Despite the efforts of a host of early childhood educators and advocates, including visionary Black club women like Haydee Campbell and Anna Murray, it took more than a century for kindergarten to become a public good.
Kindergarten is a year-long program for five-year-olds that provides children with opportunities to learn through play. It focuses on three areas of child development:
Social and Emotional Development
Kindergarten is a year full of schedules and directions, lines to stand in and other children to get along with. And while many people think of kindergarten as a place where kids learn their ABCs and 123s, it’s also a time when students gain social emotional learning skills that are essential to their future academic achievement and healthy relationships.
In kindergarten, teachers support social development by teaching children to work together and respect the feelings of others. They encourage children to recognize and talk about their own emotions, as well as the emotions of others, while developing the self-regulation skills they need to manage those emotions.
Kindergarten teachers also promote math and language development. They teach children to recognize and name shapes, compare numbers and objects, and build early literacy skills by reading simple stories and practicing their writing. They do this while also ensuring that children feel safe and supported in the classroom. They provide opportunities for children to explore their interests and develop the confidence and independence they need to become lifelong learners.
Physical Development
While intellectual and social development may take the spotlight at kindergarten, children’s physical growth is equally important. This includes the way children move their arms and legs (large motor skills) as well as the precise movement of their fingers and hands (fine motor skills).
Fine motor skill development is a necessary precursor to learning literacy-related activities, such as stacking small blocks or using crayons. This also supports their independence in self-care activities like feeding themselves and dressing.
Children’s physical development is influenced by a combination of genetic factors, prenatal influences, and environmental conditions. As a result, there is a wide variance in children’s physical development. This can lead to some children achieving developmental milestones earlier or at a faster pace than other children. While it’s important to recognize these differences, it’s also important not to compare children and to encourage a healthy level of physical activity for all children.
Language and Literacy Development
A child’s vocabulary and language development in kindergarten is critical to reading and writing success. Research by the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) has uncovered a set of abilities, including alphabet knowledge, oral language skills and phonological awareness present in preschool years, that provide a strong basis for later reading success.
Children in high-quality kindergarten programs have a wide range of opportunities to experiment, discover and document their learning. For example, they may explore a variety of materials to create art, such as paper, sand or clay, and learn to identify the upper- and lower-case letters that make up words and the sounds each letter makes.
Children also have many opportunities to read together at school and at home with their families. When this happens regularly, children go into Kindergarten with 900 hours of reading experience, which is an important foundation for future learning.
Cognitive Development
In kindergarten, children are building cognitive skills like attention control. Creating activities that challenge them to think and solve problems, such as puzzles, can help them build these skills.
During this time, children enter what Piaget calls the concrete operational stage. This is a period in which they classify objects based on their important features, but they still can’t think abstractly or use logical reasoning to explain things.
This balancing of assimilation and accommodation allows them to understand new information and fit it into their mental schemas. They also develop their understanding of the physical laws of conservation, such as weight and volume, and they master basic numeracy and pre-literacy skills, including counting and recognizing letters.
Children also learn about their communities through long-term projects in geography and history. They also explore different forms of creative arts, such as acting out stories, drawing and painting. These activities help them practice self-awareness and focus as they create and learn in a group.