Essay on Benefits of Preschool to Young Children

Drawing information from Perry School Project, Abecedarian Project and the Chicago Project preschool education is very important. In preschool, a child acquires social skills which are very important in life (Smith and Krohn, 1995). They are exposed to learning conditions that allow them to learn how to follow instructions and how to live together with other children in various activities. This, therefore, prepares them for elementary school. It is also a platform where children learn basics through play. For example, singing introduces children to new letters and alphabets while counting blocks introduce them to numbers and storytelling makes children learn how to form good sentences. It is also important for parents to take their children to a preschool. It helps children to develop creative skills. In a preschool set up, children have the opportunity to participate in different crafty and artistic activities which help them become creative and innovative at a tender age. It is very difficult for children to show their creativity while staying with their parents at home because they are afraid of getting reprimanded for the chaos it may cause. Such fears are not in a preschool and therefore children have the chance to control their curiosity and become imaginative.

According to the information from Chicago Project, preschool helps young children below the age of 4 years to develop language and cognitive skills. Children in a preschool learn in a language rich surrounding. It, therefore, allows the vocabulary of children between 3 to five years to grow (Yoshikawa, 1995). They are also able to form long and complex sentences because they interact with different people including teachers and fellow children. In a preschool, teachers are there to add new vocabulary to children and also ask them provoking questions which help children build their communication and language skills. Finally, in the Chicago Project, it is noted that children in preschool participate in a range of hand on activities that bring very many challenges to them. They have to observe these hands-on activities closely, ask some questions, and try their ideas. All these actions that young children are exposed to in a preschool help them build their cognitive skills (Dunn and Dunn, 2007). It is therefore important to take children to a preschool before admitting them to elementary schools.

References

Yoshikawa, H. 1995. Long-term effects of early childhood programs on social outcomes and delinquency. Future of Children 5(3):5175.

Smith, C., Lizotte, A.J., Thornberry, T.P., and Krohn, M.D. 1995. Resilient youth: Identifyingfactors that prevent high-risk youth from engaging in delinquency and drug use. In Delinquency and Disrepute in the Life Course, edited by J. Hagan. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Dunn, Lloyd M., and Douglas M. Dunn. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition: Manual. Minneapolis, MN: Pearson Assessments, 2007.