Watch and Learn: Practicing Child Care Career Skills With New CCE Program

Caring for infants requires specific skills, such as feeding, diapering, soothing, and ensuring their safety. For students considering child care careers, practice is essential for honing these skills and building confidence. That’s why we created our new Child Care Experience (CCE) program. It includes everything you need to create a “pop-up childcare center” right in your classroom – and in turn, provide a safe, controlled environment for students to practice managing the needs of multiple infants simultaneously.

What Is CCE?

CCE is a simulated childcare environment in which students must care for multiple infants simultaneously, teaching transferable career skills for future childcare workers. Combining hardware, software, and curriculum, CCE offers a highly realistic, hands-on learning experience ideal for capstone projects. This experience was created to provide:

• A risk-free, immersive environment for students to learn from
• A realistic way to gain transferable career skills
• An environment not all students have access to
• An advanced-level infant care simulation experience

The simulation helps teach students infant care and CPR, infant airway obstruction procedures, employability and entrepreneurship skills, and more. This program empowers students to effectively manage the care of multiple infants at once, preparing them for the challenges of real-life childcare environments.

Care Events

When students hear their Child Care Experience Babies, or CCE Babies, start to cry, they must determine what to do. Does the Baby need feeding? Does it need to be burped? Is it choking?

Our CCE Babies challenges students to address six specific “care events:” Fuss, Rock, Feed, Burp, Diaper, and Choke. Watch these videos to see every care event in action.

Fuss

Understanding that infants of different ages require different soothing techniques is crucial for providing effective and developmentally appropriate care. That’s why our CCE Babies require different methods of soothing during a fussy event.

To soothe their 3-month-old CCE Baby, students can rock, walk, or provide other nurturing movements for the duration of the Care Event. Alternatively, they can place the Baby in the soothing blanket, lining up the diaper tag with the blanket tag and holding the Baby gently until it coos:

To soothe their 9-month-old CCE Baby, students must place the pacifier in the Baby’s mouth and leave it in until the Baby coos:

Rock

Rocking is a time-tested method for soothing and calming infants and young children. During a rocking event, students must rock the baby gently from side to side until it coos:

Feed

Students considering child care careers must be prepared to address infants’ varying developmental needs. To reinforce those differences, our CCE program includes 9-month-old Babies that must be fed solid food while sitting in a high chair, while 3-month-old Babies take food from bottles.

During both care events, the Babies cry until they are fed, at which point students will hear the 3-month-old make a sucking sound and the 9-month-old make a chewing sound. Both Babies coo when they’re done being fed:

Burp

Like real-life infants, both the 9-month and 3-month CCE Babies must be burped. During this care event, students must place the Baby in an upright position on their shoulder, then lightly tap the Baby’s back until they hear it burp:

Diaper

Proper diaper changing ensures that infants and young children stay clean and dry, reducing the risk of things like diaper rash and infections.

To change a CCE Baby’s diaper, students must place the Baby on the changing pad and line up the diaper tag with the tag on the changing pad. The Baby’s cry will become much softer when the tags are aligned correctly. Once students have correctly removed the current diaper and replaced it with a new one, the Baby will coo.

Note: Students are required to log in and specify that they washed their hands after changing a diaper before picking up the infant again to reinforce that they take the time in real life to think through that extra step in the process!

Choke

Our CCE Babies act as standalone training manikins for infant CPR and airway obstruction. During a choking event, students must complete a series of back pats and chest thrusts on the 9-month-old CCE Baby to dislodge the included choking object:

Bonus Care Event: Infant CPR

Our CCE Babies act as standalone training manikins for infant CPR and airway obstruction. During a CPR event, students must complete a series of chest compressions and pats and chest thrusts on the 9-month-old CCE Baby to dislodge the included choking object:

Additional Resources

Looking for more resources and activities for helping students explore child care careers and develop related skills?

• Get additional details on our CCE program in this on-demand webinar, hosted by Realityworks Senior FCS Product Manager (and AAFCS Co-Chair) Denise DuBois
• Learn how our CCE program can help you create a 21st century early childhood education program
• Dive deep into this program with our free, on-demand webinar that details this program’s contents, how to use it, and the included curriculum