After-School Programs: Requirement or Choice?

Posted On: June 13, 2019 By Jim Newton

Children spend the majority of their time in school, learning developmentally appropriate material to help expand their minds, bodies, and social connections. School is a requirement, such that every school-aged child must be enrolled in some form of education throughout the week. Once school hours are over, children typically go home, do homework, and spend time with their families. However, although this is a common scenario, not all families work this way.

After-school programs are structured learning environments that continue a child’s learning and offer a place for them to land once the school day has ended. Many parents work long hours, evening hours, or have other responsibilities that make it difficult for children to be picked up from school each day and often not feasible for children to simply come home right after school.

After-school programs, unlike schooling, is not a requirement for children, but rather an option or choice that can help families function well while simultaneously nurturing children’s development. In this article, we’ll briefly discuss why after-school programs are helpful for children and families in the Sugar Hill area.

What Are After-School Programs?

As we mentioned before, after-school programs can be a highly valuable option for children and families. Such programs are offered to children of all age ranges, making them a great option for families with multiple school-aged children in need of after-school care. Programs provide children with guidance and support in a number of different contexts, including:

• Help with academics
• Artistic and creative development
• Physical exercise and outdoor recreation
• Social connectivity
• Adult mentorships
• Emotional and behavioral support
• Developmental milestones (such as gross or fine motor skill development)

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After-school programs have grown tremendously in popularity over the decades, and now a staggering number of families and children utilize this community resource.

What Are Some of the Benefits of After-School Programs?

Though after-school programs are not a requirement, and there are certainly benefits to spending as much time with your children as possible, the experience can provide wonderful benefits for your child that they may not get elsewhere. Here are some areas that after-school programs can help your child with:

• Behavioral Development – After-school programs tend to be structured in such a way that they are kept small. This allows teachers, mentors, and professionals to engage one-on-one with children and attend to their individualistic needs. This can help children get the behavioral guidance that they need that teachers in school may not be able to offer due to high classroom volume. After-school teachers can help children learn how to manage their behavior in appropriate ways and are better suited to focus on each child as needed.
• Academic Improvement – Many children struggle with at least one academic subject, whether it’s math, English, history, or another topic. After-school programs usually have built-in academic time for children to work on homework or classwork that is troubling them. With adults there to help, children can get the academic guidance they need to succeed.
• General Health and Well-Being – Children who go home to an empty house after school are more likely to get into threatening or dangerous situations. It is important to provide children with supervision until they are of an appropriate age to care for themselves. After-school programs not only provide a safe place for children to go after school, but they promote health and safety in other ways. After-school programs have recently incorporated more health and wellness activities into curriculum, such as mindfulness and yoga practices that help strengthen the connection between mind and body.

Awesome After-School Programs in Sugar Hill

The child care experts here at Great Beginnings Child Care and Learning Center in Sugar Hill, GA, utilize basic child development concepts and current research and literature to continue enhancing after-school programs each year. We provide a range of after-school programs that cater to the needs of families and children in our community, and we remain dedicated to improving these resources in Sugar Hill. If you are interested in learning more about our after-school programs, please feel free to look over our website or contact one of our program experts directly. We look forward to helping your family access the tools you need in order to thrive.