Top 10 Reasons to Consider a ‘Fives’ Program Before Kindergarten

Learn more about the benefits of choosing a Fives program for your budding 5-year-old from Lauriston Avery, M.S.Ed., director of the Five Mile River Nursery School in Rowayton, CT, the first program in Connecticut to earn accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.


Many parents with graduating preschoolers confront a dilemma as to when their child is ready for a traditional academic school. Here, a few tips to help you decide whether a Fives Pre-Kindergarten program may be more appropriate.

States vary when it comes to cut-off dates for enrolling in kindergarten. In Connecticut, a child must be 5 years old by Dec. 31 to be eligible to enter kindergarten that same year, though the state is debating a change to an Oct. 31 entrance date. Many other states have a Sept. 1 cut-off date.

These differing dates are in response to the fact that, while a child may be 5 and ready for the important step up in academic learning, many kindergarten classrooms are not ready to meet the younger child’s developmental needs. However, many students still need an appropriate and active learning environment in order to best meet their educational needs.

 

If you think your child would benefit from an environment full of discovery experiences, here are the top 10 reasons why you might consider a Fives program for your child.

kids building airplane in classroom

After a trip to visit grandparents, kids in the Fives program at Five Mile River Nursery School in Rowayton, CT, construct an airplane out of large-scale unit blocks, improvising helmets out of storage bins.

1. Education is not a race; it’s a lifetime endeavor.

The years before kindergarten are important brain-building years. In fact, the human brain grows incrementally faster from birth through age 5 than any other time in life. After age 5, the human brain sheds any unused neurons. It’s critically important that appropriate experiences are structured into a child’s environment so they have many “ah-ha” discoveries. These “ah-ha” moments form the neural pathways that will then provide the thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making ability that become advanced adult achievement.  If you hope that your child will make the most of their talents, abilities and knowledge, parents should make the most of their early childhood learning years, by providing them with an appropriate pre-kindergarten learning environment when they are turning 5.

2. Child-Initiated learning capitalizes on “the teachable moment.”

 

In NAEYC Accredited programs, there is a balance of teacher-facilitated and child-initiated learning experiences. The teacher is a careful listener to every child’s questions, verbal and non-verbal, that children turning 5 exhibit in the course of a day of discovery. When a child stops and picks up a leaf and examines it closely, the child is asking an implied question that a wise teacher will capitalize on by furnishing the classroom with a rich variety of answers. It will include books, magnifying glasses, more leaves, walks in the neighborhood, and opportunities to represent learning in art, music, dancing, and scientific inquiry. When a child brings a topic to the classroom, they have an emotional connection to their own question. When there is an emotional connection, learning is memorable. 

kids in preschool classroom

Children construct a cockpit out of loose parts and recycled materials.

3. Active learning supports the way young children’s brains develop.

 

In the early childhood years, children’s brains require that they are able to move throughout their classroom, their day and through their community.  Without active exploration, some critical periods of brain development can be missed, and may, without intervention, lose critical function.  In a study of twin kittens, scientists strapped one kitten to his brother in a cart, and set them free in an environment of vertical lines during a critical time of their brain’s development of the visual function of discerning vertical lines.  It was found that the kitten that was able to move in the environment developed the ability to see vertical lines, while his brother, riding passively in the cart, did not.  In the same way, children must not be confined to a desk when they are 5, but allowed to actively explore so that critical learning can take place.

4. Children need core physical strength and visual acuity to fully develop and tackle academic work.

 

Holding one’s body still for any extended time requires great physical core strength. Young children turning 5 need plenty of time to develop their strength in large motor experiences, indoors and outdoors. An accredited pre-kindergarten program will offer many extended opportunities to develop all the muscle groups with running, climbing, balancing, swinging, and upper body strengthening. In addition to developing stamina for all kinds of academic work, attention to a child’s physical fitness benefits them with oxygen to the brain, and a sense of adventure that makes the risk-taking of trying new things, answering new questions, and making mistakes in a safe environment, possible.  Children turning 5 learn that “I can do it!” when they work their muscles. In addition, their eyes need time to develop so that they can focus on academic work, close “seat work” at their desk, and far work that the teacher may demonstrate on a classroom chalkboard. Children turning 5 may not yet have developed physically to manage the demands of a traditional academic classroom.

kids learning on laptop

Children use technology for research purposes.

5. Children learn to lead and follow in discovery-based classrooms.

In contrast to 19th- and early-20th-century assembly-line needs, around which most of our education systems have been structured, 21st-century society needs adults to work in team settings, where workers are required to lead and follow in developing new technologies. Children turning 5 need opportunities to develop the social skills that enable them to work cooperatively with peers and adults, leading and following, as they work through their ideas in a plan-do-review sequence. As children try on the roles they observe in adults, they learn to make a plan, work it out, review it, and revise it and work it again. This habit of mind is the foundation for all future higher academic research and development.

6. Confident children are fearless learners.

Brain research has helped us to understand that fear causes a surge of adrenaline that shuts a brain down and inhibits learning. Children turning 5 need to become confident with peer and adult relationships, as well as the question-and-answer structure of academic learning, or they will not be able to access or retain any new information, or construct it into useful knowledge for their achievement.

7. Independent learners construct experience into knowledge.

As children gain confidence, they also gain independence. They use their experiences to form the background knowledge that helps them to improvise understanding when faced with new tasks and experiences. It is important to remember that teachers must draw learning out of students, and not try to put learning in. Learning happens in the learner. Teachers must differentiate their teaching so that children can learn. In an appropriate, accredited, pre-kindergarten environment, differentiation happens at all times, and supports every child, at every stage of development.

kids writing in journals in classroom

Kids write about the class’s airplace project in their journals.

8. Rich experiences foster rich vocabulary.

In an accredited pre-kindergarten environment, teachers listen to children’s interests, and plan opportunities for children to hear and understand a variety of rich, descriptive language. With increased attention to vocabulary development, children become competent and advanced readers and writers.

9. Rich content fosters curiosity.

Children have a million questions about what they observe in their world, and wise pre-kindergarten teachers use their questions as a way in to the “learning to learn” skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Children just back from visiting their grandmother want to recreate their experience by building an airplane, and a wise teacher will follow their topic by helping them to measure miles, learn about how the dials and controls in a cockpit measure distance, which they will then learn conceptually by measuring in footsteps, in numbers of blocks, and compare them to yards and meters. Children will ask more questions, write or dictate more stories, read more books, and learn more about where to find answers, and how to answer them independently.

classroom airplane

The children’s completed airplane hangs in the classroom, where they’re ready to take off for new adventures in learning.

10. School is the most fun you can have in a day.

In a high-quality Fives program, your child will learn how much fun it is to learn, a lesson that will indelibly lead your child into a lifetime of achievement.