It is a common practice in many countries for parents to enroll their young children in early education programs. There are many factors that motivate parents to leave their children in the care of education professionals for a portion of the day outside of school hours. A common reason for this is scheduling. If both parents work, it can be hard to provide the stimulating, nurturing environment children require. This is one way after school programs can be a valuable resource to parents.Weekend activity programmes for children
While it is, of course, important for parents to know their children are safe and being cared for while they are occupied, this is not the only reason they will enroll their kids an after school program. These programs offer active, social environments that can greatly benefit early child development.
Parents expect after school programs will offer a curriculum of activities that promote early child care development to keep their children on track, and developing at the right pace for their age. In order to create an after school program that incorporates all of these important elements, providers must understand what early child care development is, and why it is important.
In this post, we’ll clarify exactly what we mean by early child care development, explain why it’s important, and provide some ideas and activities for provider to more successfully promote it.
Early child care development is the educational foundation children receive between birth and eight years old, which can have a lasting impact on their performance in school and professionally for years to come. These programs give children the opportunity to develop greater social and cognitive skills among other children and adults. Successful programs promote emotional, linguistic, cognitive, physical, and motor development.
1. Mood Charades: This is a fun, active way to teach kids what different emotions are, and how they are often physically expressed. Write out different emotions so that each student gets the chance to act out one or more emotion. A few examples are hopeful, confident, nervous, etc. Have kids raise their hands when they have a guess as an additional way to incorporate impulse control.
2. Inside Out: The recent movie Inside Out is a valuable resource for educators to teach children about emotions, impulse control, and social cues. Watch the movie with your class and come up with discussion questions using the characters and their actions for examples to help kids understand how they should respond in similar situations.
3. Perform Skits: Acting out everyday scenarios using descriptive language and talking through each action you are performing can help students learn normal conversation patterns and social cues in everyday situations. For example, have a “dinner” or go on a picnic. While sitting around the table or have the kids describe their favorite and least favorite things to eat.
4. Guessing Games: Being descriptive can help kids better understand the meaning behind speech. Put students in pairs and give them an object, scene, or person to describe and have the other students guess until they get it correct.
5. One of These Things is Not Like the Other: Dolphin, Whale, Crab, Cow. These kinds of games help kids discern patterns and understand how things associate. Bring in props, like stuffed animals to give visual examples. Then have students explain their reasoning behind their choice. Cows are not aquatic, so they are not like the other.
6. Hide and Seek, Simon Says: These games help kids develop their problem-solving skill, in addition to expanding their attention spans and focus, as they concentrate on the rule of the game and completing a specific task.
7. Races: Have students compete is small races doing different movements such as hopping, skipping, or jumping to a certain point. These different types of movements will improve their balance and coordination.
8. Freeze Dance: Put on a song for the students to dance to. When the music stops, they have to freeze and be perfectly still. This is a fun and active way to improve balance.
Motor skill development refers to the smaller, more detail-oriented tasks done with your hands, such as writing, or tying a shoe.
9. Art Projects: Doing art projects like drawing with chalk, sculpting something out of Play-Doh, or cutting out shapes with scissors is a good way to strengthen kid’s hands and fingers, and make them more self-sufficient when performing smaller, more delicate tasks.
10. Building Blocks: Another way to facilitate the development of fine motor skills is building with smaller blocks or Legos. Give kids a specific design or shape to make and have them build it by piecing together each properly shaped block.