The Most Important Attribute of Kindergarten and Preschool Programs

In the Pacific NW it is time to register children for next year's preschool and kindergarten classes.  In the U.S. the link between students' standardized test scores and school rankings has caused an alarming, developmentally inappropriate "push down" of early academics into kindergarten and further into preschool. However, evidence shows a play based program will lay a strong foundation for a successful academic career.

For young children "play" and "learn" are synonymous and intertwined.  According to the National Association For The Education of Young Children (NAEYC), "Kindergarten is a time of change, challenge and opportunity.  In many ways, kindergarten classrooms unfortunately bow to the pressures and look more like a primary classroom than a kindergarten".  http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/position%20statement%20Web.pdf

According to NAEYC there is considerable research that supports the Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) of using a variety of play based teaching strategies for the education of kindergarten children such as;

• soci0-dramatic play for self-regulation

• block building and board games for mathematics

• singing and playing rhyming games for phonemic awareness (the ability to work with individual sounds in words, a foundation for reading)

• small group story book reading with opportunities to talk about what is read for learning vocabulary and background knowledge

• while playing restaurant or describing their drawings or doing their own writing children gain literacy skills

 Social, moral and emotional development is also facilitated through play and is hugely important to all areas of academics and life.

In, "Developmentally Appropriate Practice: Curriculum and Development in Early Education" Carol Gestwicki wrote,  "Children aren't just pitchers to be filled with knowledge.  They must be active participants in constructing their own knowledge, play is the context for this active learning. It is through play that children literally teach themselves". http://college.cengage.com/education/course360/child_dev_and_curr_111194220X/gestwicki85549_1111185549_02.02_chapter02.pdf

Intellectually 5 and 6 year olds have a big shift in development, that form the basis for their approach to life long learning, in these areas: 

• personal responsibility

• self-direction

• logical thinking

Parents of very bright children often mistakenly assume their child needs more than a play based program.  Robin Schader Ph.D., parent resource advisor for the National Association for Gifted Children said, "When it's fun and playful, that's when it gets into your head.  Neuroscience research confirms it is pleasure that makes our brains want to repeat and remember an activity, and it's that kind of natural repetition that fuels learning".  This helps explain why play is how children learn best.

A new play based Kindergarten program at Woodland Park Cooperative is now registering children for Fall 2015.  Only a few spots are left.  For more information, here is a link to the program  http://woodlandparkcoop.com

For further reading on this topic and ideal programs see Part 1 and then Part 2 of Teacher Tom's blog, "A Great Teacher is A Great Artist".   
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-great-teacher-is-great-artist-part-
two.html

Play based cooperative preschools in the Seattle area can be found here;
http://coops.northseattle.edu

Good Parenting

9 Things You Need To Know About Your Child

After talking with Teacher Tom at the end of class one day about accepting kids for who they are and then reading his blog, "Good Parenting",
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2015/01/good-parenting.html, I was inspired to share information about temperament.

Teacher Tom wrote, "If the day ever came when we were able to accept ourselves and our children exactly as they and we are, then, I believe we would have come very close to an ultimate understanding of what "good parenting" means". This is so true. The acceptance that Teacher Tom writes about, I believe, is based on understanding and working with temperament.

Temperament is a set of innate/inborn traits that help define our own unique character. There is a biological, neural, hormonal and hereditary basis for temperament.  Temperament describes how we consistently respond to the world over time.  Although there are no good or bad temperament traits it is the extremes of temperament, either low or high, that tend to be most challenging.  Based on the research of Thomas and Chess, there are 9 temperament traits.

9 Temperament Traits 

1. Activity Level - Refers to basic energy level; quiet and relaxed or on the move & busy.
2. Regularity - Are eating, sleeping and elimination times predictable and regular or irregular?
3. Adaptability - The ability to adapt to changes in routine, expectations, and schedule, and recover from disappointment and upset.
4. Approach/Withdrawl - How a person initially reacts to a new situation or person.
5. Sensitivity - How sensitive the person is to potentially irritating stimuli such as sound, smells, temperature, texture (foods, tags in clothing, etc).
6. Intensity - How strongly the person reacts to negative or positive situations; laughs & cries loudly or more subdued.
7. Distractibility - How easily the person is distracted by stimuli (noise, movement, smells) when trying to focus.  People who often or always "hyper focus" on things to the exclusion of all else are actually distractible.  They have to block everything out in order to concentrate on the tasks at hand.    
8. Quality of Mood - The amount of pleasant and cheerful behavior (positive mood) as contrasted with fussy, sad and negative.
9. Persistence - How long the person will keep at a difficult activity without becoming frustrated or giving up.    

Often what determines whether a child's temperament is problematic is a parent's perception of the child's temperament. What constitutes a challenge is a matter of parental perception and the fit between the parent and child. For example a parent who is active and likes to ski, hike, take walks and play ball will value a high activity level in a child where as a sedentary parent would likely find a highly active child challenging. On the other hand a shy parent may be happy to have an outgoing child who finds it easier to approach people.  

It is only when temperament traits get in the way of learning and relationships that problems occur.  In most cases allowances and adjustments in a parent's routine and approach are all that are needed to best work with their child's temperament while still honoring their own.  

Here is a short online quiz called, "Temperament: How do you and your child compare?"  The results of the quiz provide a graph comparing the parent and child temperament traits and it provides parenting suggestions based on the comparison.
http://tvoparents.tvo.org/temperamentquiz

Understanding who our children are hard wired to be nurtures acceptance and hopefully appreciation for their uniqueness.

For further reading;

Parenting By Temperament by Nancy Harkey Ph.D

http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Temperament-Full-Revised-Edition/dp/1478146184/ref=pd_sim_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0MVN6VBSBYMJP0NX64K3

Research (for Vespa's Mom, Emily, a researcher, and others who want to read studies);

http://www.acamedia.info/sciences/sciliterature/origin_of_personality.htm

http://www.unige.ch/fapse/emotion/tests/temperament/publications/ejds_02_01_zentner.pdf