School Church Furniture

Each year Earlychildhood NEWS recognizes excellence in the design and manufacture of products for young children through the Directors' Choice Awards program.

This prestigious awards program, now in its 18th year, serves as a resource for child care providers and preschool teachers to assist them in choosing safe, durable and age-appropriate products for young children.

In 2007, 20 products were honored in four categories including audio, furniture and play equipment, toys and games and teachers' resources and children's books. Items were evaluated based on the following criteria: appropriateness for use in a child care setting, safety, durability, age appropriateness, effectiveness for intended use and value.

One of Jonti Craft's quality products was selected as one of those winners.  Worthington Direct proudly sells all products made by Jonti Craft at wholesale prices.  Visit www.Worthingtondirect.com today and find all of your early childhood furniture needs.

Toddler Coat Locker With Step and Trays by Jonti Craft, Inc. This locker is sized just right for toddlers so that they have a place to store their coat, boots, prized art projects and much more. Shown in birch wood, but also available in gray laminate with Rainbow Accents(R) trim. continue reading

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 Giving a presentation soon?  While you may have to do extensive reseach for your presentation details, look no further for the right lectern to stand behind.  Worthington Direct has a wide variety of lecterns, podiums and multi-media carts that will ensure your presentation looks polished and well thought out.  This is the last week for free shipping on the Orator lecterns by Oklahoma Sound, so don't delay!

 Know the needs of your audience and match your contents to their needs. Know your material thoroughly. Put what you have to say in a logical sequence. Ensure your speech will be captivating to your audience as well as worth their time and attention. Practice and rehearse your speech at home or where you can be at ease and comfortable, in front of a mirror, your family, friends or colleagues. Use a tape-recorder and listen to yourself. Videotape your presentation and analyze it. Know what your strong and weak points are. Emphasize your strong points during your presentation.

When you are presenting in front of an audience, you are performing as an actor is on stage. How you are being perceived is very important. Dress appropriately for the occasion. Be solemn if your topic is serious. Present the desired image to your audience. Look pleasant, enthusiastic, confident, proud, but not arrogant. Remain calm. Appear relaxed, even if you feel nervous.

Speak slowly, enunciate clearly, and show appropriate emotion and feeling relating to your topic. Establish rapport with your audience. Speak to the person farthest away from you to ensure your voice is loud enough to project to the back of the room. Vary the tone of your voice and dramatize if necessary. If a microphone is available, adjust and adapt your voice accordingly.

Body language is important. Standing, walking or moving about with appropriate hand gesture or facial expression is preferred to sitting down or standing still with head down and reading from a prepared speech. Use audio-visual aids or props for enhancement if appropriate and necessary. Master the use of presentation software such as PowerPoint well before your presentation. Do not over-dazzle your audience with excessive use of animation, sound clips, or gaudy colors which are inappropriate for your topic. Do not torture your audience by putting a lengthy document in tiny print on an overhead and reading it out to them.

Speak with conviction as if you really believe in what you are saying. Persuade your audience effectively. The material you present orally should have the same ingredients as that which are required for a written research paper, i.e. a logical progression from INTRODUCTION (Thesis statement) to BODY (strong supporting arguments, accurate and up-to-date information) to CONCLUSION (re-state thesis, summary, and logical conclusion). Do not read from notes for any extended length of time although it is quite acceptable to glance at your notes infrequently.

Speak loudly and clearly. Sound confident. Do not mumble. If you made an error, correct it, and continue. No need to make excuses or apologize profusely. Maintain sincere eye contact with your audience. Use the 3-second method, e.g. look straight into the eyes of a person in the audience for 3 seconds at a time. Have direct eye contact with a number of people in the audience, and every now and then glance at the whole audience while speaking. Use your eye contact to make everyone in your audience feel involved. Speak to your audience, listen to their questions, respond to their reactions, adjust and adapt. If what you have prepared is obviously not getting across to your audience, change your strategy mid-stream if you are well prepared to do so. Remember that communication is the key to a successful presentation. If you are short of time, know what can be safely left out. If you have extra time, know what could be effectively added. Always be prepared for the unexpected. continue reading

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While not yet as popular as SpongeBob SquarePants, recycling projects are a growing trend in elementary schools.  If your school is not hip to the green yet, visit www.Worthingtondirect.com and browse through the Greenguard certified furniture section to find products that are made green and can aid in your schools recycling efforts.  Find activity tables large enough to make recycling posters or to sort through recyclable items.  Create a space with a computer workstation for getting your green messages out on the www.

 MANSFIELD - Every morning, students at Southeast Elementary School pack up recyclable items and take them to school, where they sort them into designated bins. And after lunch, they compost the food waste outside the school.

Now, two interns from the University of Connecticut's five-year integrated bachelor's and master's program in the Neag School of Education are building on the school's history of recycling efforts to include nature and the environment in regular classroom curriculum. The interns are working to earn their master's in elementary education and have been working with teachers at Southeast since the start of the school year.

"Environmental education is a key thing," said Liz Kloeblen, one of the interns. "It's something I want to include into my own classroom. It provides students with a more well-rounded education." She and Danielle Smith are working with the teachers and Principal Norma Fisher-Doiron at Southeast in "making the environment and the outdoors an interdisciplinary topic," Kloeblen said.

They are working with the 245 students from pre-K to fourth grade to use the environment to help teach subjects such as math and poetry. Kloeblen said a class collected leaves outside and wrote poems about them. Fisher-Doiron said the school became the first "green" elementary school in the state in 1997. It also earned the green flag award for recycling in 2001, and they are hoping to earn the award in other areas as well. She said the students can take what they have been learning since they entered the school and bring it with them wherever they go. "It's the science, it's the everyday living that we continue to do, and it's our interns that make it possible for us," Fisher-Doiron said.

For America Recycles Day, Nov. 15, Smith and Kloeblen have set up a full day of events. There will be a fashion show with clothes made out of recycled materials, including a tie made out of rubber, a coin purse made out of a tire, a T-shirt made out of plastic bottles and boots made out of milk bottles.

There will also be recycling games and a book swap for students to trade their books for new ones. They have also created a guide book for the nature trails behind the school. One class that was reading a book about owls went to the trail to learn more about owls by collecting the droppings and dissecting them to find out what they eat. continue reading

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Worthington Direct knows that AV equipment are valuable tools that should have the appropriate AV Cart to optimize their use. Here are a few details that should be considered before buying an AV Cart:

MONITOR SIZE : Be sure that the cart you choose is large enough and strong enough to hold the AV equipment you need to store or move. The measurement of your monitor is taken from the diagonal length from the upper left corner of the screen to the lower right corner of the screen. While most new monitors have a small footprint, you may want to check the overall base dimensions of the monitor against the overall dimensions of the shelf that the monitor shall rest on. Maximum monitor size and shelf dimensions are noted on all products designed for monitor use.

CONSTRUCTION : The most common materials that AV carts are made of are steel and plastic. Plastic carts are lightweight and generally less expensive, but are also weaker than steel carts. Keep in mind that steel carts are more suited for your needs if you have a larger or heavier monitor.

HEIGHT : Your audience is important to consider when shopping for an AV cart. Will your projector or monitor be used in an elementary school or a high school? Maybe both? Some AV carts feature adjustable height legs that can be lowered for younger students and then raised again for upper level students.

The size of the room that the AV cart is to be used is also important to consider. When projecting in a large space, a higher cart is best to insure that the audience in the back can too view the presentation. Likewise if in smaller space, the cart should be low enough to avoid having the audience crane their necks.

WHEELS : Most AV carts come with standard 4" casters which works well for most mobile uses. Should an AV cart need to be pushed over rough ground or maneuvered in through tight classrooms, a larger caster base could be beneficial. Caster sizes and materials are noted for each product when applicable.

STORAGE : What type of AV equipment are you storing? Some AV carts are designed for specific equipment, such as an overhead projector cart or perhaps a laptop storage cart. Others may have many adjustable platforms that can easily hold a variety of media equipment that may need to be connected together to perform a task. Check product shelf dimensions against your AV equipment dimensions to insure proper fit. Some AV carts come with locking storage cabinets that will keep your expensive equipment safe and out of view when not in use.

ACCESSORIES : Most AV carts offer a power strip that allows the user to plug all equipment into the cart’s power strip and then run only one cord from the AV cart to an electrical outlet. Another useful accessory to consider is a safety belt, which keep monitors and projectors firmly in place during transit.

AV carts are a great way to share equipment between classrooms and to add convenience to equipment during presentations. Much research and money goes into purchasing the right AV equipment, so make sure proper consideration is also given when purchasing a corresponding AV cart.

 

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