School Readiness is Unnecessary Stress on YOUR CHILD!!!

I saw this come up in my Facebook feed and while this maybe the case in some areas, I'm just going to speak from my experience. From this post it seems that "Daycare" is like babysitting, there is custodial care, "some" educational activities, but the focus is on safety, supervision and routine. They also think that in "Daycare" caregivers may not have formal education and it's flexible and less structures bla bla bla...

Preschool is basically described as a prep for Kindergarten.

I'm not naive to think that every childcare centre operates like the ones I have been apart of. So speaking from my experience I can say that from infancy programs right through to preschool programs these two sections are transferable.

Christina...what do you mean by that...

What I mean is, through a child's journey in our centres we focus on so many learning goals with an emergent, interested based, curriculum, adopting some of the Reggio Inspired concepts. Those who work in our full day programs and in our kindergarten after school programs HAVE to be a Registered Early Childhood Educator. Meaning.... the credentials are there, we are also required to do continued professional learning through the year.

The part of school readiness is what erks me. As soon as children get to Preschool parents are worried. "Why are you not doing letters, numbers, colours, words, spell their name etc..." WHY? Because that's what 2 years of Kindergarten is for. If that was our job then why would we have Kindergarten teachers or Jr. & Sr. Kindergarten? With the way we run our programs all these things are done through play or an interest in the child. Have you ever soaked in ANYTHING you could careless about? Probably not... so WHY would a child? I'm positive they don't want to sit and trace letters, and go over flash cards. They have 14 years of normal school to do that and be confined to a desk to learn and have stuff shoved down their throat with no investment just "take in this information, memorize it, because then your tested."

I think what is forgotten is that transitioning to kindergarten is more then being able to write your name. What about those live skills, self help skills, independence, problem solving, self regulation (Should I go on?). Can a child open and close their lunch container? Are they toilet trained? Can then regulate their emotions (obviously for their age). Can they be independent, Can they put on their winter clothes, can they put on their shoes by themselves???? This may seem like "custodial work" BUT this work is so so important, and even more important then letters and counting.

Children are brilliant until we tell them what to think and how to think about it. We expect them to fit an "a typical" mold to receive and process information instead of changing space, time, the environment, to encourage their learning and involve them in the learning process with something hands on or they are interested in. I know many people value education, but education can look very different, and be very successful in those different ways if you trust the process.

Focus on the life skills, because those will be carried with them FOREVER. Its up to us as parents to model how to be a good human in society. How to overcome obstacles, how to handle and process conflict, how to problem solve, and encourage them unconditionally without empty praise. Imagine if someone said "good job" to you every time you did something?

PLEASE PLEASE don't stress yourself out with SCHOOL READINESS... Focus on where your child is at in their social and emotional growth, problem solving growth, self help skills etc... Leave the rest for Kindergarten. THAT'S what they get paid to do. BUT do continue to find things they are interested in and infuse the learning there. For example, my son loved to climb the stairs, so we counted them everyday. He loves playing with cars so we talked about what colour they were. He loves books, so we read to him everyday allowing him to memorize the books and recognize the words and letters. Even going on a community walk around your neighborhood, you can use your surroundings as teaching moments. We encouraged him to get changed on his own supporting him until he got it... we used transitions as learning opportunities (just like in daycare) rather then just getting to the next thing.

Agree, disagree... I think we don't give children enough credit and we as parents need to be present with our children as much as we can to support them and encourage them into the next little milestones of their life LIKE kindergarten. The RECE's in the childcare centre I work for are always incorporating the learning and these self help etc skills right from infancy, or toddler programs, they are doing what they can on our end... WHAT are we doing on ours as present parents?

Christina