Fun Playing Ideas Employed In The Williamsburg Northside Daycares

Daycares in Williamsburg Northside promote many types of activities to keep children engaged.

Here are a few indoor play ideas to engage kids in the best way possible:

Music & Movement:

The point of dancing is to move your body. In case of young kids, it can go a long way in their physical development.

Freeze Dance: A common practice in many Williamsburg Northside Daycares, this dance form has simple rules- keep dancing to the music, and freeze when the music is paused. With awkward ‘freezing’ poses and funny faces, this game has always been a hit with kids.

Fill in the Blank Songs: It involves the teacher singing out well-known nursery rhymes, and intentionally skipping words for children to fill. It helps in their memory development.

Obstacle Course: Make a tiny obstacle course with playing blocks and other classroom items, and let the children find the right way across the course. It helps build their motor skills, and kids learn to be more careful around obstacles.

Scavenger Hunts: Think of a theme, jot down hints, hide objects all around the class and let the children embark upon an epic scavenger hunt, guided by hints and clues.

Yoga: Teach simple yoga poses to the children. Although they might not be able to do it properly, the fun factor of kids doing yoga always helps.

Arts & Crafts:

Sky is not the limit for imagination and a good imagination helps develop creativity skills in kids. Employ a number of drawing and painting activities to fuel the children’s minds and ignite their creative side.

Collage-Making: Teach them how to make photo collages, and ask them to use their own approach in collage-making.

Self-portraits: Encourage children to draw themselves using a mirror and canvas, and paint it in their desired colors.

Origami Basics: Teach the kids how to make shapes and objects using origami paper. Ask them to try making their own designs and let their imagination run wild.

Abacus: Quite a few daycares in Williamsburg Northside have abacus education as a part of their day-to-day activities for the older kids to help in the development of problem-solving and motor skills.

Why I’d Recommend This Williamsburg Northside Preschool My Child Attended

When Joshua turned one and a half, I realized it was about time for me to start looking for a preschool for him.

As I had the time to take care of him when he was younger, I was exempted from the otherwise compulsory duty of finding a daycare for him.

I had to start from scratch while looking for a Williamsburg Northside preschool for him to attend as applications were due in the fall before enrollment.

I was sure about one thing- I did not want a preschool that focused too much on structure as I felt that overly-structured preschool programs do more harm than good.

There should be plenty of room for free play and child-mediated exploration, both of which give wings to a child’s imagination and tug on his/her impressionable, yet intelligent mind and nurture a child’s intrinsic abilities.

I felt that the Reggio Emilia approach was a good place to start- hence, I started looking for preschools in the Williamsburg Northside preschool which followed this preschool philosophy.

I filtered out the viable options from the lot and delved in deeper for more details about the preschools.

One particular Williamsburg Northside preschool caught my eye for 3 reasons:

1. It followed the Reggio Emilia approach,
2. It had a lower school too that was run by the same parent institution, located not far. (The lower school also followed the Reggio Emilia approach) and lastly,
3. It was a minute away from us.

Now, coming back to the more important factors that led me to choose this preschool, now Joshua that has graduated from the same and is attending lower school:

• The preschool had a balanced curriculum that included subjects like community service, music and art, apart from the conventional ones like math and science,
• It focused on all the core developmental areas which included complex and analytical thinking,
• The programs were targeted to encourage the children to be independent-thinking, creative and contributing individuals, capable of logical reasoning.

These points more or less sum up the school philosophy, which, for me, was all that I wanted from a preschool for Joshua.

Preparing Your Child For A Preschool

Placing your child in a preschool is very essential for his/her overall developmental outcomes. Since preschools provide the first learning experience for kids, they can be intimidating (to say the least) for kids and parents alike, if parents haven’t prepared their kids beforehand. A preschool setting is very warm and interactive, however there are still potentialities that your kid may not be able to cope with that environment. Here are a number of things that you, as a parent, could do in order to make the first learning experiences of preschool fun for your kid.

Make your kid accustomed to the preschool

Kids typically have a hard time opening up to individuals or an environment they're not acquainted with. You got to take care of this by giving your children a tour of the preschool they’re going to be placed at. This gives children enough time to induce in conjunction with the preschool and its learning methods. And once they do finally get into a preschool, they don’t feel any sense of paranoia or anxiety as the place is already known to them. You can additionally explain all the fun activities in the preschool program to your kids, so that they seem to possess a positive impression of the preschool.    

Buy some preschool exercise material to stimulate the classroom setting  

You can get your kid some preschool exercise materials like books, canvas, coloring box, and more before sending them to the preschool. The dry run can facilitate a child in not facing any difficulties in the preschool while working with these materials. Teaching your kid how to use colors or how to cut with scissors is an excellent vantage for them. More or less, this is an offshoot of the last point – but with actually knocking some practical knowledge in your kid (figuratively speaking). 

Expose your kid to alternative youngsters

Preschool is a social environment where kids learn how to interact with people more effectively. For each interactive activity that goes down in a very preschool, there's a group of kids assigned to that, to make it more effective. Group activities can enhance the development of children as they learn to work as a team or the way to board a society, in a simpler sense. However, some kids have zero chill around individuals and they can get claustrophobic around so many unknown faces – no joke. Before sending your kid to a preschool, you ought to expose them to other kids to ascertain how they react around people. Besides that, you must perpetually encourage your child’s involvement in cluster activities. 

Allow your kid to be independent

Preschool is the first time (maybe?) when a child is away from his or her parents. And although preschool takes care of their children with finesse and caters to their needs, it’s still a new place where children, in some ways, are on their own. Preschools such as Williamsburg Northside Preschool have a very active environment. Active in the terms that there's perpetually something going on in there. In order for your kid to keep up with this, you ought to start training them to be more self-reliable early, early by a really long shot. So by the time they’re in a preschool, they’ll do just fine. 

Working way ahead of your time can make the learning experience for your child even more effective. If this appears complicated to you, try creating a listing of the things that your kid needs to be aware of before he/she is in a preschool. Attempt to incorporate all the above points in your list, and see how some preparation can entirely amend the preschool experience for your kid.