Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 12, 1990 TAG: 9008080156
SECTION: PARENTS' GUIDE PAGE: 11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH COX
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Some preschools are built-in child-care centers; some are early learning centers for the learning disabled; some give children carefree playtime, with early learning skills built-in.
The one parents choose to send their child to - if they choose any at all - depends upon the needs of the child as well as the financial situation of the parents.
From the Head Start program, available to 3- and 4-year-olds, mostly from low-income families, to the private preschools costing $500 or $600 a year for three mornings a week, the choice is wide and can be confusing.
Dr. Douglas Althouse of Roanoke's Pediatric Associates said he prefers the "milk and cookies" approach to preschool. "I like for children to go to preschool. But not to learn high-powered social and emotional development. They've done studies on children with equal IQ's and fairly equal abilities."
These studies, he said, showed that there was no difference, when compared in third grade, between the group that attended a high-powered, Montessori-type program at age 3 and the group that attended a preschool that subscribed to soft academic teaching.
And, he said, sometimes children exhibit a higher anxiety level when pressured into an early academic, performance-oriented program.
Marie Winn, in her 1983 book, "Children without Childhood," cautioned about the loss of childhood play. "Of all the changes that have altered the topography of childhood, the most dramatic has been the disappearance of childhood play. Whereas a decade or two ago children were easily distinguished from the adult world by the very nature of their play, today children's occupations do not differ greatly from adult diversions."
But consider this: By the time a child is ready to start kindergarten - which can be failed - he is expected to know shapes, colors, how to count, his ABC's and how to write his name. And what can be even more traumatic for children is that their buddies will know these things.
Head Start, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, was started in this area as the original Total Action Against Poverty program. It is designed to give children - enrollment in Head Start must be 90 percent poverty-level families - the social, emotional, academic, even medical boost that they need to be competitive and stay competitive throughout their school careers. To this end, Head Start accepts potty-trained 3- and 4-year olds, gives them full medical and skill assessments at the start of the year, a breakfast, lunch and snack every day and a lot of constructive play time.
The areas of interest covered range from music and science to water and sand play and art. It is not a day-care center, emphasized Director Cleo Sims, but an early learning center that gives children the medical, dental, speech and language opportunities they need before they enter kindergarten.
As a complement to Head Start, Home Start, which originated in 1977, serves rural communities and guides families in their homes to help them meet the needs of their preschool-age children. The teachers, according to Sims, all have two or four-year degrees in early childhood education or their Child Development Associates degree.
And then there's the preschool for 3-, 4-, even 5-year olds often affiliated with an area church. These type of preschools are similar to Head Start in that they teach with a soft approach, allowing free time, interspersed with constructive art, music, movement and science learning projects that all seem like play to the children. This gives children the opportunity to learn how to get along with others, how to share and how to stand up for themselves, as well as how to count, identify shapes and colors and how to say their ABC's.
If a child is at risk for a learning disability - perhaps, in some cases, an inherited tendency - learning centers that concentrate on special needs may be a wise option. Usually preschool or kindergarten teachers will recognize a learning disability. They spend five or six hours a day with the child and can easily compare him to the rest of the class.
A kindergarten-readiness assessment is usually given at a child's five-year check up and also is administered through the public school system as an option if the parents are not sure whether their child is ready for kindergarten. Pediatricians usually check their patients' speech, ability to count to 20 and say their ABC's, recognizing opposites, and their motor skills and fine motor capabilities.
Roanoke's Early Learning Center, said Director Mary Bane, offers programs for the average, gifted and high-risk for specific learning disabilities such as dyslexia and reading disorders. She said that their program offers a kind of preventative medicine approach if children exhibit warning signals that they may develop learning disabilities. The center has half-day, full-day and ungraded elementary (first through third grades) programs.
The Early Learning Center, according to Bane, subscribes to the Shedd Modified Montessori Learning Program that makes use of individualized curriculum. The children learn at their own rate, are placed in small groups and begin with simple tasks and progress when ready. It is an education-oriented setting: "play with a purpose," she said, "making use of common, everyday life activities."
The full-day kindergarten is scheduled to include, each day, language development, perceptual motor skills and Montessori in the morning, plus prewriting exercises and a structured sequential curriculum in the afternoon. She said that the only hesitation some parents have is the structured environment, but that the whole purpose of their program is to meet the individual needs of the child. The ratio of teachers to children is one to eight.
Aside from the skills that children learn in early learning programs, and perhaps more important than being able to say their ABC's, is the social skills they acquire: how to share; how to play with each other; how to sit still and listen to a book; how to express themselves in a crowd; and how to be relatively independent from mommy, before that often-terrible first day of kindergarten.
by CNB