Provider Spotlight: Shelly Deutch

Each quarter, we highlight QUALITYstarsNY participants that have made significant improvements in the quality of their programs and ask that they share their experiences in their own words. This quarter, we thank family provider Shelly Deutch for sharing her words and for inspiring others to provide high quality early learning experiences to the children that they serve.

Shelly writes, "Because of support from QUALITYstarsNY, the children have more materials to play with than they otherwise would have-not just quantity, but better quality too.  I bought a plastic kitchen a while back and it lasted about a week.  

QUALITYstarsNY allowed me to purchase pretend kitchen furniture from Community Playthings.  The children play there all the time and they play with it in all kinds of different ways.   Last week they took all the food out of it and turned it into a nursery for babies. Before that, one of the boys used it as a garage for his trucks.  One day I hung sheets from the ceiling to divide the play area into lots of smaller spaces. We pretended each space was a different 'room' of our 'house.'  

Using QUALITYstarsNY support grant funds, I was also able to purchase enough room dividers to make it possible for all the children to nap in one room together.  This allowed me to re-arrange my other room to create learning centers.  Now I have a quiet area, a block area, manipulative area, and a pretend play area. 

Finally, because of QUALITYstarsNY, I was able to enroll in a CDA class-something that would not have been financially possible for me otherwise. I have been using what I learn in the class to make changes to my program. I will finish my class in June 2015."