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Why is Early Childhood Development Important?
Early childhood development begins at birth and lays the foundation for managing skills and behaviour throughout our lives.
Providing Quality Childcare Since 2012 • Infants, Toddlers & Preschool • Daycare Centre
Early childhood represents the period between birth and the age of five. Cognitive development during early childhood begins when a child is born and refers to building skills like numeracy and vocabulary, pre-reading and language.
Early childhood development represents the foundation for the children’s entire future. Interacting with their environments shapes their brains, and their childhood experiences impact their behaviour, learning ability and potential, mental, emotional and physical health, and their capacity to manage conflicts and bounce back from adversity throughout life.
What Happens During Early Childhood?
In the first five years of life, more than one million neurons are created each second, enabling children to learn more than at any other point.
By the time babies understand or speak their first words, they already know the particular sounds of their native language, which sounds to combine for creating words, as well as the tempo and rhythm of words. This is why children in their early years can learn more languages, unlike adults who experience difficulties doing the same thing. Experiences that affect brain development include vision, sound, smell, touch, food, thoughts, injury, disease and other factors.
The brain develops differently depending on what happens during these years: poor-quality experiences and adverse conditions prevent children from reaching their full potential. Children need to strive, and they can by providing them safety and protection from harm, health care and nutrition, opportunities for learning through talking, singing and playing, and a loving environment. When all these requirements are satisfied, their brains and bodies develop harmoniously, turning children into healthy, educated, responsible and contributing members of society.
So why is early childhood development important?
It builds the foundation for children’s entire lives
The attention, support, understanding and love we provide children during their first years represent the foundation of their life. They will enable children to build healthy relationships with others and have an optimistic view of life. The first relationships children develop are those with their parents. If these relationships are healthy and supportive, they will influence all the relationships they will create throughout life.
Early childhood development helps develop and practice resilience
Managing one’s behaviour in challenging circumstances is one of the most valuable tools for having a fulfilled life. Resilience or bouncing back from adversity is a skill that can be developed from early childhood by creating a secure and socially-fair environment with clear expectations and predictable consequences. Early learning centres, kindergartens and other types of child care centres are environments in which children will encounter challenging situations at times: arguments with other children, rules they do not wish to obey, accidents in the playground, losing a game, other children not liking them or missing their parents. Resilience helps children manage these difficulties and prepares them for coping with or overcoming challenges later in life.
It impacts their emotional and social development
Emotional and social development is the process that helps us acquire the skills we need for creating and maintaining relationships, have a positive feeling about ourselves and be functional members of society. These skills include communication, cooperation, recognising and managing own emotions and the emotions of others and regulating own behaviour.
Babies cannot talk. However, they detect their caregiver’s emotions using their senses and emotions. This is how they know when we are sad or upset and will imitate that feeling or emotion. It enables them to become more and more aware of the fact that there are several emotions they can experience. The more positive the emotions in their environment, the easier it is to develop a healthy emotional and social life.
Early childhood development enables them to develop and maintain self-confidence
Children gain self-confidence with each new skill mastered, each “small victory”, and each overcoming of challenges encountered. This self-confidence gained during early childhood development helps them have a positive perspective about themselves and enables them to keep trying until they succeed instead of getting discouraged after a first failed attempt. Praising children for their efforts and accomplishments nurtures a sense of well-being. This includes seeing themselves as “achievers”, exploring new talents, taking on new interests, acquiring new skills, feeling good about themselves and maintaining self-confidence throughout their lives.
It develops a passion for learning and favours school success
A child’s brain is like a sponge: it loves to learn new things. You can use this to instil in your child a passion for learning by making this process engaging, exciting, fun and catchy. Since children are curious about everything, encouraging them to learn will not be difficult, you need to find the learning tools that work best for them. Learning from an early age favours success at school. By the time they go to school, children will be familiarised with academic notions like vocabulary and numeracy, master the skill of active listening and staying concentrated on a task until it’s finished, be “trained” in not giving up when not succeeding from the first attempt and possess the skill of regulating their behaviour, paramount in organised communities like school.
Early childhood development helps them gain and practice patience
Patience is a valuable quality both in childhood and adult life, as it can sometimes make the difference between reaching and missing an objective. For children, patience is one of the most challenging things to do, as their curiosity and nature make it hard to wait. Exposure to social environments and interactions like those met in playgrounds or early learning centres helps them understand the concept of “patience” and its utility. Patience also involves self-regulating behaviour, as it requires postponing something children want, like a toy another child is playing with or waiting for their turn.
It lays the foundation for a good physical health
Teaching small children to brush their teeth correctly, wash their hands and generally keep proper personal hygiene enables them to maintain good health throughout life, stay out of the doctor’s office and take an interest in learning more about preserving or improving their health.
Early childhood development is crucial to leading a healthy, educated, and fulfilled life. Providing the best tools for leading such a life is a process that starts in childhood, at home, in the early learning centres and in all the environments in which children interact and learn from other children and adults.
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Our Early Learning Centres
Our early childhood centre environments strongly reflects our inspiration – The Reggio Emilia philosophy, from Reggio Emilia, Italy.
We provide a creative and open ended environment that encourages infinite learning for the children and strong relationships between teachers, children and families.
The day’s routines are flexible. At the same time, care is taken to recognise and respect each child’s needs.
Why Choose a Bright Beginnings Early Learning Centre?
- Encouraging the use of natural materials
- A strong transition into school
- Teaching team inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach supports your child’s creative potential.
- Healthy, tasty hot meals cooked fresh on site
- 20 ECE hours available/free sessions for 3 year olds
- A boutique, homely feel to our centres
- Strong connections between teachers and whanau.
Here's what our parents say about our childcare centres
We are so happy that our son is a part of the Bright Beginnings family. The staff have been so welcoming and caring since the day he joined here. He has the freedom to explore and experiment as he learns about the world around him. With each passing day, he is growing into a confident and independent young boy, while building friendships and learning important life skills. We are also especially happy that he gets nutritious meals everyday, an important concern for us as parents. Most importantly, he loves it so much here that he can't wait to be back at the Centre every morning! As parents, we can go about our day with the assurance that our son is in good hands within a safe environment. Thank you to the entire BBELC team for that, Devika.
Bright Beginnings has and is a second home to both my son and now my daughter. Amber loves coming to the centre everyday and to see the relationship she has with the teachers is very special. We love everything Bright Beginnings embodies and are thankful to have found this centre.
- Best price
- Best service. From Jade Tavita
I was absolutely blown away by the presentation and the effort that went into the parent teacher interviews. I have not seen anything like it before and it made me feel very comfortable and welcome as a parent. From Darren Masters
Super duper loving, caring teachers. Awesome environment where our boy can flourish everyday. Thank you, Brad and Joanna.
Dillon absolutely loves his new big boy class. He even asks us if he can go on a Saturday and Sunday. Thanks all for making going to school so easy for us. Thanks, Anika.
I love and enjoy watching April develop and grow, I am so happy and grateful that she is in an amazing environment filled with people who care and look out for each other.
Beautiful Daycare. Thank you all.- Best price from Zara.
- Best service
Cherry: Our family is very grateful that we found BBELC. So far it is the best daycare we have seen. We are glad to enrol our kids here. Having peace of mind that our kids are safe, well fed, looked after and enjoy activities with the teachers and other kids is PRICELESS!!!
THANK YOU for helping my kids explore new things. You are all amazing. Like what I always say to the teacher, I don't know how you all do it but the teachers here at BBELC are SUPERHEROES! As parents we feel your passion, dedication and love.
Come and visit one of our childcare centres and see for yourself why your child will love it
Talk to the Centre Manager, meet the team, see the natural outdoor play areas and educational rooms, learn about how we develop our programs and find out more about our unique approach to partnering with our families.
Our latest parent reviews from Google
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What are the Core Values of the Reggio Emilia Approach?
The Reggio Emilia Approach sees children as valuable members of communities where they are encouraged to explore, wonder, question and learn to understand the world around them and reach their full potential in the first five years of life.