Like with all things in parenting and child-raising, guardians have plenty of choices to make while hearing plenty of opinions. In particular, families must choose which daycare and daycare setting is best for their little ones. For this topic, we turn to research. Studies show that children who attend daycare, especially daycares in a formal classroom setting, have a significant advantage over those who don’t.
According to research, children who receive classroom-based lessons in daycare have better reading and math skills than their peers who receive informal childcare before kindergarten. Additionally, children enrolled in formal daycare centers rarely watched any television, while those in informal or home settings watched about two hours of television per day. Indeed, children can benefit from being in a safe place with an effective learning environment.
Read how you can nurture your child’s learning experience with the right daycare:
The Right Daycare Improves Social Skills
Daycare centers provide kids opportunities to interact with other children; these regular interactions can help to develop a child’s social skills. By playing, conversing, and working with same-aged children, children can learn to understand and regulate emotions, develop empathy, and work well with others.
Daily interactions with other kids also help them to learn values such as kindness, tolerance, and respect for others: Daycare can be crucial in shaping a child’s values and behavior. In fact, a study found that having access to high-quality daycare helps promote positive social behaviors and can help minimize later emotional difficulties.
Tips for Coaching Conversation Skills
If your child is shy or is hesitant to communicate with their daycare classmates, parents try asking open-ended questions and teaching them how to do the same. For instance, a preschool could ask classmates about their favorite foods or colors and what they like to do at home and why.
The Right Daycare Promotes Consistency
High-quality daycare centers typically follow a schedule for lessons, playtime, naps, and meals to give children a sense of familiarity and consistency. This can help them feel more secure and confident (which is important especially if they’re new to school). Schedules and routines make a child’s day consistent and predictable, and kids feel safe and cared for when they know what to expect.
Tips for Practicing Schedules
Besides creating a sense of safety, following a routine and sticking to a schedule helps children understand essential life skill processes as well as how to follow directions. To help your child hone their ability to stick to a schedule, create one that’s easy to follow at home.
Establish meal times, bedtimes, and times for play, as well as times for doing arts and crafts, naps, and exercise. Knowing how to follow a routine at home can make it easier for them to adjust and adapt to a daycare’s schedule, routines, and rules.
The Right Daycare Highlights the Arts
Kids are encouraged to be creative in formal daycare settings, and children usually draw, color, fingerpaint, mold clay, sing, and dance as a way to express themselves. Artistic activities like these can help your child to be more confident and independent.
Art also helps promote hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills. More importantly, art can inspire imagination and original thinking, which is why it’s such an integral part of a balanced early education curriculum.
Tips for Celebrating the Arts
Art doesn’t have to be limited to daycare activities. To further nurture children’s creativity, keep art materials at home. Have a couple of sketchbooks, papers, crayons, colored pencils, and some non-toxic finger paints on hand, and give your child some time to create their masterpieces.
If your child is musically inclined, provide them with simple instruments such as maracas, tambourines, and flutes, and let them have a mini jamming session. You can also put on some music and have a dance party with your little one — see what types of music inspire them to get moving!
The Right Daycare Instills Basic Literacy Skills
Reading and math are two vital subjects introduced in a formal daycare center by trained early education teachers. Along with these, children are also taught critical basic skills such as identifying colors, shapes, letters, and numbers, as well as tastes, smells, sounds, and textures.
Daycares usually incorporate lessons into playtimes and activities to create an association between learning and fun.
Tips for Preparing for Kindergarten-Readiness
Let’s talk about fostering a love of learning in the next generation:
You can do this by involving them in daily tasks or chores that can improve basic skills. For instance, you can let your child separate white clothes from colored clothing before you do the laundry or ask them to place the same number of fruits or veggies in different containers.
Help encourage school readiness by reading before bed or taking trips to your local library to check out books or attend library-sponsored activities.
Finding the Right Daycare To Nurturing a Love of Learning
The right daycare can help your child develop various skills that can benefit them as they grow. Combined with your guidance and some home activities to nurture these skills, your little one may reach their full potential and be happier and more engaged in daycare.
Sandra Chiu works as Director at LadyBug & Friends Daycare and Preschool.