Bright Beginnings learning daycare center of Demopolis hosted a regional workshop for child care providers on Saturday sponsored by the University of Alabama’s Child Development Resources.

Child Development Resources provides information about the wellbeing of young children. It manages a child care subsidy program and provides training for professional child care providers, offers child care resource and referral information and conducts parenting education and support programming. It is funded by the Department of Human Resources.

The workshop on Saturday included sessions about transition times, such as from morning to snack time to circle time, from the start of the day to the end of the day. They also discussed physical fitness.

“We serve 12 counties,” said Meredith Mathers of Child Development Resources and a native of Sweet Water. “Teachers came from Marengo, Greene, Hale and Choctaw counties to take part in these training sessions.”

Kelly Avery of Child Development Resources provided some of the instruction.

“Licensed child care providers must have 12 hours of training a year,” she said. “We go to our outlying counties and offer them training. They will get four hours of credit for today’s training, which went from 8 a.m. to noon.

“This workshop will help the teachers manage their children better in the classroom and working on discipline issues. We talked about how transitions are a big part of the pre-schoolers’ day, whether it’s coming to the classroom with Mom and Dad, joining their friends for circle time, working in learning centers, going outdoors, lining up to wash hands — the day is full of transitions.

“What we shared with them are a lot of ideas to make these transition times smoother in the classroom and cut down on discipline,” she said.

Bright Beginnings, located at 1908 Mauvilla Dr. in the former West Alabama Prep building, provided an appropriate setting for the child care training sessions.

“I was excited about having this,” said Bright Beginnings owner Donnetta Wilkins. “I think the important part, to me, is getting all of the centers together to be able to work together and get the training that we all need.

“The instructors have mentioned ways of getting children to follow directions. I want to use that in our open house with the parents, so the parents can be on the same page as the teachers and help them work together in preparing for kindergarten.”

“This helps us network with other teachers in this area,” said Bright Beginnings senior director Loretta Moore. “We can share good ideas with each other. This training helps us to implement these and other good ideas in the classroom, and will help to make a smoother day for the teachers and children.”