Did you know? By the age of five, 85% of a child’s brain is fully developed.
Early learning is critical to development and can help determine a child’s future success in kindergarten and beyond. Effective learning at this age is about much more than learning ABC’s; true growth and development happen when families and schools focus on developing essential skills that will benefit their children for the rest of their lives.
At Day Early Learning, we’ve identified seven essential skills to prepare our students for success in kindergarten and beyond. Here’s a list of the skills and a few ways parents can help their children acquire them:
- Encourage initiative: Foster leadership skills by allowing your child to make individual decisions like what outfit to wear or which book to read.
- Strengthen persistence and resilience: Engage in hands-on activities like puzzles to provide space, time and support for multiple attempts at success.
- Spark curiosity: Promote dialogue by asking open-ended questions and following where the conversation leads.
- Ignite imagination: Design activities and environments that tap into your child’s interests and stimulate their imagination.
- Support flexible thinking: Offer a balanced mix of child-initiated and adult-initiated activities, encompassing quiet and active, indoor and outdoor experiences.
- Nurture expression: Encourage thinking, reasoning, questioning, and experimenting to help your child articulate their thoughts.
- Foster collaboration: Aid in building your child’s relationships by teaching turn-taking, active listening, and providing comfort.
Ages 0-5 are some of the most important years of your child’s life. If you’re looking for early care and education that instills these essential skills in their students and prepares them for a successful future, consider Day Early Learning.
Day Early Learning is a network of premier, community-based early learning centers that fosters essential skills in children, invests in the next generation of teachers and advances the science of early education. We’re dedicated to providing the highest-quality early care and education for children from birth to pre-K in our 12 Indiana centers.
