IMPORTANCE OF PRESCHOOL EDUCATION

Children are born ready to learn; they learn every second of their lives. Though we learn throughout our life but the first 6 years of child’s life is very important for learning as brain development is on its peak during this period. In the first 6 years of life, more than one million neural connections are formed each second and 90% child’s brain develops. The quality of a child’s experiences during this period makes a critical difference as their brains develop, providing either strong or weak foundations for learning.

The early years (2-6 years) are the most important time to start building a strong foundation for your child as he strives to reach his developmental milestones. Though his learning begins at home and he learns basic skills of language, colors, eating, etc. from you and other family members but as he turn 2, now its time to send him to a good preschool because quality early childhood education can make a big difference.

The preschool plays a magic role in the development of child’s skills. Your Child have first time come out of the entirely protected home environment to an open environment of preschool and transit from being entirely dependent on you, to being independent. He is very much fascinated by the outer environment or surroundings he gets to understand about his emotions and he will starts realising he is sad and when he is happy, what makes his angry and the things for what he is curious about and so on. This is the time when he starts asking ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘how’, and ‘why’ all the time and looking for answer for his every small question. Preschool is an entirely new world where he will have structured and playful social environment and the place where he will find answers of most of his questions. He will form new connections with his peer group, teachers and caregivers. In his preschool he will gain basic Academic, Cognitive, Socio-Emotional, Language, Gross Motor & Fine Motors Skills, Pre-Math & Literacy Skills and prepare them for formal school education.

I know you may not be aware of all these technical terms and how preschool of you child will help to develop these skills so, let me explain for you.

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Cognitive skills are the core skills our brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention. Working together, they gain information and move process it into knowledge we apply in our everyday life. 

Cognitive skill refers to the ability of your child to think, explore and understand. Development of cognitive skill for your child is the development of knowledge, ability to solving problems, figuring out things himself and his capacity to understand the world around him. Cognitive skill development of your child will largely depend on his learning in the early years.

Play is most important for your cognitive developmentof your child and in his preschool he will learn every thing by play-way method it will enhance his ability to think, understand, communicate, remember, imagine and work out what might happen next. At his preschool he will learn how things work, and he learn best through play by solving problems, creating, experimenting, thinking and learning all the time. At their preschool children spends time playing with their peer group, which is very good for their cognitive development because playing together they, builds relationship and sends a simple and very powerful message to each other that, you are important to me. This message is key to helping your child learn about who they are and where they fit in the world. It also gives your child confidence to keep exploring and learning about the world.

At his preschool he will learn solving puzzles from simple to complex, start understanding the concepts like ‘bigger’ and ‘taller’, he starts developing a sense of humor and delight in jokes and riddles, starts predicting what will happen next in a story (for example), he will start negotiating with his friends, he will develop some concept of time and so on.

SOCIO-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

Socio-emotional skills are one of the most important skills children develop as they grow. Developing social skills in your child will prepare him for effective communication and cooperation with others; he will respect feelings of others and at the same time he will be able to express his personal views. Social skills include initiating conversations, making friends, having good relationship with friends and neighbors, and actively participating in community work.

Once your child reached age three he will more like to play with other children instead of playing with you. During this process he will start realising the fact that not everyone think exactly the way he do and different children in his peer have different interests and different qualities. During the process he will start drifting towards some specific children and start making distance from some others. This is time when he will be less dependent on you and will develop his own sense of identity and start making social connections. 

Children perceive and express emotions even before they understand them. Emotional skills of the child include the ability:

• To identify and understand his own feelings and regulate his own behavior.
• To understand other’s feelings. 
• To develop empathy for others. 
• To establish and maintain good relationships.

Preschool plays a very important role in the cultivation of social and emotional skills in a child. He will start to recognise his emotional expression like happiness or anger and begin to learn how to control them. He also starts understanding and respecting feelings of others.

At his preschool a child undergo significant socio-emotional development. In the company of his classmates and teachers he will start learning to recognise and communicate his emotions and at the same time he will start understanding emotions of others; during this process he will start building skills to connect with family, peers, teachers, and the community. 

The socio-emotional skills they learn at this stage pave the way for them to understand friendship, develop routines, and interpret various situations. They learn to share a toy, take turns with a classmate when playing, share their tiffin with their friends and pay attention when the teacher reads a story.

However, the most common emotional milestone for the preschooler is the self-regulation of his own temperament. Children of this age have tendency of anxiety and many of them still throw tantrums, but they have a good understanding of their moods. Preschool helps them to better manage their anxiety and mood by creating right environment and communicating essential information. Preschool children are more likely to understand the value of cooperation and they like to play with their friends rather than alone and form positive relationship with their classmates.

As every child is unique, they posses a different attitude and talent altogether so, this is very important for parents and teachers to understand their learning pattern and accept if a particular child is lagging behind other in the learning milestone. Parents should not hesitate to go to a qualified child psychologist for screening in case there is some developmental delay.

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 

The development of speech and language refers to the skills your child use to understand and communicate with others. Language development helps him to communicate what he feels. Though language development continues throughout the life but initially your child will pick up the language from you and other family members and he will learn most of the basics by age 6. 

Once your child starts going to his preschool his vocabulary will start developing fast, he will start understanding formal and informal words and will learn how to speak to his teachers, caregivers and classmates. 

I have come across several cases of delayed speaking where a child will take relatively more time to start speaking than normal. I have seen most of these types of cases (with no medical problem) come from nuclear family where both the parents are working and busy in their professions and they don’t have time to speak to their child. I have experienced most of these children start speaking very soon after joining their preschool as they pick up language from their friends and teachers.

GROSS MOTOR DEVELOPMENT

Gross motor skills are the skills, which involve large muscles of our legs, arms and rest of the body. The process that a child follow from learning to lift his head or leg as a baby and walk, run and jump as a toddler to playing a sport in the school is known as his gross motor development. 

Gross motor development of the children is directly linked with their learning of the body movement and it’s control. During early childhood, it is important for children to develop skills such asmuscle strength, balance, core strength, posture control and coordination. 

Preschools help children develop gross motor skills by developing activities to run, jump, hop, throw and catch, climb up, down, over, under and through things, pedal tricycles or other ride-on toys, push and pull, dump and fill.

It is very important for parents to be very careful while choosing a preschool for their child, the preschool should have necessary Infrastructure and activities to support gross motor development which include running at different speeds, jumping rope, playing hopscotch, tossing and catching balls, pitching bean bags, climbing, pedaling toy car or tricycle and filling and emptying buckets and other containers, etc. 

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

Many of your child’s daily activities like eating, lacing his shoes, colouring, sketching, writing and getting dressed up require eye-hand coordination and careful control of small muscles in hands, feet, fingers and toes, controlling the muscles of the tongue and lips to speak or sing or use of eyes, lips and nose to give various face expressions. All these skills are called fine motor skills. So, I can say each and every activity or expression, which needs use of use of small muscles of our body, involves fine motor skills. 

You can help your child building his fine motor skills start from home, which will further refined once he started going to his preschools. Some of the activities helpful in his fine motor development are:

• To hold a spoon or a fork to eat.
• Button & un-button, Zip & un-zip. 
• Scribbling with pencil or crayons.
• Sketching. 
• Making objects by using floor dough.
• Open and Close a container.
• Paper folding.
• Solve the puzzle.
• Pour water into his glass.
• Stack and arrange blocks of various sizes.
• Rolling of papers.
• Crumbling waste papers.
• Use of sponge.
• Paper cutting using child-safe scissors.
• Shorting beads 
• Using paint & brush, marker and chalk, etc.
• Etc.

Preschool nurture curiosity

The world is full of wonders and when children are born, they are full of curiosity for the world around them. They are curious to know everything. They have endless questions on why things are the way they are. Curiosity is the roots of creative thought, imagination and development so, it is very important to encourage them to ask questions and give their answers. 

Teachers plays very important role in nurturing curiosity in children; they observe and ask questions and listen their imagination & ideas during the activities. To nurture their curiosity and motivation to learn, teachers use children’s interests and plans activities according to their ideas and imagination. At their preschool children have active imaginations and learn through role-play areas like doll house, pet house, zoo, farm house and costumes. 

Preschoolers often have imaginations and they love to use their curiosity to explore. They are eager to have answer of their every why, how, when and where. They observe and explore things and try to expand their vocabulary to describe what they are seeing, hearing, thinking and experiencing.

Preschool prepares children for formal school

Preschool is the first stage of learning of a child in a structured environment. It prepares children for their formal school education. Children expands their vocabulary, learn how to behave with teacher and other persons in the school, how to express their feelings and how to make new connections. They learn basic english and math and starts reciting rhymes with action. Matching games, counting games, and puzzles & board games build their understanding of numbers, which in turn will support their learning of math at later stage. 

By the time they finish their preschool they become more confident, responsible and disciplined and they themselves start taking care of their school bag, tiffin and other things means they are ready for their formal school.