I forgot to address your comments about the service learning piece, which are pretty good ideas.  I will have to look into what VT calls their childcare network.  I vaguely remember there being an active one and they may well be a great connection for us.  
One of the elements of the RE philosophy that I particularly like is classroom environments and natural playscapes, which you know more about that I do.  
I shopped for books on the Learning Materials Workshop site and found one named Bambini.  It looks promising because it has a foreward by the RE guru Gandini, but also includes an article by Ron Lally, who I know from Head Start days.  He was the one who designed the Infant Toddler (perhaps Zero to Three?) conference I went to in Hilton Head, S. Carolina in the early 90s.  Really great cutting edge information at the time.  I'm thinking about buying this book.