Welcome to The Virtual Community of Support for Early Learning. We are very excited to be able to offer our on-line program again this year and look forward to reaching out and making some very important connections within our communities. Participation in the program is designed for parents and caregivers in rural/isolated communities that are unable to access a school based StrongStartBC Center or Outreach Program on a regular basis. In addition to this we encourage parents to use the Virtual On-Line Program to supplement their local StrongStart Centre.

The Virtual Program is an on-line program designed to reach parents and caregivers within rural communities/isolated areas to increase the knowledge, skills and abilities of Parents and Caregivers to provide rich early learning environments in their homes. Specifically the goals of the program are to enhance parents/caregivers understanding of

• Early learning and early childhood development;
• How to create language-rich learning environments at home;
• How to incorporate simple everyday activities at home that support development in all domains: physical, emotional, social, cognitive and language and communication; and
• Ways to reflect on their children’s early learning.

The Virtual Program will be delivered via Elluminate sessions on-line. Elluminate is an interactive on-line program designed for small and large groups. An Early Childhood Educator will facilitate monthly learning/discussions sessions beginning in October and continuing until the end of the school year in June. Opportunities will also be available for parents/caregivers to meet one-one on-line with the Early Childhood Educator to discuss child development and topics of interest. There will also be weekly activity sessions on-line where children will have the opportunity to listen to stories and participate in activities.

A group site is available through Key Learning Centre. On this site you can find information about the virtual program, registration, Elluminate sessions, links to early learning websites, arts and craft ideas, healthy snack ideas and much, much more. Keep checking our site as new information will be added weekly. Participation in The Virtual Program is voluntary and free of charge. Parents and Caregivers are required to register in the on-line program. Weekly participation is encouraged, however, sessions will be recorded and stored for later review. This will allow parents and children to view the session recordings that they have missed. As well, an email package of all materials used in the session will be emailed out each week so that they may be printed and used at home.

Attention Parents and Caregivers

As everyone by now is aware of the recent school and daycare closures, many are struggling to find things to do while maintaining the recommended social distancing. Many educational programs have opened their programs free of charge to families to utilize during this period. The link for the updated list of these sites is posted below. The Virtual Community of Support for Early Learning will remain open (on-line, email and phone) throughout this period and will be updating activity posts weekly in hopes to assist families with activities that will allow them to maintain these recommendations. Take care everyone.

Free Educational Programming Link

Looking for a fun way to get your kids moving while stuck indoors? Check out this link!

Get Moving!-Kids Zumba

Another great website with tons of activity ideas to do at home. Super fun science experiments!!

Amazing Science Experiments

Field Trips from your living room!?!? Who knew these existed?

Take a Trip right from your living room!

Talking to your children about COVID-19