From the moment that your little one uttered out their first word, even if they said ‘dada’ instead of ‘mama’, or visa versa, you couldn’t wait for the next word, sentence, or full-blown story. It is such an exciting time to watch your child soak in the words that they hear and begin to understand how to use them and express their feelings and personality. Language development is, of course, incredibly important during your child’s young age, and parents play a pivotal role in helping them advance their skills. In this blog post, we will provide you with a few activities and ways in which you can help them during their journey. You can rest assured that Compass Child Care will provide assistance as well! We are proud to offer the best early childhood education in Blaine and Coon Rapids in a fun and safe environment for our students! If you would like to learn more about the curriculum that we offer such as STEM, art, dramatic play, and more, or are looking to enroll your kiddo, then feel free to contact us today! Talk! For the real little ones that are just learning how to speak, and even those that are starting to get a grasp on it, it’s really important that you keep the conversation going. This can be as easy as narrating the activities you guys are doing each day. Explain the steps that go into making breakfast, point at things like street signs and explain their meaning, make up stories on the go. Anything helps! Also, make sure that you are having conversations with them. As young as they are, a lot of children don’t like to be spoken to as ‘kids’, so ask them about their day, have them talk about their favorite part of their day at child care and what they learned. They’ll love knowing how much you care about them and what is going on in their lives. Read Children follow their parents’ lead, so you need to make sure that you are encouraging them to work on their language skills. Reading is a huge part of this. In a previous post, we offered some advice on helping your child develop a fascination and love of reading, it is so important! Remember that it is never too early to begin reading to your little ones. Even babies are learning while you read a story to them! Make sure that you take time every day to either read to them or have them read a storybook out to you! To further enhance their language skills, have them explain what the story means to them, what their favorite character is, etc. Visits to the local library are also a great way to boost their interest in reading. Be Careful With Screen Time
In this day and age, it is pretty impossible to ignore screens. Whether tablets, smart phones, the television, or computers, these devices are everywhere. And children love watching shows or playing games on them. We understand that it will be difficult to avoid, but it is best for your child’s development to have them watch TV or play games sparingly. When you do give them access, make sure that it is educational. There are some wonderful programs and educational games out there, but nothing compared to having them read a book or have an actual conversation! Music Enjoying music with your child is not only fun, but is very beneficial to their language development as well. Sing children’s songs with them while driving around town, dance around to their favorite tunes, even encourage them to create their own silly songs! This will also encourage them to pursue the arts and work on their creativity. In future posts, we’ll cover more ways in which you can help your little one develop their language skills so that they will be better prepared for their classes and also for their future careers! We’ll help them as well! Each and every member of our staff is committed to providing the best care for our students and you can rest assured that they are having a great time when they are with us. Contact us today to learn more about our child care center and the early childhood education that we provide in Blaine and Coon Rapids. Contrary to what you might think, not all children are born equally creative. Creativity, however, is more than just an inborn talent, which means there are things that you can do as their parent to encourage them to develop this skill. In today’s post, we’ll take a look at six tips you can follow to actively foster creativity in your child. At Compass Child Care, our passion is to help children learn and grow through fun, engaging, and immersive programming at age-appropriate levels of instruction. Our teachers strive to incorporate activities and lessons that will help your child develop their creativity as they learn. Contact us today to schedule a tour at one of our three locations in Coon Rapids, Blaine, or Isanti. 1. Don’t Provide Answers
Before we dive into this tip, let’s take a moment to clarify that you shouldn’t provide immediate answers when your child asks questions. While the questions aren’t likely to be too tough during the preschool years, it’s a great stage to practice answering their questions with a question. Practice the habit of asking them what they think before you provide an answer. This seemingly small shift will help them cultivate their creative-thinking skills, as well as allow you to help guide their thought processes as you understand their reasoning. 2. Let Them Get Dirty Unfortunately, many families unconsciously prevent their children from getting dirty. When you think back to your own childhood, however, you may remember that some of the most fun memories involve playing in the rain and mud, digging in the dirt, and more. Not only are you enabling them to use their imagination in different ways, but you will also help them to feel free and happy in a way that they may not when they are aware they need to stay clean. 3. Use “What If?” Questions What if you could be invisible for an entire day? What if you could fly? What if there were no bugs? As you think about these questions, your imagination begins to work to fill in possibilities. While you may think of more logical answers by virtue of being an adult, imagine some of the answers your child might offer. Try to come up with a “what if?” question once a day or once a week to keep their imagination muscles working. You might just be surprised at some of the fun conversations that result from these questions. 4. Solve A Family Problem Together A unique way to foster creativity in your child and help them feel like an important part of the family is to ask them to help you solve a family problem. For example, if the living room always seems to be a mess, then you might ask them what can be done about it? Not only will they need to use creative thinking to come up with possible solutions, but they also will feel like a valued member of the family. An added bonus might be that they come up with a great solution to the problem! 5. Go On A Nature Walk Take a walk with your child and look for items such as rocks, twigs, flowers, and leaves to collect. Be sure to bring a bag on the walk to make collection easier. Encourage your child to select just one of each item to ensure that you have a variety of items when you return home. Depending on your child’s age, you can ask them to tell you their observations of each object, create a story with the objects, or trace the shapes on paper as you discuss how they look, feel, and smell. 6. Provide Unstructured Time While there are many more tips for fostering creativity in your child, one of the best ways you can help is to provide unstructured time for them to play and entertain themself. Whether they play indoors or outside in the backyard, they will be developing the skills that help them to think and see things in a more creative way. Trying to plan activities for every moment of the day is one of the worst things to do if you want to foster a truly creative child. Planned activities are fun, but do not require your child to figure out how to occupy themself. The act of choosing what to do is, in itself, a truly creative accomplishment. Early Childhood Education At Compass Child Care, we know that you want your child to be creative and have fun as they learn and grow. We partner with parents to encourage these same skills in our classrooms. If you are looking for a preschool program that immerses children in music, art, science, and more, then contact us today to schedule a free tour at one of our three locations in Coon Rapids, Blaine, or Isanti. We are here and ready to help you foster your child’s creativity and curiosity. It seems everywhere you go, people are staring at screens. From the grocery store and restaurants to an airplane or car ride, everyone is entertaining themselves on their own electronic devices. While this is a part of the world we live in today, and you can’t hide underneath a bucket, staring at screens at an early age is not ideal for young children, from infants up through teenage years. Compass Child Care is an early childhood education center that offers infant care up through preschool. We focus on fostering your child’s creativity and preparing them for their school years though offering innovative and foundational educational programs that your child will not only engage with but will love as well. We have locations in Coon Rapids, Blaine, Isanti, and soon in East Bethel. Below, we’ll go over some of the benefits of outside play. Contact us today for a tour! BENEFITS OF OUTSIDE PLAY Exercise Everyone is aware that obesity, including childhood obesity, is a problem in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 18.5% of children ages 2-19 are obese in the United States, or about 13.7 million. This is largely due to two factors. One, kids and adults lead a relatively sedentary life in the developed world. From school to work, we spend the majority of the day in front of screens, instead of tilling the fields like 150 years ago. Two, the prevalence of fast food, unhealthy food, and processed food, which was just not available 150 years ago. These foods are full of saturated fats and sugars, all of which our body stores very easily when we consume them in excess. Outside play is a great way to get kids active and burn calories. From playing games and tag with their friends to playing on the monkey bars at the playground, the outdoors is full of adventures and excitement to keep kids moving and in good health. Learn About Nature Nature is overwhelmingly beautiful, even in the harshest of climates. From watching the leaves fall in autumn to watching the snowflakes cover your front yard, nature enriches your mind, brings you peace, and soothes your soul in ways just not possible otherwise. Children can learn about the food web when they see a spider catch an insect, see earthworms decompose the soil and organic matter they eat, and watch birds feed their young in the spring. When children walk in the woods and hear chipmunks, climb a mountain or go on a hike and experience the rocks beneath their feet, or frolic in the ocean blue and taste the salt water on their lips, they learn about the world around them and ultimately their role in this world. They also gain an appreciation for nature and a desire to care for this planet that is their home. Socialization If you’ve ever tried to build a fort yourself, you know it can be quite boring. However, you bring in your friends to help, and soon you are fending off a pirate attack and building lookout points. Compass Child Care notes that outside play fosters socialization opportunities. Plus, it gives kids a chance to discover their strengths. Perhaps a child discovers they can run fast, lift heavy stones, or solve a problem. Outside play offers opportunities for kids to work together, to learn to share and cooperate, and to learn how to treat others. It’s also a place where kids who might not fit in, do fit in and are accepted more readily than in a more structured play environment. Teaches Life Lessons Humans learn in many ways, one of which is by trying and failing. Nature offers a lot of opportunities for kids to try new things and take risks. This is a skill that is crucial to learn as a child that can be translated over as an adult. For example, all of the greatest inventions were preceded by failures and risk taking. For example, if Bill Gates hadn’t quite Harvard, would Microsoft exist today? Many thought he was crazy at the time, but he has made our world infinitely easier to live in. In nature, you can climb a tree to try to reach the highest branch, climb a mountain to reach the pinnacle, or cross a stream on a tree, balancing the entire way. Kids may succeed or may fail, but it is guaranteed they will learn from it and be a better person because of it. Improves Overall Health And Well-Being Compass Child Care notes that when kids engage in outside play, they are exposed to the sun. Our bodies need the sun in order to make vitamin D, which helps our bodies have strong bones and a healthy immune system. The sun also improves our mood and helps our circadian rhythm, or our sleep cycle. For children, getting enough sleep is crucial to their overall development and growth. Plus, outside kids can breath fresh air and release stress through play. CHOOSE COMPASS CHILD CARE FOR YOUR CHILD’S EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION Compass Child Care takes a holistic approach to your child’s education, beginning from infancy through the preschool years. Every child receives age-appropriate curriculum designed specifically to give them the skills they will need to be successful in the future. We teach music, movement, art and fine motor skills, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), dramatic and imaginative play, and promote social and sensory skills. Children at this age are sponges, soaking up everything around them, and our mission is to expose them to as much learning as possible. Compass Child Care offers many locations to better serve your needs, including Coon Rapids, Blaine, Isanti, and soon East Bethel. We choose early learning activities that build upon one another as your child moves through our early childhood programs. We focus on language development as infants and toddlers and carry this through early literacy programs as a preschooler. We want to positively shape your child’s learning and give them the skills to overcome challenges, all while giving your child the free time (including outside play) to begin to discover themselves and truths about the world around them. Every day we strive to foster positive self-esteem, provide opportunities for creative expression, and stimulate cognitive problem-solving. Our innovative STEM program focuses on introducing your child to the fundamental concepts of science, technology, engineering, and math from an early age with the goal of making sure your child is comfortable with these concepts as they move forward in their school years. From learning to sharing and responsibilities like cleaning up to conflict resolution, your child’s days at Compass Child Care will be full, fun, and exciting. Contact us today for enrollment information or to take a tour! |
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