The Number One Benefit of Preschool for Children The number one benefit your child can receive from attending preschool is not necessarily learning the curriculum. Although preschool curriculum can help your children get a step up for kindergarten, it is not the number one benefit of enrolling your kids. The best thing it does for your children is give them the opportunity to interact with a community of other children. Creating and maintaining good relationships with other people is imperative to the health of a child and you as a parent.
Giving Them the Right Attention They Need Children require so much attention. They are constantly stimulated by the environment around them and want to explore it. Children want to know about people, places and things. Allowing them to visit preschool for a while will (1) keep them from exploring you and your personal space when you need time to yourself, and (2) help them discover more of the world around them as they learn to love new people in strange places. Interacting with others teaches children how to become better adults. If they learn to interact with their peers from a young age, they will be less likely to experience integrating into social environments when they are older. The more sheltered they are growing up, the less likely they’ll want to interact with others. Some may argue that it’s only one year that they’ll be missing, what could possibly happen in a single year? The answer to that is that it can make all the difference in the world to a child. A person will never develop as an individual more, than when they do before they turn twelve.
Curiosity of a Child Every day is a huge, discovering adventure for children. From the first time they first focus their vision, until they graduate high school, they are steadily learning at a million miles an hour. They are especially observant of the world in their youngest years as they come to speak, play and understand. The sooner you can get the kids interacting with each other, the sooner they’ll learn to integrate themselves into society.
When they do something wrong, they are immediately given feedback that it is so. Since they are learning so much every day, they remember what they learn far easier than they did before. Don’t believe it? Stand in at a preschool lesson plan sometime and watch how it works.
Social Etiquette In these social environments they come to understand the social norms and rules of society. It is wrong to take things from another person, and you will not be favorably received by anyone if you do it, no matter how much you cry and beg. On the flip side, children see the teacher giving rewards for good behavior. They discover that they have the ability to improve their situation by doing good things when they try to imitate that behavior and get the same result. This is a very applicable life skill: adding value to a work place for the hope of a better salary. There are many other lessons they can learn, merely by being in the presence of their peers. Preschools can never fill the shoes of a mother in a home. They should not take upon themselves the responsibility of teaching your child what is right and what is wrong. They can only compliment your teachings by allowing them to try out what they’ve learned in a social environment. Here they have the opportunity to practice what they’ve learned and find out what society loves and hates. Photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography, Sonya Bean