Experiences, Experimentation, and Discovery
Multi-age Setting
A Brief Discussion of Reading Approaches
“Young” Kindergartners

Preschool and Kindergarten — Experiences, Experimentation, and Discovery
Examples in Math, Literacy, and Art

There are some very specific things I try to teach Preschool and Kindergarten children—especially with respect to Christian education and, for the Kindergartners, in reading and math. However, much of what I do for children at this Early Childhood level is set up opportunities for experiences, experimentation, and discovery. Research indicates this discovery, experiential approach is the most effective approach for enhancing brain development and learning for children this age. For example, a very specific concept I want to get across is one-to-one correspondence. This concept seems to require development at the neurological level and experiences with manipulating objects. We can’t tell from the outside exactly where each student is neurologically. We can just observe his behavior. If a student is asked to count some objects, he might start counting by putting a finger on the first two or three objects and then just rattle off numbers. Probably this student knows the numbers by rote—not as a way of representing quantity. A student who has the concept of one to one correspondence will continue to touch the next object matching a number with it. One thing that can promote the concept of one-to-one correspondence is to show the student how to “slide and count” objects. For example, with a pile of pennies I count as I slide the pennies one by one across the table. This is an effort to establish that numbers represent a specific quantity. If a child is ready neurologically to grasp this one-to-one correspondence he’ll naturally follow this one number one object way of counting. If he’s not ready, drilling on the concept doesn’t seem to influence things. We just keep looking for opportunities for the learner to experience this one number/one object relationship and as his brain develops he’ll get it.

When a child paints a picture, I try to ask him if there’s anything he’d like me to write on the picture. This is part of promoting literacy in the student. Not only is it interesting to adults what the child sees or had in mind in creating the picture, the writing it down demonstrates to the child that ideas can be conveyed not only by pictures, but also by words—which are very, very abstract. But incredibly, with a combination of brain development and experience, children learn to read. “I will praise you because I am … wonderfully made.” Psalm 139:14 Research indicates that experience can promote and enhance brain development, so I try to give the child lots of language and literacy experiences so those dendrites keep growing and those synapses keep firing!

Art is a very definite area in which the experience is the goal rather then the end product being the goal. The point of Preschool and Kindergarten art is to give young children the opportunity to work with various materials as a sensory experience, discovering properties of these materials and learning how to manage them. It’s the process that is the goal of the activity, not the product. To the young child the product is only the result, not the reason for doing the art in the first place. You can learn what your child was thinking about in the creative process and help your child reflect on discoveries he has made by talking with him using comments like:

Tell me about your painting.
Did you enjoy making this?
What part did you like the best?
How did the paint feel?
I see something brown in your picture and you didn’t have any brown paint to use. How did it get brown?

Multi-age Setting

For people who went to schools in which each grade was in a self-contained classroom it may seem difficult for effective learning to be taking place in a multi-age setting. However, at the Preschool and Kindergarten level the activities in which the children participate when they are together are the sort of activities in which learning can be taking place on many different levels. For example, while listening to stories, younger children may be focusing on what's happening on each individual page rather then grasping the story as a whole. Vocabulary development is probably taking place. Some children may be starting to put together the fact that those scrawls under the picture somehow tell the reader what to say. As the child gets older he'll gain understanding that there's a structure to a story—a beginning, a middle, and an end. Students will become more and more sensitive to the sounds of the language as they mature. They will start to hear isolated sounds in words and notice alliteration. Rhyming words will become a source of enjoyment. As the child matures he may start to think about different ways the story could turn out, analyze the characters, and make judgments between real and make believe. Some children will start noticing specific letters and words and will recognize when a printed word is repeated.

Dramatic play can also take place on various levels. Some children might simply mimic what they've seen family members do. Other children might develop plots which they want to enact—taking a hurt dog to the vet or the sequence of activity a firefighter goes through from the time a call comes in, going to the fire, entering the burning building, putting out the fire, and returning to the station.

Playing with manipulatives can also represent different stages of development. Some children will sort by colors, others may consider size and color. Some students may play around with one to one correspondence and others may come up with a sequencing strategy. Active learning is taking place in all these scenarios and each student is gaining understanding of concepts his mind is ready to grasp.

The multi-age setting offers the possibility of students teaching and learning from each other. Children are very curious about their world and eager to understand it. A child who has just grasped a concept is anxious to share his knowledge and can convey his recently gained understanding to another young learner very effectively.

Finally, there is built in preview and review going on constantly in a multi-age setting. We think the multi-age setting has real positive advantages!

A Brief Discussion of Reading Approaches

There are basically three approaches to teaching reading (and as fluent readers we continue to use aspects of all these approaches in our reading). One approach to teaching reading is through the use of phonics. The teaching of reading is approached as though our language is a regular code. Students are taught to associate specific letters with specific sounds and so “decode” letters in order to figure out the words they represent. The strategy is to start with isolated letters and then blend them into words. This is the “sounding out” strategy and is the method on which the Letterbooks (part of our Kindergarten curriculum) are based. This phonic method would be very efficient if it worked all the time, but we all know it doesn’t. Some high frequency words which don’t follow the rules (like “the,” “a,” and “said”) need to be taught as “memory words” or “sight words” early on so that sentences have some resemblance to normal language. This brings us to another method for teaching reading which is called the sight word approach. This was the approach behind Dick, Jane, and “See Spot Run.” In this sight word approach teaching reading is based on the use of many repetitions of frequently used words. Somewhere down the road phonics is introduced, but it is kind of extrapolated from words known by sight and then applied to unknown words. So this approach goes from whole words recognized by sight, then breaking them down to sounds and applying this knowledge to unknown words. Once again, this is a valid approach, but not very efficient when it comes to unknown words. A third reading approach is called the whole language or natural language approach to teaching reading. This approach relies heavily on the concept that reading is simply talk written down. When we write down what a child says about a picture he’s drawn, we’re tapping into his natural language. Since he’s said it, he has a very good clue as to what is written down. The child uses what he knows about the flow of language and context clues in order to read what is written. When children learn to read at a very early age seemingly without instruction, they’ve probably relied heavily on this natural flow of language for cues and internally figured out the phonics and sight words. (The brain is an amazing thing!) The point of all this is that when reading we use aspects of all three of these approaches. Good, balanced reading instruction will incorporate all three of these approaches.

“Young” Kindergartners

The traditional age for starting Kindergarten is five. The St. Vrain Valley School District policy is that a child must be five years old on or before October 1, in order to enroll in Kindergarten. The same date is used by Our Savior’s Lutheran School. However, factors other than the child’s age contribute to a child’s success in school. Often the parents of a child whose chronological age falls near or soon after the October cut off date feel a child is ready for Kindergarten because of his seemingly advanced academic skills. However, consideration needs to be given to the child’s emotional, social, physical, as well as, academic maturity. A decision made when the child is five will have consequences for the child throughout his school career—that is, for the next 12-16 years. What will the impact be three, six, nine, or twelve years from now? The child will always be the youngest in the class. Is it really in the child’s best interest to set the stage for his being the youngest among third graders when independent work skills are expected; the youngest among seventh graders when there is such an awareness of physical maturity; the youngest among high schoolers when peer pressure dominates and ability to make mature decisions can have life-long implications; or during college when mature academic, social, and emotional skills can be a real edge that makes a difference?

It’s good to have a concern that a child continue to be challenged, but is pushing him into school early the best way to do that? My observation is that children who read early still love to be read to, children who count early aren’t asking to be taught algebra, and children who are unusually articulate may enjoy writing, but there are lots of things to write—they won’t become bored if they aren’t in an English class. Mostly children enjoy being children. While they may look forward to the next stage of development, there are physical and developmental processes outside of academics that are necessary to prepare them for the next stage.

Children who are eligible for Kindergarten, but are younger—those who have birthdays during the summer may also benefit from waiting another year to start school. Think of the advantages a child who is one of the older students in his class has—greater ability to focus, longer attention span, more mature work habits, more life experience, greater ability to integrate learning, and usually an advantage in sports!

Parents are sometimes concerned that a child who at age four seems academically advanced will be bored if he doesn’t start formal school. In reality, boredom can be an attitude problem or is a case of a person not being willing to put forth the effort to become engaged. A child who is not ready can be bored, also. From an educator’s point of view, it’s far more a delight to provide challenges for a mature student who’s strong academically, than to try to work with a child who’s developmentally lagging in some areas.

Finally, remember the October 1 cut off date is a rather arbitrary guideline. (In Greeley the cut off date is September 1.) Each child is different—one date does not fit all. If you are in doubt as to whether your child is ready, it makes sense to wait. If you’d like to discuss more specifics, I’d be happy to talk with you.