Why You Should Send Your Child to Preschool

Why You Should Send Your Child to Preschool

Children are always learning. It is the most important thing a child does growing up. Making sure that children are getting the best opportunities possible should be every parent’s main goal when it comes to raising children. There is some controversy over whether or not children should go to preschool at all and if it should be a half-day program or a full-day program. Whether you put your child in preschool or not is a completely personal decision. 2-7-year old’s have minds have minds like sponges, they absorb pretty much everything they are taught and experience. Being in a school setting helps children to develop critical social skills that may or may not be taught if they are kept at home until they get to Kindergarten.

In May 2006 the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) did a study that found benefits of a full-day program versus a half-day preschool program. The results of the study showed that the children enrolled in full-day programs achieved better grades on math and literacy testing than the children in the half-day programs did. These better results continued to happen all the way up to the end of first grade, sometimes longer. (Research on Early Education)

In one of the most famous studies done on the benefits of preschool, by HighScope, 123 children, all at high-risk of failing in school, were included. The study occurred from 1962-1967, all of the children were between 3 and 4 years of age. Randomly split between two groups, one that went into the high-quality preschool program, and the other half that was just a comparison group. In 2005, it was published that when the groups were interviewed at 40 years old, the group that went through the preschool program had higher salaries, smaller criminal records, could hold jobs down better, and had a higher percentage that graduated high school rather than the comparison group. (Navigation)

Preschool provides the environment to foster a foundation for learning, not only on the academic side, but also the social side. Having a child in a preschool helps them begin to get used to the structure of school, without just being thrown into a normal Kindergarten class. Majority of preschools offer half-days or part-time options to slowly ease the children into the school routine. Even if you think you know the answer to every question that your child could possibly throw at you, preschool helps teach them lessons about the world and how things work, so they will get to experiment and talk through these questions with their friends and have the satisfaction of figuring it out. This also helps them develop a sense of subjects that they are really interested in and you can help grow that some more. (Sanchez, 2017)

Currently the federal government, 42 states included, spend over $37 billion on early childhood programs, specifically trying to target low-income families and students. Preschool is beneficial to all children, but the children that benefit the most from early education are the children that come from low-income families that may not be able to provide everything they need to succeed. There is a great mix of curriculum built to benefit every student as much as possible. “Instruction built on social and emotional skills, rich play, toys, games, art, music, and movement complements explicit instruction focused on things like learning to count and matching letters to sound and words.” (Sanchez, 2017)

The experiences that children have in classrooms from an early age can have an effect on the rest of their academic achievements and behavior towards teacher and the classroom. The most important person in this factor is the first teacher they have. Recently there has been a higher amount of attention being focused on improving early-childhood education, but it is more focused on the overall classroom context and not the actual teacher-student relationship that are the more important aspect of early-childhood education. (Lippard, C. N., Rouse, H. L., La Paro, K. M., & Crosby, D. A.)

In this day and age, parents often take parenting advice from places that they really probably shouldn’t, like online blogs from other moms who think they kn