Both parents and early childhood teachers have the same goal- to create the best learning environment possible for their young children. The trouble is that our visions of what a great learning program should look like are often very different.
Recently, a great article appeared in the NAEYC Journal Young Children. It talks about what a good academic preschool program should look like.
Good preschools and kindergartens know that three-, four- and five-year-olds are wigglers and doers. To help children stay with tasks and learn important concepts and skills, teachers work with, instead of against, their individual developmental styles. A good teacher watches as a child explores materials. He asks open-ended questions that stimulate the child’s thinking: “What do you think would happen if you tried…?” She helps develop vocabulary by describing what the child in doing: “I see you used lots of colors – red, green, blue and brown.
To many parents, a room full of children doing their own thing, playing, is bordering on chaos. Our experience of school and learning is orderly rows of desks, or at least children sitting a tables. Math and Language Arts should be learned through worksheets. This is what we expect.
It is up to teachers to help us to change our expectations. Parents need early childhood professionals to open our eyes to all of the learning that takes place in a play environment. Our children need teachers and directors to be strong and stay true to what is developmentally appropriate, rather than crumble under parental pressure and confine young children to worksheets. As the author states:
In high-quality preschools and kindergartens, academic learning is playful and exploratory. Children contribute their own ideas, use their own problem-solving strategies, and pursue their own interests. Teachers skillfully weave in academic goals and objectives as they build on what children can do, and challenge them to try new things. Children are not left to their own devices, nor is their development left to chance.
A quality program may look like nothing more than a group of children playing as teachers flit about from group to group, but a skillful teacher can open up a world of wonder and understanding by being a thoughtful “guide on the side”. This takes hard work and careful planning. Share this work and planning with the parents in your program and help them to see the beauty in how young children learn.
Filed under: Education Industry, Importance of Play, Preschool | Tagged: Early Childhood, Importance of Play, learning styles, Preschool, Teaching
