Now more than ever, we want to be paying attention to health and wellness, especially when it comes to our children. Lately, parents are taking extra precautions to make sure their children stay safe and healthy. First of all – you’re doing great! But to help you take a little stress off, here are a few of our tried and true child health and safety tips for keeping our children safe inside at the Simon Center – and ones you can easily replicate at home!

Cleanliness

There’s a reason we teach “The Wash Your Hands Song” to our kids so early on – a consistent routine is proven to stick. However, outside of that favorite catchy jingle, we recommend keeping on a few key things on hand to ramp up your sanitizing routine.

• Soap and Water Mixture
• Water and Bleach Mixture
• Hand Sanitizer

We definitely do not recommend having these products within reach of younger children, but older children (school-agers and up!) will know the importance of these products to keep a clean work or play space. In addition, they’ll know to use them at home for messes and spills. Don’t you love when they can lend a helping hand?

Health and Safety for Early Childhood

Cultivating a safe and healthy environment – and good practices- for children starts with education. At the Simon Center, we make it one of our top priorities to make sure safety is considered in all of our activities.

Encourage your children to clean up their play spaces when they are finished with their activities – you can use your soap and water mixture for cleaning, and then let children join in by wiping surfaces and toys with a dry paper towel or cloth so they’re not directly handling cleaning fluids. Show them about the importance of washing their hands by making it part of the “cleanup” routine, or with older children you can incorporate hand sanitizer (with adult supervision!) By making this a part of their routine, it becomes second nature for them to engage in these activities – eventually without being prompted.

At the same time, we’re ensuring safety and also teaching good habits that children can bring back home. It’s always great when they can bring home the new habits they learn at school or daycare!

First Aid

While we do our best to prepare our students and staff with the best tools for a clean and safe environment, we can’t always predict accidents. Children take tumbles and have spills, so it goes without saying that there should always be a basic first-aid kit on hand. We all have busy schedules and it’s easy to overlook that first aid supplies are a bit low, so make it a part of your weekly routine (or grocery list!) to double-check your first aid kit to make sure it’s sufficiently stocked.

When we make health and safety a part of our every day conversation with our children, it makes it a normal part of their daily routines. If there’s anything we’ve learned in the past year – it’s that health and safety are more important than we realize