Quiet times for kids in Early Learning Centres
Quiet times for kids: We pride ourselves on keeping the children in our care happy and fully occupied at all times.
Quiet times for kids
However, our Nollamara early learning centre also recognises that younger children need ‘down times’ too. We make sure they’re built into the typical day’s schedule.
Energy ‘crashes’
Long before most children reach a preschool early learning centre, parents will have seen a very typical pattern. That usually involves their child putting out vast amounts of apparently inexhaustible energy, then suddenly ‘crashing’ and needing a sleep or some calm time to recharge their batteries.
Sometimes these ‘crashes’ can be near instantaneous but at others they start showing they’re coming, as the child gets grizzly or unhappily emotional. A short nap and they’re back to normal!
This is all perfectly normal. Each child is different in terms of how many such energy-empty situations they create and of course, the frequency and duration of them will also vary by age.
At Read2Grow Nollamara, we have seen every possible variation of this! That’s why we have rest areas children can go to if they simply need a quick nap. Depending upon the age of the child, we may also build in nap-times to help forestall children pushing themselves a little too far and getting grizzly as a result.
Time outs
The position with slightly older children may be different.
Some may still require a nap, whereas others may be moving away from that. What they all will require though is some ‘down time’. That essentially means some time where they’re free, within reason, to do their own thing outside of a structured environment.
We make allocations in our day’s planning for exactly that. These are the sessions where children can exercise their imaginations to structure their activities as they wish. In some cases, they might simply decide to do nothing much more than read a book quietly. In others, they might choose to play games inside or outside.
This is, essentially, what in school we’d have known as ‘break’ or ‘play time’. However, it’s not just about playing games or turning children into a play yard to run about for a specified period of time. This is about giving them tools, games and materials to explore as they wish, free of any program-driven objectives.
Studies have shown that such time-outs from formal development activities are essential and help children to assimilate what they’ve already experienced and learned in the period beforehand.
Individually tailored
We recognise though that children differ in their needs in this and many other respects.
Our trained and experienced personnel will recognise any signs that an individual child needs their own time-out and we’ll always have quiet spaces available where they can do their own thing (or doze) free from the excitement and hubble-bubble of the typical Read2Grow Nollamara early learning centre day!
If you’d like to know more about our services and facilities, we’re always available to show you around. Just give us a call and make an appointment to come down and see us in action!
