What's the Best Pre-K?

With this new school year starting, many families are concerned with education and how it may affect their children. As each family is making a careful decision, I want to shed some light into how kids may benefit from learning. It’s a unique time, with concern for child safety; But I hope to help parents understand what research has shown in terms of efficacy of different learning techniques, and some resources to help their decision.

Early Childhood Education

When it comes to education, there are usually a few different trains of thought. In other countries, they may apply an academic preparatory theory for schools. While the U.S. sticks to a more child centered philosophy following a social and emotional growth in line with developmental needs, and strong cognitive emphasis with Piaget and Maria Montessori Theories. You may have heard more about Montessori based schools; letting children learn naturally in a child driven, thoughtfully prepared environment. Piaget is a Child Developmental Psychologist that introduced a cognitive development model that determined stages of how children represent and reason with the world; helping us understand how our children learn best at different ages. 

How do we improve education?

There is a debate on how to improve education, with pressure for instruction in academic skills as early as Pre-K in the U.S. Supporters of developmental theories and approaches report that the push for academic skills neglects child need for exploration and free play. This disrupts the self-initiated learning by relying too much on teacher initiated learning. I think we all learn best in environments that motivates and interests us, the approach to learning can make all the difference. 

 What’s best for our kiddos?

U.S. Studies support child centered, developmental approach. One study (Marcon, 1999) had 721 4-5 year olds that had three types of class; Child Initiated, Academic Directed, and Middle of the Road (blend of the two). The Child Initiated group actively directed their own learning, and excelled in basic academic skills, more advanced motor skills (compared to the two other groups), and scored higher than the Middle of the Road group in behavior and communication skills. This suggests that one philosophy for education can work better than a blend (like the Middle of the Road group), and child centered learning is more effective than Academic Directed. This doesn’t necessarily apply to 100% of kiddos, everyone learns differently, but we want to report the majority of the findings to better understand what may work best.

How can Occupational Therapy help?

Occupational Therapy practice is a child centered approach that creates goals and a treatment plan to make sure the child is getting the most effective treatment. We use theories, similar to Piaget and Maria Montessori to help guide their learning and make it effective for learning. If your child is having trouble with the upcoming school year, and you find them falling behind on certain skills, we may be able to help you with specific skills necessary for school tasks. Give us a call and schedule your consultation on our home page, we’re happy to talk to you!