Preschool is a huge step for some kids, but not nearly as big as the step they’d be taking if they went without it. At the Brightside Academy in Northern Ohio, we help children get ready for the massive step that is kindergarten, by helping them get prepared for both the social and academic aspects. We believe in a whole person-centered approach at the Brightside Academy, meaning we look after all areas of your child’s well being.
Without addressing health and fitness or acceptable social functioning, all of the typical academia in the world won’t get your child to the point of being a well rounded and happy person. Proper grammar is useless if you’re too afraid to talk and all the math and science skills in the world won’t help someone who can’t add up social context or take its cues. We work hard to make sure that your child is not only progressing in their school work, but in their lives as well. Without regard to typical subject matter, here are five areas where your child should be developing during preschool.
5 Developmental Areas To Improve During Preschool
While there have been many children who haven’t been fortunate enough to have early childhood education through daycare or preschool, it doesn’t mean that it’s not of vital importance to your child’s potential development. Being around others and engaging in the activities and tasks provided everyday at the Brightside Academy in Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo are early steps to your child becoming a well rounded person and adult.
Physical Health and Development
As far as your child’s physical health and development goes, one of the most effective things we provide for your student is a space where they’re simply forced to engage. Not by coercion, but by their own natural curiosities. One of the most important things that children can develop in their early educational years are motor skills, both fine and gross motor skills.
Gross motor skills involve the larger muscle movements and usually come first. Achieving things such as crawling, walking, and running on time will help keep your children in line with where they should be physically, while growing but not developing these skills could be detrimental to their long term well being and development in both physical and intellectual terms. Next comes fine motor skills, which involve the fingers and other small muscles. These motor skills are critical to our everyday lives because they help us do basically everything we need to do as adults.
Engaging in physical exercise and activities in preschool that require the development of fine motor skills helps your child get to the point where they’re ready to start doing things like running without falling over, holding a pencil, and creating. This turns out to be critical for both physical well being and intellectual development, as the abilities your child’s motor skills unlock include their first steps towards critical and creative thinking as they start to explore the world around them with their hands and feet.
Creative and Critical Thinking Skills
As we stated, your child’s fine motor skills play a major role in how they become critical or creative thinkers. All children are little scientists, but sometimes we just fail to see it. The truth is, when your children are playing, their brains and bodies are hard at work, figuring out not only what works for them, but what works out in the world. When a child builds a house from blocks, fills in the missing shape, or even pulls someone else’s hair, they are testing the world and what its reaction will be. Slowly the houses become sturdier, the blocks go in faster, and those who didn’t like the consequences of pulling hair stop pulling hair.
Learning Social Interaction
As with how many of us handle situations as adults, children learn how to modify their social behaviors through critical thinking about how others perceive their behavior. Using the hair-puller as one example, it may not be immediate, but over time, your child should learn why hair-pulling is unacceptable in day-to-day life. Bringing them to a child care facility is one sure-fire way to help ensure that your child develops more socially than they would otherwise. Children get more chances for interaction, and are encouraged to practice interacting through games and activities. Along with bringing social interaction to the table in the first place, we always place emphasis on positive and effective communication. Often, when your child makes a mistake, our approach will be to help them practice emotional recognition, so they know why they acted in a negative way and how they can avoid it in the future.
Emotional Recognition and Response
One of the ways your child can rapidly improve on their self-esteem and self-confidence is by practicing emotional recognition from an early age. This is a big key for good mental health, as when we understand our reactions and feelings on things, then we can start to reshape them. We’ll help your child be conscious of their feelings, how to dissect them, and how positive actions typically lead to more positive results. Down the road, this could help your child find their passions and their purpose.
Building on Language and Literacy
In the Brightside Academy’s preschool program, your child will continue to develop their language skills and will start to learn about letters through various games and activities. Between the interaction from teacher to student and student to student, your child will have ample opportunities to practice. Formal activities and one-on-one games will be used to get your child familiar with letters, so that they have an easier time with the entire alphabet in kindergarten.
Choose the Brightside Academy for Your Ohio Preschool
If you’re looking for an early education and school readiness program for your son or daughter before they go into kindergarten, then the Brightside Academy wants to be your choice for daycare, child care, and preschool, so we can ensure that your child is a lifetime learner by helping you form the foundation they need to succeed not only in the classroom, but in life as well.
