What benefits does Child Care have for working parents?

Doesn’t it sound great to be able to advance your career and at the same time properly care for your child? Stay at home mums are quickly becoming a thing of the past as the cost of living rises, as well as the expectations from families who dare to dream, increases too. As parents, we all want what is best for our children. From the best foods to the most appropriate schooling and friends, to having numerous experiences and adventures. Putting together a child’s life (and caring for them!) does not come with a manual, but we do the best we can!

Ensuring your child is in a safe environment with proper care will mean you won’t miss out on great opportunities at your workplace. Considering child care to become part of your family’s routine could benefit your life as a working parent, as well as your child’s life too.

How child care can keep you updated on your child’s growth:

Not only is raising a child and working a hard juggle in itself, but it also leaves you with no time to be able to monitor the growth and advancement of your little one. The team at Little Saints will monitor your child, and keep you updated with their ongoing advancements as well as if there are any challenges your child may face. We offer age-appropriate activities that both boost your child’s growth and maximise your child’s potential.

How child care can impact your time management:

Child Care operating schedules tend to be flexible. They will be able to accommodate your work schedule, which will leave you with enough time to keep up with deadlines and other equally important matters. As a working mum or dad, being able to pop into the supermarket on the way home and prepare dinner without little busy hands interrupting you, is a major life-changer. Or dropping the kids to Child Care a bit earlier before work to get the endorphins pumping after a quick gym session will keep your mental health in check as well as your physical health. Time management is always going to be an area we can all get better at. We all have the same amount of hours in a day- it just depends on how we choose to spend them. That’s why many parents use Reedy Creek, Burleigh, Elanora, Palm Beach and Tallebudgeera Child Care Centres as it brings many benefits for the parents with time management.

How child care can help you access parenting tips:

Parenting is not an easy task, no matter how prepared you feel you are. Once in a while, you will need expert advice on how to handle something new or foreign. This could be about your child’s milestones like potty training, or sometimes you just want assurance that your child is

growing up ‘on the right track. Whilst friends and family members with older kids might be able to help you, advice from professional caregivers is always worth considering and trying. Child care educators are experienced and are willing to give advice and share tips around specific

topics if you require assistance as a parent. Plus there is the help from the child care community you will grow in.

How a child care community can benefit working parents:

I’m sure you would have heard the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. The social benefits for your child at a child care centre not only means you don’t have to find the additional time outside of your work schedule to factor in play dates, and other socialising appointments. It means you have a community of potential lifelong friends to journey the road of parenthood together. The mums and dads are in the same position as you sharing advice on what works for them, what growth they have seen or the worries they have playing on their minds. Having a community outside of your work and family can be a helpful addition to your family’s growth.

How child care will help you retain your job:

It’s a fast-paced world, and there are so many changes. Something could happen in your field of work within a short time. Obviously, you will have to take time off work to take care of your children after birth. But here’s the worrying part: many workplaces nowadays focus on the bottom line. They can’t financially afford to hold your position vacant for long and this can dreadfully force you to quit the job. Don’t worry though, childcare centres have qualified caregivers who can care for your child from 6 weeks old. They have programs, facilities and every other resource needed to ensure your child, no matter their age, is taken good care of.

Weighing it all up:

Many questions and conflicting statements will float around your head whilst trying to come to terms with going to work and parenting.

Do I sacrifice the much-needed income to stay at home to care for my child? Do I deal with the guilt of putting my child in care, whilst I go to work to earn an income?

Sometimes we don’t have the privilege of a decision to stay at home. We have no choice, but to go back to work to finance our family. It is important to make a decision with peace in your heart that you are doing the best thing for your family. Trusting that you have chosen a great child care centre with an amazing team of educators you can team up within your child’s journey and growth will make this transition easier for your family and for your work too.

Six Ways To Keep Class Interesting

Your school has boosted student enrolments through marketing, but how can you ensure you’re delivering on the school’s promises? That means offering a high standard of education. Teaching is hard, from planning and marking to standing in front of a class and explaining your subject to them. Whether you teach Maths, English or Chemistry, teachers across all schools and subjects struggle to make their lessons interesting to all their students.

When one group of students find your lesson boring, they can suddenly throw a spanner into the works of the whole lesson, derailing it and distracting others. A key way to avoid this is by ensuring that students are as interested in and engaged with your lessons as possible at all times. Here are our six ways to keep class interesting for your students.

1. Relate your subject to real life

When students are struggling to engage with their lessons, it is often because they find it difficult to understand how that subject can be applied outside the classroom. If you bring real-life scenarios into the classroom, your students will be able to see the application of your subject. This will then help them understand the material better, giving them more ways to apply their learning in the future.

Finding ways to relate your lessons to things the students experience is one of the best ways to keep class interesting. Picking the right examples is key because they might not understand some of the more adult experiences. Find something they do understand and that they’re interested in and they will give you more of their attention. This means they’ll stay on task and retain more of the lesson’s contents than if you were teaching them the same material in a more abstract way.

2. Play games

Gamification is a great way to keep students engaged and reinforce learning, and can be done with students at all levels. Games add a level of competition and fun to learning. They also provide lots of different, new opportunities to try out what was just taught, and students love the idea of being able to win.

Games are also useful because they can help you establish how much your students have learned. You can also see who needs a bit more help, and what misconceptions you haven’t yet corrected. All of this can be done while they have fun. Additionally, having games as a reward for if they behave well can help reinforce what they know and keep them engaged throughout the rest of the lesson as well.

3. Vary activities

Doing the same thing every lesson, or even throughout a single lesson, can be really dull for many students, especially if they’re in primary or secondary school. Instead, what you should do is have a variety of activities throughout the whole lesson. This means that your pupils don’t have to focus for too long on the same thing. This means they get a chance to do lots of different things when learning the material you’re teaching them.

A 16-year-old can concentrate for around 32-48 minutes. However, this is affected by things like their surroundings, distractions and how interested they are in the activity. By breaking up your activities. your students are engaged and interested in the lesson you’re teaching for longer.

4. Innovate with technology

Technology has been used in the classroom for a few decades now, but teachers need to keep innovating how they use technology to keep pupils interested.

In the past, kids might have been thrilled when teachers wheeled out the television to show a video. Now, they’re more likely to remain interested in your lesson when they’re doing an activity they can participate in. This might be through quizzing apps like Kahoot!, or filming videos of activities they do, or even letting them use their phones to research something in the classroom.

Turning technology into an asset rather than a distraction is difficult, but knowing how to do this will make your classes among the most interesting that your students attend. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to technology. Reinvent tried and tested activities with new, technological aspects that will keep your students interested until the very last minute of your lessons.

5. Give pupils choice

Many pupils feel forced to go to school and don’t get a say in which lessons they attend. This means they can feel trapped and that can lead to them being distracted easily.

If you give them choices in your lessons, through ways to pick what exercises they do or questions they answer, they’ll be more interested in your lessons. This can also help them to begin developing independent learning skills. They’ll need to think about what they need to learn as well as what they want to learn, and how to challenge themselves.

One way you can give students choice is to create a series of shorter activities and place them in a three by three grid. Students have to do three of the activities, and you can customise the rules – maybe they have to be in a straight line or go through the central square. This allows pupils to have a choice in what they do while also reinforcing different aspects of the learning they have done.

6. Don’t repeat yourself

Repetition is one of the few things that practically all students hate. They find it boring so they don’t learn from it. Instead, rather than repeating yourself, reinforce student learning in other ways. Use quizzes, get them to teach each other or create a resource they will be able to use when they need to revise.

If you do need to explain something again, find an alternative way. Consider using a real-life example or an activity that pupils can relate to better will help their understanding. Repeating yourself verbatim will never help and will bore your students more, so keep them interested by trying alternative explanations and activities.

Summary

Keeping your classes interesting is as simple as selecting the right learning activities to increase student engagement. This can be from gamification, technological innovation or even through establishing a real-world connection to the subject matter.

Keeping your students interested and engaged is the key to ensuring their learning is effective and thorough, and to keep students interested, they have to be involved. Give them ways to invest in your lessons, and their learning will come far more easily. When students are more interested, they’re also more likely to remember what they learn as a result.