Letting your child go at such an early age can be daunting. Maybe you’re afraid how they will cope with a structured environment, or you’re just worried about how you will cope with the separation. Don’t worry however as this is a time of great emotional, physical and intellectual development for your child. They’ll adapt perfectly to these new situations and gain so much from them. It’s shown to benefit kids massively by attending a high-quality preschool.
There are some great examples, like this London Nursery, where they’ll gain some invaluable skills early on down to some great nurturing. Here are some of the exciting things your kids will be getting up to. You might even be a little envious of all the fun they’ll be having!
Social Skills
Will they have any friends? That is one of the common worries any parent has when their child heads off to school for the first time. The idea of your baby being lonely is a heartbreaking image. However, many nurseries such as Wandsworth Nursery will inject social skills into their games. There will be games on helping them decipher what emotion a face is portraying, to staring contents so they can get used to eye contact.
Many activities are group based, where they must learn how to share and work together. Something as simple as taking turns and vocalising this to their fellow students goes a long way. They also start to become more independent without their parents there to turn to, learning to vocalise to others what they want or need. They learn how to start tackling big issues like deciding how to spend playtime. It is a big decision at that age!
Fine Motor Skills
You’d be surprised the amount of time working on fine motor skills it takes to do even the simplest tasks, such as holding and using a pencil. Preschools like Winchmore Nursery reguarly encourage and play with arts and crafts. Scissors is a great place to start, curring out their favourite shapes or things, and then progressing to drawing and colouring.
Other playtime activities, like playing with sand is a great example of how preschool can develop your child’s motor skills. Gripping a scoop or shovel, duping it all in a bucket and tipping it requires a lot more skill than you would expect. Looking through the sand for lost toys is always a fun way to develop finger strength too.
Creativity
At preschool, children are watched and monitored in a safe environment. As a parent, it’s hard not to try and micro-manage your child and try and control what they do. Preschools like Crouch End Nursery practice a lot of free-form play. This allows your child to explore and really experiment with all these new toys and games.
Preschoolers tend to focus on process rather than the end product, so they’ll experiment through new properties like mud, sand, water or glue without any real goal. Preschools understand this method of expression and support fully them exploring their creativity through a process. Therefore it is important to not try and control your child’s process, let them lead the way!
How to Use Letters and Numbers
These are the most obvious things you’d expect your child to learn. It can be dangerous at home to try and teach these though. It’s easy, right? Wrong. You can’t sit down and teach them in the traditional sense, it must be done in a nurturing group environment, where they can go at their own pace. Nurseries like Finchley Nursery practice an approach where they learn them through play and activities. This can include playing with labelled blocks, having story time or even asking your child to count how many toys they want. At this age, practice and repeated exposure is everything.
Hopefully, these will help show you the benefits of letting your child attend a preschool. It can be so difficult to let go of your baby but they will benefit so much from being exposed to this environment. The learning doesn’t stop when they get home though! Make sure you ask them about their day and keep going about supporting their development at home.
