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Originally Posted On: https://bippermedia.com/skills-your-child-will-learn-in-preschool/

If you are a parent or guardian of a child who is around the age of four, you might be considering enrolling your child in preschool. Preschool is a great way to prepare children for kindergarten by giving them a head start on their education. If you are curious about the benefits of preschool, this article will discuss what skills your child will learn in preschool and its advantages. 

What is Preschool? 

Preschool teaches your child basic skills that establish the foundation for future learning. Depending on where you live, children can be enrolled in preschool anywhere from 3 to 5 years old. Unlike kindergarten, preschool only lasts a few hours a day and engages your child in games that promote learning. 

What Your Child Will Learn 

Preschool is a great way to teach your child that learning can be fun. Unlike traditional education methods, preschool focuses on educating your child through games and experiments. Some games that your child might participate in are puzzles, arts and crafts, and musical chairs.  By participating in these activities, your child will grasp skills that will be advantageous to them. 

The following are some skills your child will learn in preschool:  

Creativity  

Creativity is an essential skill for children to learn while they are young. Creativity is not just knowing art skills, it is knowing how to consider things from a new perspective that other people may not think of. It can also serve as a way for children to express themselves and their uniqueness. Knowing how to be creative will benefit your child in school and their future career. Creativity is taught in preschool through painting and drawing, building blocks, imagination games, play dough, and even debate games such as dogs vs. cats. Having a fun debate game will make children think outside of the box on how to defend their side. 

Communication Skills 

By the time your child reaches the age of 3 to 4 years old, they are beginning to develop a more comprehensive vocabulary. In preschool, teachers promote communication by continuously asking questions for your child to answer and helping them learn how to talk and effectively ask for things. Songs and children’s books are also used at preschool to help strengthen communication skills by teaching children proper language structure and pronunciation of words. 

Teamwork 

Children sometimes have difficulty understanding how to share and work with others. Preschool helps to improve your child’s teamwork skills by playing games that require group involvement. A popular team-building exercise that is played in preschool is the parachute game. In this game, children evenly spread out and grab ahold of the edges of a parachute. Once all of the children have a side, they count to three and raise the parachute. 

Quickly, all the children run inside the parachute and sit on the edges inside so no air is escaping, creating a mushroom shape. If a child releases the edge of the parachute then all the air will run out and ruin the game. 

This helps show children that when you work as a team, you can reach a common goal. Teamwork has also been shown to help improve other skills in children such as communication and patients. 

Social Skills 

One advantage of enrolling your child in preschool is that it will expose them to other kids their age. If your child does not have any other siblings, then preschool might be their first time talking and playing with other children daily. Preschool will teach your child how to make friends and communicate with other children through fun games and activities played in class. 

Listening Skills 

Before going into kindergarten, your child must learn how to listen. Without proper listening skills, your child won’t absorb important information taught in class and may fall behind. In preschool, children are taught to listen to instructions and their peers. Some ways that preschool helps to encourage active listening in children is by practicing eye contact and playing listening games. 

A popular listening game you might know is Simon Says. In this game, the teacher plays Simon and the children have to follow what the teacher says. If Simon says “raise your hand, then the children must raise their hands. However, if the teacher does not say the words “Simon says,” then the children should not obey the task. 

Fine Motor Skills 

Fine motor skills are the coordination between your small muscles such as in the hands and your eyes. Examples of fine motor skills are writing your name with a pencil or zipping up a zipper. It is important to help your child strengthen these skills at a young age. 

Some ways that preschool helps improve your child’s fine motor skills are by practicing coloring in the lines of a coloring book or tracing words with a marker. Having good fine motor skills help children learn how to do many things independently such as writing or eating with utensils. 

Early Math Skills 

Teaching math skills while your child is young will help them better understand math as it builds. Ways that preschool helps teach early math skills is by working on number recognition. Number recognition can be prepared in preschool through fun activities such as hopscotch. 

In this game, some squares are drawn out on concrete and each one is labeled with a number starting at 1. When the children jump from one number to the next, the number is called out with them to help them learn numbers and their order. Teaching patterns in preschool helps children make connections and problem solve. 

The Benefits of Preschool Education 

Enrolling your child in preschool will teach them many important skills that will help them throughout their school years and daily life. If you want to help your child succeed, The Learning Experience can help. 

They offer a wide variety of educational programs that can make learning fun for your child. Find a TLE Center today to discover how their curriculum can benefit childhood development!