When parents sign their children up for extracurricular activities, it’s often because the child expresses an interest in a particular sport or art form. Though these activities can help children stay busy and out of trouble, they also teach kids important skills which they can carry with them throughout their lives. These would include: 1. […]
Education
Gymnastics Center Goals: Developing Physical Fitness Goals for Kids, Part 2
At your gymnastics center, you want to do more than provide one more “extracurricular activity” for the kids you serve: you want to help them establish healthy habits that will lead to lifelong physical fitness. In that endeavor, it’s important to not only understand what “physical fitness” entails but also the most significant areas of […]
Gymnastics Center Goals: Developing Physical Fitness Goals for Kids, Part 1
When it comes to physical fitness, do you ever wonder exactly what it entails? Or to pose the question differently, what constitutes a healthy lifestyle or suitable fitness goals for children? Especially where kids are concerned, the obesity epidemic may be a significant symptom, but it’s also only a symptom of a more pervasive problem. […]
Encouraging Healthy Habits in Your Childcare Center: Movement, Part 2
Movement is a healthy part of life for those of all ages (see Part 1), but it’s especially important for preschoolers. While educational standards soar, the youngest children are being robbed of the very thing that they need in order to lay the foundation for healthy emotional, social, and cognitive development. Exercise and Experience Many […]
Encouraging Healthy Habits in Your Childcare Center: Movement, Part 1
While seeing young children sitting quietly at desks and doing worksheets may seem like a great start to a successful academic career (see this previous post), that kind of setting is actually far from ideal for the developmental needs of young children. Instead, movement and sensory experiences provide children with what their bodies and brains […]
Encouraging Healthy Habits in Your Childcare Center: Imaginative Play
While it won’t make its way onto standardized tests or college entrance exams, movement is an important aspect of how children learn. Your childcare center has the important opportunity to help lay the foundation for later academic achievement by giving the children in your care opportunities to play, build, and create. While those kinds of […]
Child Care Tips – Teaching Life Skills: Sharing, Part 2
In Part 1 we introduced the topic of sharing by discussing motivation and some basic means of teaching sharing. From modeling sharing behavior in front of children and pointing it out when you witness it in others to positively affirming sharing behavior when you see the child engage in it, you’ll probably be well on […]
Child Care Tips – Teaching Life Skills: Sharing, Part 1
Sharing is definitely an important life skill, when it comes to getting along with others. Children will not only utilize this skill throughout their childhood, but they’ll also reap reward throughout adulthood, both socially and professionally, if they learn to share well. For young children, learning to share can definitely be a challenge; however, this […]
The Importance of Rest Time for the 5 & Under Set
If you manage a child care program for children 5 and under, you don’t have to be told how important a scheduled rest time or nap time is. But just in case you need to be reminded — or need some support for this aspect of your daily schedule — we’ll discuss some reasons for […]
Where Bridges to Community Volunteers Serve
Bridges to Community (bridgestocommunity.org) is a poverty alleviation-focused nonprofit organization. Our motto, “building communities, changing lives,” encapsulates both the how and why of what we do. Our volunteers work with community leaders in impoverished regions of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to accomplish these important goals. In this article, we will focus on the criteria […]