Day Care

INTRODUCTION

        A child day care centre functions as taking care of children and educates them by someone aside from their parents. Children usually sent to the day care for safe care purpose in the daytime as the parents, also known as biological caregivers are busy working and earning money to ensure children get to live in a good environment, fulfill their needs and receive proper education in schools. Hence, a child day care plays a vital role in children’s development and learning in the absence of parents care.

        In fulfillment of the subject of Introduction to Theories of Psychology, five members as a group are assigned to complete an assignment on developing and creating a day care for children. Five members which are Gan Chi Kien, Kartiga Devi, Kelly Ching Ko Ying, Putri Nurul and Yogeas work together as a team and and each is assigned different responsibilities in order to create and develop a brand new and good quality child day care centre.

        Through the report, we are going to explain about the initiation of the day care centre, as well as how are we going to operate the day care and giving care to the children in various factors and perspective. The content of the report may include:

• Description of the design of day care centre
• Information about the caregivers and staffs
• Psychological theories underlies the development of the centre
• How to enhance social, cognitive and emotional development of the children

AGE RANGE OF THE CHILDREN

Age ranges of children in the day care center are from 3 years old till 12 years old. It can be said that these children are in play age and school age. According to Bee (1992) “it is the time of vigor of action and of behaviors that the parents may see as aggressive”. Children in between 3 to 6 years old may be interested to interact with other children at their surroundings such as school and neighborhood. By participating in a day care, children between 3 to 6 years old can have a chance to interact with more children other than students in school, hence it encourage them to explore their interpersonal skills through initiating activities in the day care. When children begin to socialize more and begin to plan activities or play with others. They may also develop the sense of initiative and learn the ability to lead others as they feel more confident after make decisions. In this circumstance, children are also given the perfect environment in training their leadership and decision-making skill since the children always perform and work together with their peer group.

Parents nowadays are very busy with their career and unable to spend time with their own children. At this range of age, they will start to ask many question as their thirst for knowledge grows. Some parents may feel annoyed or irritable after a long day of work or experiencing stress, thus they may treat their children’s questions as insignificant, which cause them to feel guilt and passive in asking questions. So, the caregivers in the day care may take parts in this situation and avoid children to turn out in bad ways by always attending their questions.

Lastly, it is a good to encourage children between 7 to 12 years old to enter day care. As they engage bigger peer group in primary school, they will more competitive and feel the need to gain approval by demonstrating their abilities and master. From this they will get the sense of pride and become a major source of their self esteem. However, if they failed to do so and unable to develop specific skill children may experience inferiority and low self-esteem. As caregivers of child day care, our mission is to focuses on the developmental skills and other necessary skills to help them grow and understand more as their parents do not have enough time and attention for this, instead of focusing on academic knowledge which they had already spent more than 5 hours in school. Besides, we need to ensure that the young children during this age are having healthy competition, otherwise it may bring bad effects to their development and learning such as developing hatred towards others and ended their friendship. They are still young and immature, so they require an adult like parents and caregivers to give healthy advises for them.

Furthermore, the number of children should be between 10 to 15 children from each age group, as caregivers may easily pay attention and attend to each and every child to their need. If the number of children is huge, we may easily neglect some children who are quiet and timid to talk. In the number of 10 to 15 children, we may also divide them into 2 to 4 groups when having group activities and it may be easy to lead and guide them in these groups.

HOW THE CENTRE LOOKS LIKE AND INFORMATIONS OF THE STAFFS

The day care centre is preferred to locate at workplace such as CIMB bank tower. It is the most suitable place for the day care because most of the staff there having children and it will make their travelling distance shortly as well as to reduce their cost. Every morning children also will follow with their parents to school so it is more convenient for children themselves and their parents too. Moreover, parents can drop in at the centre to see their children anytime because parents and children’s are in same place but only in different units or floor. For example, parents are able to contact immediately if the child have emergency situations suddenly such as illness. Thus, the parents are able to reach there quickly and pick up their children. With taking all considers on mind,  to place the day care centre in workplace is a great relief for both the child and the parents.

The outside design of the day care must be look colorful by using bright colors (red, blue or yellow) and suitable clip-art (balloons, toys or teddy bears) or pictures of smiling happy children in order to attract the attention of parents and children. Children normally will attract to colorful things while parents perceive that colorful building to be cheerful for the children. The inside of the day care must choose colors from nature and comfortable to create homelike feeling. The wall has to be use warm neutral colors such as soft grays, beiges or eggshell as more neutral colors on the walls will reduce sensory overload in order to provide a calm environment since so many of the toys, equipment and also display items are bright primary colors.

Safety and security are the foundations of high quality care. The caretakers and children have to be safe (physically) as well as feel safe (emotionally). Thus, there should be one entry point with a reception desk with installed CCTV and a receptionist must be present at the entry at all times. Besides, there must be a comprehensive fire protection system (smoke/heat detectors, sprinklers or fire extinguisher) and also multiple exit points such as emergency exit doors with staircase, bomba lift or escalator. Therefore, annual fire drill and evacuation training are required for children.