Home Hot Topics Articles Directors' Choice Awards About Us / Contact Us Activities & Curriculum Activities for Outcome-Based Learning Arts & Crafts Music for Learning Recommended Reading Sharing Boards: What Do YOU Think? NEWSlink Current National News Conference Calendar Topics In Early Childhood Education Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education Job Sharing Board State Licensing Requirements Stay Connected! Each month we'll send you an email filled with articles and ideas for your classroom. Subscribe Now Date: 5/12/2007 6:30:00 AM Author: Flabbergasted (glsmailbox@yahoo.com) Subject: Pre-K and K SHOULD be reqd. -Anna, Great luck with your paper. I recently opened an "innovative" (which I'm learning parents aren't used to...seems they still prefer hokey) PRESCHOOL and family child care home to offer center style quality inside a home environment.... When their children--many, certainly not all--grow up and behave like buffoons parents cry and wonder what happened, or which arm of the government failed their children. Yes, children do learn through play, but child-appropriate academics are desperately needed in preschool. I just enrolled a 3-1/2 y/o boy and besides knowing his "abc's" and "123's" via rote, he doesn't seem to know much else. So sure, I can continue to fail him [ole' time "educators" please wake up, it's 2007] and "let him play" and "be a boy" ALL DAY (without infusion of fun-dipped, cleverly placed, and intentionally incorporated academics) and hope the logical thinking bunny falls from the sky and bites him on the head to ready him for the academic challenges awaiting him, at least in better schools, so that some day he can come back to visit me with his particular story of hardship--financial, marital or otherwise. Or, I can assist his parents and him (via DAP) today (21st century) in understanding that a child's collective and lifelong attitude toward school, learning (logical reasoning), and education as a process is virtually cemented in the early years--age birth to 8 y/o--and work with the family to ensure that he becomes literate. Literacy begets education, and I'd prefer an educated child--as a complement to his or her social finesse-- who can logically choose to "fail" or try and "succedd" in their life choice of X versus a child that most likely may fail at whatever he or she attempts because the adults responsible for teaching him or her to "think" preferred that they built paper people or randomly applied paint on paper all day, every day. Name: Email: Subject

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