Kids can learn so many amazing skills when they are in a caring, quality childcare setting! These skills not only benefit them in the now, but they lay foundations to build on as they continue to grow and branch out in their lives, activities, and personalities.
Let’s check out 4 positive life skills children learn while in childcare!
1) Social Skills
When kids attend daycare, they are presented with a lot of different opportunities to develop their social and emotional skills. Learning how to interact with other people in both positive and negative scenarios allows kids to stretch their social skills and allows them to learn how to navigate tough emotions that can come along with these situations. Research also confirms that consistent socialization in early childhood can have a huge impact on prosocial behavior later on in life.
Kids also benefit socially and emotionally by learning the values of sharing, working together, kindness, and respecting others. Learning these skills well early on in life will be invaluable to them as they grow up.
Interacting with people other than their parents can give kids confidence in themselves and healthy trust in other safe adults.
This confidence can help them overcome some of the separation anxiety many children feel when they first start attending a childcare or school program. Interacting regularly with other supportive adult caregivers and friends their own age can help alleviate their fears of being separated from mom and dad.
3) Cognitive Skills
Activities and learning games help to sharpen a child’s cognitive skills, and a quality daycare center will offer a wide variety of these. Kids will learn language skills, colors, numbers, letters, and more. Kids also learn and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills through play. Kids learn so much when they explore the world around them with curiosity, and a good daycare center will have plenty of these opportunities available for children.
4) Discipline
A quality childcare center runs on structure and routine, which is good because so do kids.
Children crave consistency in their lives, and the structure and routines of a daycare environment can provide kids with a sense of stability and familiarity every day. A set schedule for snack time, nap time, and playtime instill anticipation in a child for the day will bring but also provides kids a hidden benefit of beginning to understand and practice time management and discipline.
Hours of fun with friends isn’t the only thing that a child will walk away with from a quality daycare; they will have begun laying the foundation for many important life skills as well!