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One for all and all for a tidy room

5 Ways to Make Chores Fun for Preschool Age Children

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Involving children in household chores at the preschool age has many potential benefits. Gaining a sense of responsibility, independence, self-reliance, and empathy are just a few of the developmental breakthroughs that can occur as a result of your children participating in their household chores. Not only will it help you out by having one less thing on your to-do list, but it will help your preschool age children learn skills that will last a lifetime, including time management, task prioritization, and basic organization techniques.

Luckily, chores don’t have to be a drag! You can turn them into fun games and activities that your preschooler will love! Here are a few ideas that will get preschool age children started on their chores:

  1. Play the Freeze Dance Pick Up Game. Children at the preschool age are old enough to put away their own toys, but most kids don’t have as much fun putting them away as they did taking them out. The solution is turning this tidying up chore into a fun and interactive game of freeze dance. Blast your child’s favorite upbeat song as they dance and put as many toys away as possible while the music plays. When the music stops, well – you know the drill.
  2. Film a cleaning commercial. Whip out your smartphone or video camera next time there’s a spill and tell your kids that they are going to be the star of a new cleaning commercial! Hand them a wet towel and the cleaning product in a spray bottle (of course you’ll want to make sure that it’s a gentle one without any strong chemicals or fumes) and start filming away as they wipe up that mess!
  3. Kick off a laundry race. Make sure you have a few laundry baskets ready because your children will be eager to play this cleaning game. Blow your whistle and shout whites, colors, or darks! Your children will be racing to their rooms as fast as they can to grab their dirty laundry and come back with the color that you requested.
  4. Play cleaning Jenga. Here’s where you can really get creative by writing an age-appropriate chore on the side of each log in the Jenga stack. Your child will be directed by the cleaning activity written on the side of the log that caused the stack to fall.
  5. Hold a tidying contest. This one is all about speed. Who can tidy up their mess the fastest? You can make a scoreboard. Record all the times and give them the opportunity to beat their previous times, or the times of their friends and siblings. This is a great way to incorporate a little friendly competition and get the job done fast!

How Chores Help the Learning Process at the Preschool Age

At Carpe Diem Private Preschool, we use an interdisciplinary approach to learning in which children learn through doing and reflecting. Our experiential learning process helps children build character and leadership, as well as gross motor skills. We believe that involving your preschool age child in chores at home is a great way to continue this experiential learning process outside of the classroom environment.

 

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The Top 10 Benefits of Summer Camp

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Summer camp is so much more than just a way to keep children occupied and entertained throughout the summer months. You may be surprised to find out that summer camp actually has many positive effects on children, some of which can last a lifetime. In fact, many child development experts agree that the summer camp experience is valuable in guiding children to become more mature socially, intellectually, emotionally, morally, and physically.

Although the benefits of summer camp are seemingly endless, we have provided our top 10 picks on how we believe children benefit from this experience:

  1. Boosting self-esteem and confidence – Because summer camp isn’t about grades or test scores, it removes the somewhat consuming sense of competition that the school year brings with it. A less competitive atmosphere, coupled with a wide-range of opportunities to succeed and explore, gives summer camp the potential to really boost a child’s sense of confidence and self –esteem.
  2. Finding unique interests – Many camps specialize in certain subjects or sports, such as video game design, archery, golf, STEM, and many more. If something interests your child, summer camp is the perfect place for her to discover and explore new interests.
  3. Staying physically active – Summer camp programs incorporate many different sports and outdoor activities for children to participate in daily. From running and jumping to dancing and swimming, summer camp allows children to spend their day being physically active.
  4. Developing life-long skills – Through their social experiences at camp, whether it be through daily activities, sports, or field trips, children are constantly evolving. Some important life-long social skills such as leadership, communication, and participation are developed during summer camp.
  5. Gaining independence – Something as simple as letting your child choose what kind of camp he wants to attend can help build independence. During camp, there are often many opportunities for children to foster that sense of independence. For instance, your child may revel in the fact that he gets to participate in activities of his choosing during an unstructured play time.
  6. Experiencing new things – Camp is full of opportunities for taking a child out of her comfort zone. At camp, kids get to try new activities, explore new topics, and dive deep into areas that they might not have otherwise known about.
  7. Reconnecting with nature – Instead of being stuck inside glued to the TV or tablet all day, summer camp allows a child to be outside and develop a deeper appreciation of nature.
  8. Sharing a sense of community – Through their interactions with other children and teachers at summer camp, children develop a sense of community and hone in on some important life skills. Caring, fairness, citizenship, and trustworthiness are some of the many community-oriented service skills that can be developed during camp experiences.
  9. Building good character traits – Attending a summer camp helps a child gain self-respect and helps them build other life-long character traits such as responsibility, resourcefulness, and resilience.
  10. Making true friends – Summer camp is the ideal place for kids to make new friends and strengthen existing friendships. At camp, kids are free from the stressors and pressures of school. This often allows children to relax and open up more. Through singing, laughing, playing, and talking, camp experiences can help develop new friendships and bring friends closer together.

Summer Camps at Carpe Diem Private Preschool

At Carpe Diem Private Preschool, we offer an exciting 11-week summer camp program in arts, humanities, sciences, and more! Each week features a different theme, which allows children to discover many new interests throughout the summer.  We also offer a special STEM program that allows children to explore topics such as marine biology, engineering, archaeology, sports science, coding and gaming.

 

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How to Get Your Tot to Be Tidy

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Nothing is more frustrating than coming home from a long day and finding your child’s room a complete mess. With toys and clothes scattered everywhere around the room, it’s hard not to lose your mind right then and there. Thankfully, there’s another option – just teach your child to clean the clutter themselves!

5 Ways to get your tot to be tidy

Keep things at a child’s level. Looking at things from your child’s eye level will give you a better perspective on how to help them get organized. For example, closet hanging rods may be out of reach for your little ones, so lowering the rod and accompanying it with child-sized hangers will make it easier for them to put away his own clothing and keep the closet organized.  It’s also important to make sure that things like cubbies and dresser drawers are at their level so they can put things away on their own.

Teach your child organizational skills. Instead of getting mad at your children for leaving their room a total mess, teach them skills and maintenance methods that they can use to organize their room. This will allow them to adopt efficient ways to keep their room clean on a daily basis. One way to do this is to ask yourself what’s working and what’s not working for them. Also, be sure to know what is important to your child so you can explain to them why staying organized is important in a way that is meaningful to them.  For example, if they are frustrated because they can’t find a favorite toy, be sure to use that as an opportunity to explain how being organized and putting things back where they belong can help them find their things more easily!

Create a system.  Sorting, storing, and simplifying will make it so much easier for your child to keep their room organized. Start by keeping clothing sorted according to style and season. For example, you can keep all pants in one drawer and all shirts in a separate drawer. Things like jackets and hoodies can be stored in the back of the closet, under the bed, or on higher shelves during the summer months when your child won’t be using them.

Label everything. Printing out photos of the inside contents of a drawer and slapping them on the outside of each corresponding drawer, will help remind your child of where each item belongs. You can also put them on the inside of toy boxes or storage containers so if they decide to dump the stuff out, they will still know where everything goes back by looking at the photo inside.

Make a maintenance routine. Creating a regular routine can help your child stay organized and not feel overwhelmed. It’s usually a good idea to break things up according to time of day. So you can assign tasks like making the bed and putting dirty clothes in the hamper as the “morning pickup” and tasks like putting toys away and getting their outfits ready for the next day as the “evening pickup.”

Our Take

At Carpe Diem, our aim is to create an invigorating and orderly environment for your child. We believe that this kind of balanced environment leads to inspiring thoughts and good habits that will follow them into the future. That is why we keep all of the materials in our classrooms at “child level” – not the teacher’s /adult level. We know that when a child gets things and puts them away by themselves they are experiencing independence, which is a fundamental part of child development.