Parents are saddled with the job of making educational decisions on behalf of their children without also being given any predictable background in the research and theory they need to make those decisions. In my years of work in early childhood development as Researcher, Program Evaluator, Preschool Teacher, and Preschool Director I’ve been privileged to have some of that background, and to observe some of the misconceptions, misinformation, and social biases which make those decisions even harder for parents. Below are my answers to four questions parents often ask.
Why don’t you recommend a more “academic” program prior to kindergarten?
I’m sure you’ve heard this time and time again, “Oh that’s just play, but are they actually learning anything?”
Notice the dismissive qualifier “just.” It may resonate, or even carry some anxiety for you. Am I giving my child every advantage? Are they gaining the foundation they need to succeed? If you have wondered about this, you are not alone, it’s a widespread concern we hear about all the time.
In California, our rapidly expanding public school programs for these ages tend to feed parent anxiety. They lead parents to think that children should enroll in “real” kindergarten prep (a TK or PreK program) instead of a play-based. Once again, It can help to think more critically about the qualifier, “real”, which communicates a diminished value in play-based programs.
It’s actually the other way round. “Academic” and compliance focused preschool and/or TK programs typically offer children LESS preparation for school subjects (and for life) than play-based, emotionally supportive, and developmentally informed preschool programs. They may also reduce children’s level of interest in academic engagement in the long run.
These “academic” preschools or TKs typically offer little or no education in social problem solving and critical thinking, both of which are essential to academic success. Even those with the poor substitute of a prescribed “social emotional” curriculum generally ignore the children’s actual relationships, interactions, and peer negotiations where the real learning takes place. They offer fewer opportunities for the child’s creativity and personal interests, less experiential learning, and less individual engagement with stories, books, pre-literacy and even pre-writing or oral story telling activities. A child’s inherent love of learning and purpose is at risk when for much of their weekday time, they are forced to sit and work on a narrow set of skills they have no interest in and are kept from engaging in the things they want to learn and talk about.
More and more studies are showing that children who read and write younger do not end up being more successful learners when they get older. Earlier does not equal better. One longitudinal study concluded that “Children whose preschool experience was child initiated [children chose how they engaged in preferred activities instead of doing only what they are told to do] fared better than peers in the transition from the primary to the later elementary school grades. Not only were their overall grades following the transition significantly higher, their school performance improved or held constant in all but two subject areas (music, social studies) despite increased academic demands of the next grade level.”
Another important study demonstrates that children who were in academically geared preschool ended up doing worse than their peers (who did not attend preschool at all) by grade 3, and those students who went to academic goal focused preschool are continuing to show worse outcomes both academically and emotionally as they get older. Other studies, and my own experience, point in the same direction.
Policy makers across the country are taking these studies into account as they try to enact reforms to practice, but the process is slow partly because many stakeholders aren’t educated about what is best for young children.
Our unconscious assumptions about what is “just” play and what is “real” education are pushing play-based programs aside, and our children are suffering the consequences.
How is Caterpillar Cottage preparing my child for Kinder?
By providing an environment rich with choice of books, learning activities, manipulatives, play props, and creative materials, along with developmentally attuned and responsive teachers, and the ample space for children to choose how they engage, we are giving these pre-kindergarten aged children everything they need to thrive.
Children emerge from preschool motivated to learn because they love the continuing activity of discovery and exploration they have enjoyed from their earliest years. The critical thinking skills they develop by engaging with activities they choose are pivotal to their success as they enter elementary school. They will have, as a matter of course,
developed small motor skills critical for writing success,
practiced gross motor mastery in the many ways they move about the playground on foot and on trike,
developed spatial awareness from activities like puzzles and manipulatives,
developed a large vocabulary,
acquired a basic understanding of adding and subtracting, and
gained a love of story (with engaging concepts about what might happen next and why things happened).
Socially, they will have had a multitude of experiences in negotiating their needs with peers and
grown their understanding that peers and teachers also have important perspectives that differ from their own.
Emotionally, they will be possessed with a belief that their ideas and words matter and are important,
they will have good practice in down-regulating (calming) themselves with caring adults when they are overly stimulated or get upset and be more capable of redirecting their energy to focus on a non-preferred task (this practice helps them to be more self-aware of their needs and allows them a better opportunity to manage these ongoing feelings in future settings).
The opportunities to contribute their ideas individually with a teacher or peer as well as in group settings will give them all they need to become fully engaged learners with group curriculum with more confidence to speak up when they have questions or contributions to the class discourse.
All of this depends on a good ratio between students and teachers with expertise in supporting emotional skills within peer relations. At Caterpillar Cottage we keep those ratios low and provide ongoing professional development for our teachers.
We (as a society) treat young children’s learning as if they were mini adults, when in fact their brains are still developing the capacity for a number of key capabilities which will allow them to academically and personally thrive in elementary programs (and life) if they are supported well early on.
Economic pressures and societal misunderstanding have driven private and public early education systems toward practices that are misaligned with the body of field knowledge we have known for decades.
But not at Caterpillar Cottage, where the reason we exist is to stay constant and true to what we know is best for young children.
What will be required of my child within a kindergarten curriculum?
I think it's really important to understand California’s criteria and standards that will be expected by the end of kindergarten when they are 6, which can give you some perspective on how little they are really expecting children to learn in their Kindergarten year. Remember, this is BY THE END of that first year, not at the beginning. I'll link those standards here.
Most children entering Kinder don't have much letter or number knowledge. Kinder teachers don't start the year with the expectation that this has already been mastered for any child. It is common for entering kindergarteners to recognize some numbers and letters and be able to write their name.
These standards are pretty basic and you will see the content they need to learn is not a lot in the entire year of kindergarten.
When surveyed, most kinder teachers' priority is the hope that children come to kinder with social emotional and fine motor skills (so they can more easily start writing letters). Those are the most preferred skills in a new student. I know this because my previous work was as a school readiness program evaluator and I spent all my time doing this kind of research and reporting about how different kinds of preschool and parent and child activity programs supported children's readiness for kindergarten. I also know this because of more current conversations with schools and kindergarten teachers over time, and more recently from work on a book for which we have been researching the expectations of kindergarten teachers.
On average, children who graduate a play-based program with good ratios and supportive and educated teachers like ours will pick up new concepts presented in kinder class quickly compared to their peers. And due to their experience in a developmentally informed setting, in the long term, they will likely do better overall because they began kindergarten with a love of school, the knowledge that their voice matters, a wide vocabulary and capacity to talk about all the things that interest them, and a broader practiced skill set in negotiating needs while considering the perspective of their peers (and teachers).
What can I do at home to support my child’s readiness?
Here is a list of things that we practice at Caterpillar Cottage Preschool that you can also do at home.
For a short- and long-term love of reading and engagement in critical thinking about content, reading to your child and engaging them in conversations while you read is key for as long as they stay interested.
Concrete ways to bring counting into routines like when you are measuring for a baking activity together or when you are doing laundry and finding pairs of socks are also huge for their concept development in numeracy, addition and subtraction.
Practice in self-help skills like putting on their clothes and using the toilet independently are also important.
Repeated practice with basic practical addition and subtraction is key for children to gain mastery in higher level mathematics once they reach the age to multiply and divide. Think of things like—how many plates do we need to set on the table for dinner? Or, how many more do we need? Questions like these can help children at these young ages gain a stronger foundation in math. Fractions are even something you can naturally explore with whole cups or half cups of certain recipes. Hands-on learning is where mathematical concepts can really take root-- repetition with this is key.
I hope this helps illuminate the differences between these types of programs as well as gives you a clearer understanding of what is supportive learning for these early years. Remember, earlier is not better, and often earlier means that less support was provided in many important areas.