Parents and caregivers of children, teachers, school leaders, and community members are invited to join Trying Together and Playful Pittsburgh for community conversations on play.
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Physical movement, the freedom to play, and playful learning during the school day improves a child’s social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills. However, many American children engage in less than one hour of unstructured play per day.
We’d like to know how much your child is able to play. A community conversation being held on May 30 will discuss how play is a part of a child’s school life. The event will help attendees learn how to advocate for play and developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood.
Dinner and child care will be provided to participants at the in-person event. There will also be a virtual event in June.
Details
Thursday, May 30 | 5 – 7 p.m.
Spartan Community Center of Hazelwood, 134 East Elizabeth Street in Pittsburgh
Register
Monday, June 10 | 7 – 8 p.m.
Virtual
Register
Can’t attend? Take the play advocacy survey to share your thoughts.
Parents and caregivers of children, teachers, school leaders, and community members are invited to join Trying Together and Playful Pittsburgh for community conversations on play.
Learn More
Physical movement, the freedom to play, and playful learning during the school day improves a child’s social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills. However, many American children engage in less than one hour of unstructured play per day.
We’d like to know how much your child is able to play. A community conversation being held on May 30 will discuss how play is a part of a child’s school life. The event will help attendees learn how to advocate for play and developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood.
Dinner and child care will be provided to participants at the in-person event. There will also be a virtual event in June.
Details
Thursday, May 30 | 5 – 7 p.m.
Spartan Community Center of Hazelwood, 134 East Elizabeth Street in Pittsburgh
Register
Monday, June 10 | 7 – 8 p.m.
Virtual
Register
Can’t attend? Take the play advocacy survey to share your thoughts.
The Remake Learning Days Festival will offer more than 350 events – including Playful Pittsburgh’s Ultimate Play Day – in May. The three-week festival offers activities for children ages two to 17 as well as adults.
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From May 2 to 22, families can take part in a variety of events and celebrate learning. Activities include building a robot, coding an art spinner, directing a film, doing scientific work, exploring the outdoors, making music, printing inventions with a 3-D printer, and more.
The festival will include in-person and virtual events hosted by schools, museums, libraries, after-school organizations, child care centers, and tech companies.
There are a number of free activities as well as others that range from $1 to $50. Most of the events take place in Southwestern Pennsylvania, while a few others will be held in West Virginia.
Ultimate Play Day – which is co-hosted by Playful Pittsburgh, Trying Together, and CitiParks – will take place during Remake Learning Days. The event emphasizes the importance and power of play for people of all ages. The free event will be hosted at the Activities Shelter at Riverview Park from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 18.
The festival will also include a performance of “Leonardo! A Wonderful Show About a Terrible Monster.” Color puppets and props will bring characters from Mo Willems’ book to life on stage.
For more information on the Remake Learning Days Festival, visit the festival’s website.
Playful Pittsburgh will host its annual Ultimate Play Day on Saturday, May 18 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Activities Shelter in Riverview Park. There are three bus routes that can drop participants off close to the event.
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Ultimate Play Day is a celebration of playfulness for people of all ages. The event – co-hosted by Playful Pittsburgh, Trying Together, and Citiparks as part of Remake Learning Days – celebrates the importance of play.
A number of city organizations will take part in the event – including the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, Carnegie Science Center, Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Fred Rogers Institute, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and many more. A complete list can be found on Ultimate Play Day’s event page.
Directions
Participants driving to the event and taking 279 N should avoid Milroy Street. Instead of making the first left, continue on to East Street and take Baytree Street to the park.
Three bus routes will drop participants close to the event. Riders can take Bus 8 from the Northside to Riverview Park. They can pick up this bus at Cedar, East North Avenue, or Federal Street. The closest stops to the park are Perrysville and Watson or Perrysville and Cherryfield.
Riders can take Bus 12 from the Northside. The closest stop to the park is East Street and Venture Street, which is about a mile walk to the event. Riders can also take Bus 15 from Downtown.
More Information
If you have questions, contact Adam James Zahren, Program Director for Playful Pittsburgh, at adam@tryingtogether.org.
To plan a route to Ultimate Play Day, visit Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s True Time System’s website.
NorthSideWorks! and PA Career Link are hosting the Northside Job Fair on April 26. More than 50 employers, service organizations, and training providers will attend the event.
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Attendees will be able to learn about full- and part-time opportunities in various industries. Registration for attendees is free.
Employers attending the event include Acrisure Stadium, Aflac, Allegheny County Health Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, the city of Pittsburgh, DollarBank, National Aviary, PA Women Work, Peoples Gas, Pittsburgh Pirates, PNC Bank, Rivers Casino Pittsburgh, Trying Together, and many others.
More Details
The job fair runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on April 26 at PNC Park, located at 115 Federal Street.
Free parking is available at Red Lot 5A, located at 664 W. Robinson Street.
For more information, call Quinn Kirby at 412-231-6500.
The principal partners of Early Learning Pennsylvania (ELPA) are calling on state policymakers to support investments in evidence-based, high-quality early care, education, and health services.
ELPA is focused on supporting young Pennsylvanians from birth to age five. Trying Together is a partner of the statewide coalition of advocates.
The coalition is urging state policymakers to make investments in child care, pre-k, and early intervention.
Learn More
From birth to age five, children’s brains make millions of neural connections every second, forming brain architecture for life. At no other time in a human’s life will the brain develop at this speed or with such intricacy. This period is the foundation upon which all later learning, behavior, and health depend.
Pittsburgh-based early childhood nonprofit Trying Together and their ELPA partners are calling for state policymakers to maximize the potential of these first five years through investments in early care and education programs in the 2024-2025 budget.
Budget Requests
The budget priorities from ELPA for the 2024-25 final state budget include:
- Supporting the Shapiro administration’s proposal to increase subsidy rates to the 75th percentile of the current price families pay for child care services. This will help alleviate rising facility, food, utility, and supply costs for providers participating in Child Care Works.
- Investing $284 million in new and recurring state funding to implement a child care teacher recruitment and retention initiative. This will help alleviate an ongoing staffing crisis that is causing classrooms and entire programs to close and leave working families without access to child care. The funding would provide monthly payments to providers maintaining a subsidy agreement with the state. It would be restricted for initiatives that would help retain and recruit staff such as monthly wage increases, hiring bonuses, benefit packages, or retention bonuses for staff staying for a certain length of time or achieving credentials or degrees.
- Supporting a proposed investment of $30 million in Pre-K Counts to increase the per-child rate to help address workforce challenges and inflationary pressures. For the Head Start Supplemental Assistance Program, a proposed $2.7 million investment to the per-child rate should be examined so that it has parity to the Pre-K Counts rate increase. To achieve this, the needed investment should be $8.8 million in the Head Start Supplemental Assistance line.
- Supporting, at minimum, the administration’s proposed $16.6 million increase that will serve an additional 3,000 children and their families. This is a first step in a broader solution that includes a long-needed rate adjustment for early intervention providers and that would serve additional children. Additional support would help to address such issues as workforce shortages and achieving equitable enrollment as well as moving to the coaching model and addressing the growing needs of families across the state.
Trying Together and other partners of ELPA will continue to advocate for these investments as the budget process continues through June 20. Stay up-to-date on how to advocate for these issues by signing-up to get public policy updates from Trying Together.
Pre-K for PA and Start Strong PA will host a Working Together webinar in late April that will focus on:
- Early learning in the 2024-25 state budget
- Follow up and response to state policymakers
- Federal advocacy update and opportunities for child care
Learn More
Speakers will include Pre-K for PA and Start Strong PA’s partners:
- First Up: Champions for Early Education
- Pennsylvania Association for the Education of Young Children
- Pennsylvania Child Care Association
- Pennsylvania Head Start Association
- Trying Together
Participants will learn how to work together to strengthen the state’s early learning system for teachers and programs and grow access to more eligible families.
Details
The webinar will begin at 12 p.m. on Monday, April 29. Those interested in participating can register in advance for the Zoom webinar.
After registering, participants will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
As part of its programming, Buzzword distributes its signature “BUZZ Boxes” to local families to help excite children from birth to age five as well as their caregivers about new words that are all around them. These family engagement kits come complete with a high-quality children’s book and enriching activities that support early literacy skills and development.
This Month’s Buzzword
This month’s Buzzword is EMERGE, which means to come out into view. The EMERGE Activity Book will give children – ages birth to five – and their caregivers the opportunity to connect through science, art, music, and early literacy activities.
Caregivers are encouraged to read through “Bloom Boom!” by April Pulley Sayre with their child. Then, they should take part in the different activities and experiments in the EMERGE Activity Book. Time should be spent explaining the meaning of the words in the book and connecting them to their child’s life experiences.
Buzzword has also provided an EMERGE book list of recommendations from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh for further reading.
View the EMERGE Activity Book and book recommendations.
More Information
Buzzword is a free literacy resource for families. BUZZ Boxes are available at local Allegheny County Family Center locations for children up to age five. Each box contains a children’s book, activity guide, and materials for completing the activities.
Want to learn more on how to get involved with Buzzword? Ask your local family center about the program. You can also visit the Buzzword website or email buzzword@tryingtogether.org for more information about Buzzword.
In February, Gov. Josh Shapiro released his 2024-25 state budget approval. While the governor mentioned proposed investments in pre-K, evidence-based home visiting, and perinatal and child health, his proposal did not directly address the state’s ongoing child care teacher shortage.
To accomplish our goal of keeping classrooms open and staffed, we need supporters to send a message to the General Assembly and the governor, telling them to fix child care in the 2024-25 state budget.
Details on the Teacher Shortage
A September 2023 survey conducted by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab – on behalf of Start Strong PA – provided details on the staffing crisis in 762 of Pennsylvania’s child care programs.
The survey found that nearly 26,000 additional children could be served at child care programs if they were fully staffed. Additionally, 2,395 open positions have resulted in the closure of 934 classrooms. Lastly, child care providers’ inability to recruit and retain staff is having a direct impact on the quality of programming. As a result, thousands of families are unable to find the care they need to go to work.
Take Action
Pennsylvania lawmakers can fix this problem by tackling the child care teacher shortage. They must establish and fund a program that will help providers to better recruit and retain staff.
Make your voice heard: Send a message to the General Assembly and the governor. Tell them they must fix child care in the 2024-25 state budget.
Get Updates
By signing on to Trying Together’s Public Policy Agenda, you’ll receive action alerts to advocate on behalf of young children, their families, and the early care and education professionals who interact with them.
Trying Together and ELRC Region 5 are partnering to provide First Aid, Pediatric First Aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), and automated external defibrillator (AED) training.
This single course emphasizes hands-on learning and provides life-saving skills in alliance with The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)’s Best Practices for Workplace First Aid Training Programs.
Certification will be issued upon successful completion of the course. This certification is valid for two years.
PLEASE NOTE: Successful course completion requires full participation in classroom and skill sessions, as well as successful performance in skill and knowledge evaluations.
Participants will be conducting strenuous activities, such as performing CPR on the floor. If you have a medical condition or disability that will prevent you from taking part in the skills practice sessions, please let your instructor know so that accommodations can be made for the practice portion. The CPR and AED evaluations must be completed with the manikin on the ground.
Session Details
May 16 | 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Location:
Homewood Early Learning Hub & Family Center
7219 Kelly Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15208
Register
Learn More
The cost for this course is $38.
This course is PQAS certified and must be paid for in full before registrants can participate. Registered individuals will receive additional course information prior to the start of the course. Please make sure to read all information before the start of the course.
For questions about the sessions, contact Holly Cessna at holly.cessna@alleghenycounty.us. For credit questions, contact Paige Kizior at paige@tryingtogether.org.
