"Miss Lois" Will Be Featured Speaker at Early Childhood Education Conference

She’s been known to call people wishy-washy and parade them around in front of a crowded room.  They don’t mind.  In fact, they love it.

They call her the squish-squash lady to her face.  She doesn’t mind.  In fact, she loves it.  It’s all part of Lois Wachtel’s workshops for early childhood educators where grown-ups get to act like kids again. 

“Nobody out there is doing the whole realm.”  She said, “Teachers are able to see how easy it is to get creativity into their classrooms.  From singing- to-dancing-to- bookmaking, I get them involved.” 

The petite blond uses pizza boxes, rolling pins, and pie plates to show educators how to turn these easy to find items into reading, math and science lessons for infant, toddlers and school-age children.    Four years ago Wachtel left her role as a preschool director to start Creative Beginning Steps (www.creativebeginningsteps.com).  The formation of this business gives her the chance to travel throughout the country to share her expertise with educators.  She’s presented to organizations like the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), early childhood coalitions, and school districts, which have benefited from her eighteen years of experience as a preschool director and teacher.

 And just how did she earn the title of the Squish-Squash Lady of Early Childhood?   The theory that young children lack the fine motor skills to hold a pencil properly banned this item, as well as paintbrushes, from the classrooms where she was the director.  Instead she says, “We put up butcher paper on the walls and encouraged children to bring in everyday items to use to paint with.  Families brought in dog toys, sponges, toilet plungers, flip-flops, and balls.”    Rest assured the toilet plungers had to be new.

She even helped a reticent child learn to ride a bike by putting butcher paper on the floor, paint on the trikes wheels, and watched as the child realized pumping his legs to ride the bike created a design on the paper he rode over.

And about calling people wishy-washy, it’s not because she feels they flip-flop on issues.  It is part of her interactive workshops and it’s based on a song by the group The Learning Station about a wishy washy washer woman.  Wachtel said she added her, “…own twist to the song to teach teachers how to teach math, science and social skills.”

Wachtel has a graduate degree in Early Childhood Education with a specialty in diversity from Walden University and her undergraduate degree in education from California State University, Long Beach.  She also teaches education courses as an adjunct professor at Palm Beach State College in Florida.   

The author of two books Creative Beginning Steps to Art and Creative Beginning Steps to Reading says “We need to stop and look at things from a child’s perspective.  We can do standards, we can do assessments, but children can still be children and learn through play and not worksheets.”

She’ll be leading a workshop for a the Lehigh and Northampton Association for the Education of Young Children (LANAEYC), a local affiliate of NAEYC, at the Holiday Inn Express in Easton, PA, on March 29, 2014.    The cost to attend the conference is $45.00 for LANEAYC members and $55.00 for non-LANAEYC members.  The registration fee includes breakfast, lunch, morning and afternoon sessions and hand-outs.  To receive a registration brochure please email terryathomas@earthlink.net.