Community Helpers Learning Lab Guide

What’s inside

Three invitations, three age groups and four printable pages

• How to Use This GuideThe Explore, Create, Build framework in one page, plus “Four principles to carry through the month” — start with children’s real experiences, use real photographs and open-ended materials, offer fewer materials to younger children, and observe before explaining.
• EXPLORE | Community Helper DiscoveryHow to start a simple discovery area and a list of possible discovery objects, then a page each for 12–18 months, 19–36 months and 3–4 years with “Set up the invitation”, “The educator’s role”, “What to notice”, “Language to try” and an educator tip.
• CREATE | Community Helper Role-Play StudioChild-made props, signs and tools for dramatic play, with the same three age pages. The guide warns against pre-making identical examples or asking every child to produce the same firefighter hat, postal bag or badge.
• BUILD | Build Our Community ChallengeBlocks, loose parts, vehicles and people figures used to design the places that make a community work, again written for each age group — from stacking and pushing at 12–18 months to a shared community build at 3–4 years.
• Printable quick references and checklist“What Should My Room Actually Look Like?” (an age-by-invitation table), the “Community Helpers Prop & Loose Parts List”, “Educator Language That Opens Up Thinking” (an Instead of / Try table) and “One Invitation Can Become a Week of Curriculum”, a Day 1–5 plan with final reflection questions.