So much more than day care!
As an early childhood educator, I am often challenged by the term “day care” so often used to describe the services we provide. When I hear that word, it is as if someone is scraping their nails down a blackboard. While it is true that we provide custodial care to young children while their parents are at work, we do SO much more during the time we share with them.
First, we begin each day by helping the child join their friends in a new setting and separate from their parents at drop off time. We transition them into their classroom with engaging activities and learning opportunities intentionally embedded in their play experiences. We link that learning to their current knowledge and expand that cognitive knowledge by making new connections to their world.
Yes, we PLAY but in doing that we LEARN.
We share meals while teaching manners and ways to positively socially interact with others. We enjoy the outdoors and using our gross motor skills to walk, climb, jump, run and swing. We learn important life lessons like how to share, show empathy to a friend who is sad and how to express our feelings in a safe and positive way. We teach them how to be a good friend, how to accept other people and solve problems together. We build things and we tear them down. We count things (lots and lots of things), we explore patterns and begin to learn early math. We read stories and do finger plays and sing songs. We think about science by experimenting with trial and error and cause and effect. We lay the foundation for all future learning. Above all, we hope that we instill in them the love of learning for a lifetime. But it all starts here…
After all “Teaching is the profession that creates all others!”
