Unit Two

Reflective Letter
While working on this website I did have some rough times. I either was struggling with finding information, thought what I had was not good enough, or I was sicks. I finally got it done and am really proud of what the end product was. I want this website to be helpful and informational to the people out there. However, I did not want it to be one of those websites that has so much information on it that when you look at it you just do not even want to read it. I kept it short and simple, straight to the point, and only put in the information I thought was important enough to read.

The topic for my website is Low-income Families and child care. I chose this topic because Job Corps helps a lot of the teens that come from low-income families and my family also struggled with money when I was younger and at times it was just horrible. My parents got divorced when I was really little and it was just my mom and I. While doing my research I found that many low-income families tend to be single parent families, which mainly only the mother and her kids. It was interesting to learn that growing up I grew up in a center based child care even though my grandma took care of my most of the time. According to one of my sources there are two types home-based child care and center-based child care. Home-based is where family members and family friends help take care of the children but it is very unstable and unreliable because the parents never know who is going to take care of the children that specific day. Center-based is a child care business whether it is in a home or in a specific building; this is the better choice because the children see the same people every day and they have the chance to adapt to a school based environment. I enjoyed learning about the different programs and child care option. The design for the website was a bit harder.

Trying to find my layout was a bit of a hassle; I wanted a background that was not so depressing but that also looked formal. The first one I found was way to colorful and reminded me of a website you would see for weddings. The second one was just to plain and needed a little more color to it, but I definitely love the picture that came with it. The picture was of a couple of kids eating watermelon and it looked like they were so happy. My third layout was the best, the top was a light blue and the bottom is dark gray color but I could not find the picture from the previous layout. However I knew this was the layout I wanted for my website.
For me finding the right pictures for the website was pretty easy. The top picture that will be displayed on every page is a picture of a young boy sitting in the back of the car. I really like this picture because it related really well with my topic. I also added a small picture next to the text on the pages. Each page has a different picture the goes with the topic of that page. On the home page I chose a mother and her son laying on a bed because I was talking about low-income families and child care, I also mentioned Job Corps. For the next page I found a picture of a girl tutoring a boy to resemble what I do at Job Corps, this page is also the page where I briefly talk about what Job Corps offers. My third page has a picture of two little boys in the playground. I chose that picture because my third page I talk about the types of good child care that my research recommended. On the fourth page I have a picture of a women and a little girl in a grocery store saying “Let's Go Shopping”; I chose this picture because on this particular page I have some help programs up. Many of these programs help the families with food and nutrition. My final page does not have a picture because it is my works cited page and I did not know what picture to put on it.

Coming up with what the other pages should be about made me stop and think. So I went through my research and pick out the information that stuck out to me the most. So for my first page I decided to make it about Job corps because it was what got me thinking about my topic and it my service-learning program. On this page I have some information about Job Corps and what they do, I also added the link for the Boise program and the main website for the entire program is on there. My second page is talks about home-based child care and center-based child care and the differences between them. The third page has the programs that are willing to help the families out. For each program there is a brief explanation about them and some even have websites to go to for more information. Hopefully you enjoy me website: http://lowincomefamilieschildcare.weebly.com/