Is your child about to turn three? Then, the time has come to consider pre-school education. So far the grandparents have been very helpful, except that it starts to be difficult to deal with the agitation of the child and his natural curiosity. What options are there? Hire a nanny or put the child in kindergarten?
Before making any decision, it is necessary to understand that a child’s brain, in the first years of life, evolves at an incredible speed. However, it is important to remember that each child has a different learning pace, according to their abilities! Quality pre-school education takes these aspects into account. Only then, it contributes to the good personal and social development of children between 3 and 5 years old. It is essential to find out what the advantages of pre-school education in an educational environment outside the family context.
What does legislation tell us?
According to the Law for Pre-School Education, pre-school education should be considered as the first stage of the children’s educational process, complementary to the family, favoring a balanced personal development and a healthy insertion in society. Moreover, the same law also points to the benefits in the frequency of pre-school education in a setting appropriate for this purpose –
- Promotes the social development of the child, by promoting their insertion in socially and culturally heterogeneous groups of children;
- Promotes respect for individual characteristics;
- Promotes the development of interpersonal relationships with other children and adults;
- Enables the detection of inadequacies, deficiencies and precociousness;
- Enables the development of communicative skills.
The characteristics of pre-school education
Pre-school education works as an educational context that facilitates the development of fundamental skills for the full and successful integration of children in the 1st cycle. It is also a unique space for new experiences and different experiences. In kindergarten the child grows and learns without curricular pressure. That is why pre-school education has its own terminology –
- The word education is used instead of teaching,
- There are no teachers, but educators,
- Learning facilitators do not teach classes, but organize activities, such as Hands-on learning.
Thus, the educational environment is truly motivating that allow diverse learning in communication, creativity, interaction, problem solving, questioning, etc. The truth is that all educational experiences promoted by excellent pre-school education contribute to the child’s full development, having positive effects in preventing school dropout and social exclusion.
Advantages of pre-school educational experiences
Until the end of the 1980s, academic studies confirmed that attendance in pre-school education promoted a positive insertion in the 1st cycle of basic education, by contributing to opportunities for school success, especially in learning to read, write and count. This was due to the fact that, in pre-school education, activities such as storytelling, leafing through books, magazines or newspapers, playing games of letters and words, games with geometric figures and numbers, among others of cognitive stimulation , which are essential to instill future habits, are encouraged of reading and mental calculation.
