Introduction
In pre-school children life, parents play an integral role in influencing children’s learning experiences and knowledge grasps. This arises from interactive segments among parents and children. For this reason, many parents opt to participate in mothers and toddlers groups, childcare arrangements, babysitting activities, and other events that increase interactive sessions between toddlers and parents.
Such programs harbor potential positive impacts child development through provision of high quality, individualized, social reactions, and catalyzing experiences that improves children learning capabilities.
Conversely, poor parenting, inadequate interactive parent-children structures, and minimal supervision of toddlers negatively affect development of children. Such negativities hold deleterious bearing on children’s abilities to grasp information, leading to lackluster performance in class work.
Definition of key words
Child development refers to the physical, social, intellectual, and emotional growth in young people as they interact with peers, parents, teachers, and the society. Development in children makes them more independent of parental guidance.
Knowledge passage, on the other hand, denotes the transfer of familiarity and mastery of concepts about something in the society. It takes place in children through peer competition, parental education, and teachers’ guidance. Pre-school years represent stages in life when children start developing before achieving the school going age. Most scholars put ages 1 to 4 years as the pre-school years (Sheridan, Sharma, & Cockerill, 2008).
Factors influencing early childhood learning and development
Early childhood development derives direction from several factors. Hereditary factors such as temperament, gender, and health conditions, which arise from within the children, play an integral role in children growth, development, and relationship with others. It is such relationships that define educational and development capabilities among toddlers.
Similarly, family structures and cultures have a bearing on child development. Family relationships, parenting styles, cultural and social values, economic capabilities, parents, education levels, siblings’ behaviors, parents’ occupation, physical health, and mental health influence early childhood development.
Community and social structure influence children development. Integration of children’s interactions within community services such as support for parenting, housing qualities, community safety and security, unemployment, social crimes, and general feeling of trust among the residents influence children growth and development.
These coupled with different cultures, parenting styles, beliefs, values, and different perspectives of children influence development and early childhood development. Understanding these facets puts early childhood development into perspective, thus improving chances of successful development.
Importance of early childhood education
Social development
Early childhood education creates a link in children’s’ cognitive, psychological, and physical processes within the confines of care and support services from the surroundings. Families, communities, and nations need to invest funds in structures that improve such links to ensure successful child development and growth.
Similarly, inadequacies in cognitive skills among pre-school toddlers compromise such toddler’s abilities and motivation to learn upon entry into schools (Mouw & Weyrick, 2008).
Insufficient preparation for school harbor costly ineffectiveness in the education systems given that these children hold high probability of poor academic performance, repeating grades, and increase chances of school drop outs before basic education cycle. Therefore, early childhood preparation and development creates a foundation for successful educational future among the children (Bullough, 2001).
Early childhood education comes with significant positive impacts across the world. Research shows that continuous evaluations of high-quality child development programs hold adequate long-term impacts on educational attainment, reduced levels of poverty, reduced participation in crime, increased social uprightness, and reduced social ills among children in future.
In the US, for example, High/Scope Perry Pre-School Program presents seventy percent success stories (Heckman, 2010a). These success stories get attribution from impacts of cognitive development, grade progression, college participation, and improved behavioral structures.
Educational foundations
Child development requires more than classrooms and centers for learning. Recent research shows that the set of cognitive and non-cognitive skills and knowledge children acquire at pre-school remain much relevant in their longer lifetime outcomes (Miquela, 2008).
High-quality pre-school programs with adequate space and good supervision of children games to ensure safety, quality books, puzzles, and blocks for motor skill development play integral roles in children development and growth.
These act as bases for educational success. Similarly, affectionate and respectful caregivers, routines with individual and group engagements, and regular engagements with parents help in improving children association with society members, hence refining their social skills for future benefits (Heckman, 2010b).
Arts and Cultural appreciation
Pre-school arts and cultural activities strengthen parent-child bonds. This in turn helps engage families in their children’s knowledge acquisition through provision of positive goal for common experience and communication. Family reading, singing, role playing, traditional tale sharing, and story-telling offer the best avenue for arts and cultural experience sharing vital for toddler development (Nomaguchi & Brown, 2011).
Similarly, artistic design development, memory sharing via photographs, and short family video clips help pre-school children understand their family setting, background, and previous experiences, thus influencing their bearing and perspective on family social structures and cultures.
All these programs help in nurturing children to learn and appreciate existing arts and cultural structures within their family settings hence encouraging positive cultural upbringing (Bolen, 1989).
Quality art and cultural experiences in early childhood assist children in developing subsequent artistic abilities necessary for future survival. Bolen denotes that arts exhibitions and cultural show experiences at museums, galleries, theaters, and libraries presents many parents with ideas, confidence, and resources necessary for children games, hence providing an avenue for defining children hobbies’ and talents at an early stage (1989).
Early childhood education in arts and cultural activities aid in developing intrinsic human qualities in children. Identification of flows and hiccups in such qualities at an early stage remains necessary for improvement of child growth and development.
Pre-school engagement in such facets helps help children learn preservation of their cultural and arts heritage as well as helping them develop languages that shape their individual, community and global identity. Similarly, pre-school experiences help children develop confidence, self-esteem, and positive behavioral characteristics (Bolen, 1989).
Language development
Children learn from interactive segments. For pre-school youngsters, making art and sharing experiences help in word caption, pronunciation skills, and communication skills development. An example of simple learning skills arises when children playing together with parents crumble up papers into a round stuff and names it a “ball’.
Children with such experiences develop great description mastery and harbor high chances of language success as compared to their counterparts with no experience. Similarly, creative art works, paints, and shape definitions at pre-school life stages provoke children’s desire for different styles in artwork hence improving their abilities to learn more stuff (Laurie, Garrett, & Buka, 2004).
Visual development
Most pre-school activities revolve around tangible stuff. Molding, decorations, painting, threading beads, sculpturing, and drawing represent most of the learning cultures and training programs of most pre-school programs. Such activities, as Burger (2010) puts out, help in developing visual capabilities among children.
With advancement in technologies, toddlers continuously enjoy use of phones and tablets, thus improving their visual abilities before they develop language mastery skills. Visual interpretations of information help pre-school children interpret and criticize designs and art works at an early stage of life. Such characteristics are vital in future activities both at school and in the society.
Inventiveness and decision-making
At pre-school learning centers, children get encouragement to express themselves and take risks in creating new arts for competition. Such supervised peer competitions create a sense of creativity and innovation among kids. Developing creativity and innovation in arts works provides a basis for creativity and innovativeness in decision-making, thus influencing positively the future of the kids.
Since arts, designs, and paints encourage processes and experience of thinking and making things look better, early engagement of children in such activities presents a prerequisite for future success. Similarly, engagement with arts and designs in pre-school programs provides kids with an avenue of exploring, thinking, and experimenting new ideas, leading to increased success of idea creation (Currie, 2001).
Motor skills development
Art making, painting, drawing, and solving puzzles remain vital in growth of fine motor skills among young children.
Statistics show that progressive milestones around age three such as drawing circles and learning use of safety scissors helps children advance their motor skills. Continuously and supervised use of safety scissors among the pre-school children help in developing the dexterity vital for mastery of writing skills (Payne & Isaacs, 1995).
Music and its benefits
Pre-school learning encourages use of music. In instances where kids engage in age-appropriate music within a socially acceptable environment, a great foundation of success exists. Phonological structures, spoken language skills, and voice comprehension skills available in organized music sessions provide children with foundation for reading and language comprehension.
Similarly, music helps kid develop their spatial-temporal and argument skills necessary for mastery of mathematics, science, and engineering (Levinowitz, 1999). Besides, music plays an integral role in development and management of emotional skills.
These act as basic readiness strategies for full time class work since they help regulate children responses and relationship with complicated situation in many elementary schools. Similarly, emotional skills help in building social pillars that guide children relationship with their fellows and teachers at schools.
Markedly, peaceful, respectful, and cordial relationships among children and teachers increase chances of success and grade progression. Equally, physical components of music such as dancing, moving, and playing instruments improve motor skills among children (Music, 2011).
Improved home and school connection
Parents engaging kids in early childhood learning sessions help children create a close connect between home and schools. Such kinds of engagement help parents understand many aspects about child’s daily aspects. Once such kids join schools, parents easily comprehend stuffs privy to their kids’ tribulations in school. Such a close link between home and school creates an avenue for supervision.
Therefore, child development follows without compromising the child’s freedom of knowledge acquisition (Carma, Baxter, & Imes, 2010).
Likewise, close relations between school and home engagement help in creating a truthful bond between parents, teachers, and children, hence increasing chances of skill development and success. On the same note, close parental engagement with kids at an early stage of development provide the kids with a springboard responsible for easier movement into primary school (Curby & Timothy, 2013).
Conclusion
Early childhood education plays an integral role in child development. Academic success with roots from the early childhood engagement, critical evaluation, and decision-making skills from art works, as well as improved curiosity for creativity form the basis for children success if properly developed at an early stage.
With numerous studies showing parental engagement in educational follow-up high in elementary schools, acknowledgement of early childhood education remains necessary for future concern over children’s performance. Musical skills, language development, mathematics, and science skills together with motor skills earned in pre-school programs help children achieve their academic dreams.
Complimenting these positive impacts with right teacher attitude as well as adequate parental guidance forms the greatest foundation for educational, social, and life success in children.
References
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