It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas………
The decorations are now up at home and my two boys are looking forward to a break from school. This is to be our first Christmas in Shanghai and I’m excited about experiencing all that this wonderful city has to offer. We are going to be tourists and explore all that the city has to offer.
This week at Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai we have been busy with another open day and many ‘Getting to Know You’ sessions. We were fully booked for the sessions and had the opportunity to meet lots of amazing children and future, founding Wellingtonians. The ‘Getting to Know You’ sessions will now re-start in January 2016 and parents from the December open days will receive their appointment very shortly. We have doubled the number of open days in January to meet the needs of all interested parents; please check the website for more details.
It has been a pleasure to formally introduce Yuki Gong and Jane Williams to you all and I hope you enjoyed reading their profiles on WeChat. I’ll look forward to introducing more members of the team in the coming weeks.
Last week, I introduced some research-based information on sleep and I’d like to continue with this regarding the amount of time children are recommended to nap during the day. This is something to consider, in preparation to getting your child ready for an Early Years’ setting. The National Health Service for the UK (www.nhs.uk) advises that sleep is very important to a child’s wellbeing and whilst there is no set amount of sleep that children need, there are general guidelines:
2 year old day-time 1 hour and 30 minutes / night-time 11 hours and 30 minutes
3 year old day-time up to 45 minutes / night-time 11 hours 30 minutes – 12 hours
4 year old night-time 11 hours 30 minutes
5 year old night-time 11 hours
Evidence shows that night time sleep is just as important as healthy eating and exercise for children to develop. The key to how much sleep is enough is whether a child gets up fairly easily in the morning, is alert and happy for most of the day and is not grumpy. Young children who are persistently sleep deprived seem irritable and overactive, seek constant stimulation and don’t concentrate well. Being deprived of sleep doesn’t necessarily mean that your child will be tired; in fact, quite the opposite can be true. Certainly food for thought.
