How can you support your child's preschool education at home? Daycare provides hours of activities, lessons, explorations, and experiments that help your child to develop new skills. Take a look at what you need to know about childcare services, learning, and the best ways to extend your preschooler's education after they go home.

Talk To the Teacher 

What does your child do in their pre-kindergarten class? Don't assume the child care services center follows a curriculum that you could find online or in a resource book. Each preschool has its own set of learning activities, expectations, educational approaches, and more. While you can count on common content areas (such as early literacy, the arts, science, early math, and social studies), you will need specifics before you extend your child's learning at home.

Talk to the teacher and ask for more information on specific lessons, themes, or activities that the children engage in during their day in care. Some educators provide parents with a weekly or monthly schedule of activities. If your child's teacher doesn't, ask them if they can email or discuss themes, content areas, and activities. 

Talk To Your Child

What does your child enjoy doing during their day in preschool? Do they find joy in the book area, spend most of the morning finger painting and drawing, or explore in the science section for hours? Before you jump into at-home activities, talk to your child about what interests them. This can help you to expand on what happens during the daycare day and make the most of your child's learning.

If your child is reluctant to talk about what they do in school, start with a prompt. These could include:

• What's the best thing you did in preschool today? This open-ended question can help your child to think about their favorite activities.

• Did you read a book? Story-time is an easy extension to try at home. If your child can recall parts of a book, you can turn this interesting activity into an art project, dramatic play experience, or discussion time.

• What did the teacher talk about? Does your child's classroom have a circle time or a similar group meeting? Ask your child what they remember from this time.

You may need to try several different types of activities at home before you figure out what truly interests your child. Provide your preschooler with opportunities to extend everything from arts and crafts time to math lessons. The more interest and engagement you see during these activities, the better you know which areas to work on at home.

To find out more, contact a company like Learning Tree Schools.