit, this showed me that I could construct respectful, reciprocal relationships that support and
empower families by giving them the tools to grow and learn as a unit. The things I receive from this
project are stronger, happier, and healthier families. By creating stronger families, intern that will start
to build a stronger community.