Equipment Needed For Every Child Care Centers

There are many factors to consider when selecting materials and child care equipment Australia for young children in an early childhood environment.

Some of those considerations are the following:

·         Selection of materials should be based on developmental practices of supporting social, emotional, physical, and cognitive growth of children.

·         Select materials and equipment that are high quality — you will save on replacement and repair costs.

·         Selection of furniture and equipment should be based on the multiple uses of children on a daily basis.

·         Materials should be open-ended and allow for a wide range of manipulative and creative uses by children.

·         Cultural representation of the program's enrollment should be integrated throughout the classroom with appropriate materials and props.

·         Creative and expressive materials that stimulate thinking, problem solving, and emergent literacy should be selected for all play areas in the classroom.

·         Purchase the following for each child:  cot/crib, chair, and cubby for personal belongings. 

Keep in mind that these are the important things need in a child care equipment Australia:

Reading Materials

Provide board books and bathtub books for toddlers to explore on their own. Offer comfortable places to sit, such as beanbags, in the library area. This is also a good place to put stuffed animals and a few sturdy pillows.

Dramatic Skills

Toddlers enjoy imitating adult behaviors. Dramatic play equipment should be basic and include pretend telephones, dishes, sturdy baby dolls, simple dress up clothes that toddlers can put on and off by themselves, and play food.

Manipulatives

A large part of a toddler's day includes filling and dumping and transporting toys. For this reason, fine motor manipulatives should be put in baskets or easily transportable buckets. Large Duplo blocks, stacking rings, and three-piece knob puzzles are perfect for this age.

Building Blocks

A simple block center should contain soft foam blocks, large cars and trucks, plastic animals and people. Heavy unit blocks are not appropriate for toddlers yet because of their weight and size, but large foam blocks or cardboard blocks are perfect for this age group.

For Sensory Development

Sensory play is extremely important for toddlers. Toddlers in the sensorimotor stage of development learn by touching, tasting, and smelling. A sensory table, which can be easily cleaned and filled with things such as sand, rice, or water, is appropriate for a toddler classroom if it can be closely monitored. Teachers can also make sensory buckets. Some ideas for sensory buckets include soft scarves, material scraps in a variety of textures such as fake fur, leather, cotton, and corduroy. Sensory buckets can also contain simple musical instruments such as bells and cymbals.

For Gross Motor Development

Toddlers need plenty of room to push, pull, ride and run. Child-sized shopping carts, ride on toys without pedals, and other push toys are all important items to include in your toddler environment.

Play gives children the opportunity to develop physical competence and enjoyment of the outdoors, understand and make sense of their world, interact with others, express and control emotions, develop their symbolic and problem-solving abilities and practice emergent skills. Without proper child care equipment, the children may not maximize their learning potentials.