Early Childhood

East Side Settlement House

East Side House Settlement (ESHS) provides early childhood education and family support services at 14 sites in the Bronx, enabling more than 8,000 low-income residents to create economic and civic opportunities for themselves, their families and their community. For more than five years, CMOM has run an effective early childhood literacy and arts program at ESHS and documented improvement in children’s school-readiness skills and improvement in family reading habits.

CUNY Professional Development

CMOM partnered with CUNY’s Early Childhood Professional Development Institute in 2007 to develop a much-needed training program for ACS/CUNY Informal Family Care Providers. These individuals care for children from low-income families and are generally home-based providers with little access to professional development opportunities and the greatest need for training in early childhood education.

Working with CUNY, CMOM designed a unique training model based on our signature early childhood curriculum that includes interactive art, music and literacy workshops, a hands-on early childhood education class for providers and the children in their care, a guided exploration of the Museum, and a free one-year CMOM membership for participants. Providers who complete the 10 hour training receive a joint CMOM/CUNY certificate that documents their hours of training and helps move them towards a higher rate of pay from ACS.

See more of the Play is Learning Professional Development resource website.
The Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s Play is Learning resource website is an educational database that provides lesson plans, activities and visual documentation to support developing creative and educational environments in home care settings and childcare centers. This resource was developed for the Play is Learning professional development series which partners CMOM and ACS/City University of New York Informal Family Childcare Training Project; CUNY’s New York City Early Childhood Professional Development Institute in providing professional development training for New York City childcare providers.

Read more about the Play is Learning Professional Development Program in this article written by CMOM's Deputy Director for Education, Leslie Bushara.

Homes for the Homeless

CMOM partners with Homes for the Homeless to provide children and single mothers living in temporary housing with music, art, literacy, and parenting skills development in a safe and supportive environment. Through a weekly program at the Museum, these women and their children gain tools and life skills that empower them as women, mothers, and future job seekers. Working with CMOM educators and a licensed social worker, participants develop parenting strategies and gain insight into how their children learn. Journal writing sessions with a resident author promote personal dignity and expression. Each year these writing exercises are turned into a published book of poetry, giving participants renewed confidence and a feeling of accomplishment. CMOM learns a great deal from this program about the daily pressures faced by families. The deep trust and continuity we develop with the mothers helps us to understand how to better serve all families who walk through our front door or whom we serve off-site.