A Guide to Safe Sleep for Babies and Toddlers

What is SIDS? 

SIDS stands for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and is the leading cause of death for infants between 1 month and 12 months old. AOFC uses many rules and regulations to practice safe sleeping habits with our infants and toddlers so we wanted to provide our parents with some very important information. 

Here is some stats for you:

• According to a study done by Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. babies born to women who smoked during their pregnancy are 3 times more likely to die from SIDS. Second hand smoke around your infant also increases their chances of dying from SIDS. If you are looking for a reason to stop smoking here it is!
• About 1 in 5 cases of SIDS occurs when children are in someone elses care other than the parents. So make sure anyone who watches your little one is well informed on safe sleep tips.
• Babies who are use to sleeping on their backs and are randomly placed on their bellies to sleep are 18 times more likely to die from SIDS.

Now lets talk about some ways to protect your babies and reduce the risk of SIDS. 

The safest place for your baby to sleep is in your room where you sleep, but not with you or in your bed. You can place the baby's crib or bassinet with in arms reach of your bed for added security and ease. 

When your baby is asleep always place the child on their back. 

Do not allow your baby to get too hot. Always dress your baby lightly for sleeping and set the room temperature to a comfortable temperature for a lightly dressed adult.

Pacifiers actually help reduce the chances of SIDS. Just make sure it is free of cords and clips that could cause strangulation. 

Pacifiers with items attached are not recommended.

The baby's bed should be free of all toys and other soft items including bedding materials. Loose bedding can impair the baby's ability to breathe. 

A better alternative to loose blankets are sleeps sacks like pictured below.

Sleep Sack and its benefits!

Once a child has practiced tummy time and has built those strong neck and shoulder muscles and can successfully rollover from their back to tummy and tummy to back, you can allow them to sleep on their tummy. At AOFC our babies always start on their back no matter the age. If they roll over to their stomach, we will turn them back to their back. Once they roll over twice, we will leave them in that tummy sleeping position. 

All of this information was provided by the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

If you would like more information about SIDS, check out any of the links below.

Healthy Child Care America

First Candle/SIDS Alliance

Healthy Kids

For more information about our program, please click here.

AOFC Easter Party

We hosted our first Easter Party at AOFC this afternoon and it was a 'hopping' good time. There was Easter snacks, games, and crafts as well as each class had Egg Hunts! We had a lot of parents come join in on the fun as well!

If you would like a cute Easter craft to do with your child this weekend, click here.

Check out some of the fun moments we captured today.

We had a bunny trail that led all the families to the yummy snacks. Our snacks consisted of Rabbit Munchies, Bunny Bait, Bunny Tails, and of course Cupcakes decorated like Easter Eggs!

 This brother and sister duo were absolutely thrilled over the Easter Bunny stopping in for the party! All of our friends were sad when the Easter Bunny had to hop back to her home.

 Our little Preschool 2 friend was thrilled that she got to make her very own bunny ear hat. All of our friends got to leave with their own set of floppy ears today!

 The Toddler 1 class enjoyed their snack today! Snack time is always better when mom gets to join in!

 The Easter Bunny found her a baby bunny to hold! Look at that precious smile!

One of our crafts today was using shaving cream and food coloring to dye eggs. The children got to roll their eggs around in the shaving cream! They loved their finished eggs and I think they also loved making the mess with the shaving cream!

It was a great day at AOFC and we hope you have an EGG-stra special Easter weekend!

For more information about our program, please click here.

I spy something green...

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

AoFC has officially been taken over by all things green! The children and staff have had such a wonderful time looking at everyone's different green outfits and accessories. We have seen everything from green applesauce to pots of gold for snack today!

Here is a fun fact for you: The original color associated with St. Patrick's Day was blue! To learn all about how the color transitioned from blue to green, click here.

We loved all of the GREEN fun today at AoFC but didn't want the fun to stop here!

Click here to view an easy but fun St. Patrick's Day craft to do as a family tonight!

Take a moment to look at our St. Patrick's Day fun!

 

Our Toddler 1 class had some sweet little girls today dressed in green! She was even talking on her green phone!

This handsome man was loving his green morning snack! He loved that even his cream cheese for his bagel was green!

Now this is what you call some 'Lucky Charms'. Our Infant 1 room had some little boys that were ready to show off their green this morning!



 This Irish Sweetie spent the morning on the balance beam! I think I spy even some green glitter on her shirt.

Leprechauns turned Preschool 2's lunch green! Green peas, green mashed potatoes, even green milk!They were all excited to show off their green necklaces as well. 

Ms. Jamie made a yummy snack in celebration of St. Patrick's Day! Look at that rainbow with a huge pot of gold at the end!

This ninja turtle loving friend also loved her pot of gold! She does not want our St. Patty's Day celebration to end!

PreK1 made a fun rainbow and pot of gold art project today! Here is our Irish Cutie working hard on it!

We had a blast today! Rather you find a four leaf clover or not, we hope your year is full of good luck!

For more information about our program, please click here.

Welcome to a Sneak Peek of Infant 3

Our featured classroom for this week at AoFC is Infant 3! Our Infant 3 room is for babies 6 months to about 12 months and is led by Ms. Kristina. Ms. Kristina comes to us from Nebraska where she obtained her Bachelor's Degree and held a position working with infants and PreK at a child development center. We are thrilled with all that Ms. Kristina is doing with our infants.

We use Frog Street Infant curriculum in all of our infant classrooms. Frog Street is designed around early brain research and is specifically designs for the little ones. The curriculum provides each teacher with activity cards that are used to help young babies meet their developmental milestones. The four domains they focus on are:

Physical Development

Cognitive Development

Language Development

Social Emotional Development

Each of our infant rooms also learn a new baby sign every week. We integrate this into our weekly curriculum with our other activities. This a great tool to use with babies to help build their communication foundation.

Now lets look at Infant 3 in action!

Each month our Academy has a different theme and this month ours was bugs! Ms. Kristina took each child's little toe prints and formed caterpillars for each child!

In Infant 3 we love for the babies to do fun art projects!! Here is an example of some fly swatter art from when we studied flies and mosquitoes!

Frog Street uses puppets to help with the daily activities and lesson. Ms. Kristina's puppet is named Lily and she was helping a little friend learn all about bugs!

Lily also helps our infants learn their different body parts. Today Ms. Kristina was helping this handsome guy learn all about his toes!

Our Infant 3 guys love to play! Look at that bin full of toys with different colors and textures!

The weather was so nice and this little friend loved playing outside in the sunshine! This orange ball is bigger than him but it is his favorite ball to push all around the playground!

Look at the smile on his face! He loves learning and playing with Ms. Kristina and his friends.

For more information about our curriculum, please visit: http://www.frogstreet.com/

For more information about our program, please visit our website at: http://www.academychilddevelopment.com

Our Little Artists

 The Academy of Forrest Crossing is learning all about bugs this month! Each week we are focusing on a different type of bug and this week we are learning about mosquitoes and flies!
Here is a FUN FACT for you: Did you know that flies can fly up to 45mph and can bat their wings over 200 times per second!? That is so fast! However, a mosquito can only fly 1-1.5 mph.

In celebration of all the fun mosquito and fly facts we are going to learn about this week, we thought it would be fun to let the children use some fly swatters to paint some awesome pictures!

 Ms. Kristina and her little friend loved the fly swatter art project! His eyes lit up when the fly swatter hit the paper and made a big "splat" with the paint!

 Ms. Kristina is helping another sweet child from Infant Three make fun art! While they were creating the art project, he also got to learn all about the colors being used!

 Our friends in Toddler 1 joined in the fun with doing some fly swatter painting. Ms. Erica set them up with a lot of fun colors to use in their project.

Two of our girls from the PreK1 class worked together to make their fly swatter art. This pink and blue art project will look great hanging up in their classroom for their families to see!

 Preschool 2 didn't waste anytime diving into this creative art project! The smile on her face shows just how fun it was!

 Fly swatter painting isn't complete without making a mess during it! Her page was covered with fun prints by the end of her art time!

 Ms. Brooke took some time to help one of her little buddies create his project. He especially loved pressing down as hard as possible to make his fly swatter prints!

 All of our little friends had a blast with this fun, artsy activity today!

Check out http://www.mosquito.org/fun-facts for more fun facts about mosquitoes.

To learn all about flies, visit http://www.bugfacts.net/house-fly.php

For more information about our program and activities, click here.