As the owner of a daycare, one of your priorities is setting up fun and engaging activities for your daycare kids. These activities play a crucial role in determining the quality of your business and help to ensure your kids are happy and your parents are satisfied. Play is an essential element of early childhood learning. Finding ways to incorporate play that encourages skill development is a great way to introduce new experiences into your daycare.
Introduce Hands-On STEAM Projects
There are so many great ways to incorporate new learning through play, so why not set up some exciting STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) projects?
Baking Bread
Kids simply love to get their hands dirty, so put the Play-Doh aside and teach them how to bake bread instead. They’ll have fun measuring the ingredients for the dough and will enjoy the part where they get to knead the dough. Best of all, once the bread is baked, they can enjoy a tasty treat they’ve made from scratch!
Plant a Garden
Planting a garden is a great way to nurture a child’s love for nature. They learn so much by planting a seed in the soil and understanding the conditions needed to make a seedling sprout. If you have a large outdoor area with space to plant a garden, that’s ideal, but even some individual planting pots inside the classroom will work well.
Tactile Crafts for Skill Development
Kids are curious by nature and love to touch things; this is a large part of how they learn about their environment. Tactile play is a form of play that involves the sense of touch. It encompasses various sensations such as textures, temperatures, and movement. When kids participate in tactile play, they can improve their range of skills, from socio-emotional development to fine motor skills.
Create sensory bins and add spoons, funnels, scoops, and tongs for exploration. For dry bins, a variety of dry foods work well, such as fun pasta shapes, rice, birdseed, beans, and grains. With messy sensory bins, try cooked spaghetti, water and ice, kinetic sand, or soap foam.
Measuring the Success of Your Childcare Programs
The biggest indicator of success in your daycare program is how your kids respond to the activity—does the activity engage their curiosity, and are they keen and focused on the task?
Teaching through activities that are fun is the best way to nurture skills and promote self-confidence in children. It’s also beneficial to make note of any challenges the children have so you can monitor their improvement over time and share these insights with their parents.
Promoting Parent Engagement
Parents love to hear about what their kids are doing at their childcare centre, so be sure to communicate information about new activities. They’ll benefit from knowing what the activities entail and the type of skills they are aimed at nurturing. When parents understand what their kids are working on during the day, they can support similar continued learning at home.
How a Daycare Communication App Strengthens the Parent/Daycare Relationship
It’s impossible to properly connect with every parent at drop-off and pick-up as these are typically very hectic times of the day. The TimeSavr app is designed to streamline communication with parents so they are easily informed about their child’s progress and the activities they engage in from day to day.
Send Mobile App Messages for a Quick Response
Use the messaging app to send important reminders and time-sensitive information so parents can prepare for the following day. Maybe they need to send in craft supplies, or they’ve forgotten something important that’s needed for daycare activities that day.
Make Parents Smile with Photos and Videos
Send parents photos and videos of the fun activities of the day. They’ll love to see the delight on their children’s faces as they’re eating their freshly baked bread or watching the slimy spaghetti slide through their fingers back into the bin. These are images that parents will treasure, so be sure to share these precious moments from time to time.
Take Your Daycare Business to the Next Level with the TimeSavr App
Save time by automating your administrative tasks so you can spend more time on the fun stuff! Get your weekends back to do as you please by automating registration and time-consuming invoicing tasks. With this extra time on your hands, you can focus on developing great programs to nurture your kids, improving each child’s experience, and benefit from a high approval rating from their parents. To find out more, book your free demo today!