As a day care administrator, you share a crucial responsibility of parents in preparing their children for schooling. Day care centers deal with preschool children of tender ages and hence their task is never a cakewalk. Day care centers attend to the comprehensive development of kids and shape their habits, behavior, language, comprehension ability, socializing skills and other personality aspects in a profound way.
Some studies that focused on the effect of daycare centers on a child’s academic performance at the school have surfaced some astounding observations. For instance, a study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has come up with mixed results on how daycare centers impact the entire academic careers of children. The findings of this study can help you understand how your day care center can help children succeed in school.
Positive impacts of day care on preschool kids
The study has found that those children who get to spend time in professionally managed day care centers had a better command over vocabulary by their fifth grades than those children who did not. However, the level of their achievement depended on the quality of training they received at their day care center.
Quality day care centers are able to positively impact the learning and socialization skills of children. Well trained early childhood educators can help the kids achieve a significant level of development in the above two areas.
Quite a number of primary grade teachers appreciates how professionally managed day care centers are preparing the kids for elementary school. At a very young age, children at day care centers get to learn structure, routine, and responsible habits like how to put away their coats, how to put on their shoes and other tasks they are trained to do independently.
A primary school teacher remarked, “I always ask my kindergarten students about their care prior to coming to school. Based on their responses, I may change my approach to socialization and early school skills at first, because some kids who have stayed home with a parent and haven’t interacted with peers much don’t know general school rules such as sharing, waiting in line, not touching others, and not talking when someone else is. Day care kids typically have all the social rules down pat.”
Educators in the primary schools also make a mention about the lesson plans and first hand learning that the children get to experience at the day care centers. Most day care centers teach the children general hygiene, science, basic mathematics, reading and ABCs.
Some downsides to participating in day care centers
Not everything has been said positive about the impact of day care centers on preschool kids. These studies have also pointed out some negative outcomes of day care. One big thing surfaced by these studies is that kids who are in the care of multiple care takers at the day care centers are prone to get sick more often than those kids who have been cared by single caregiver at their homes.
Even in the best maintained day care centers, children are exposed to sickness in different ways. The results could be more sick time, more doctor visits and more medical bills.
Take home
Take steps to improve the aspects that the above mentioned studies warn day care ceters about. Focus on giving your best across the different programs offered at the center. Invest in the best daycare payment software and streamline your payment collection so that you can focus more on your core activities.
