Going to Kindergarten

by Dr. Terence K. McAteer

Published in the Family Post Spring 2006

Nevada County Schools welcome our new Kindergarteners.  We believe that Kindergarten is essential for social and academic success in later years.  Considerable research, both nationally and internationally, has been conducted on early-childhood education programs in general and on Kindergarten in particular.  At the heart of this research has been an interest in gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the learning process for young children with a view to providing better and more developmentally appropriate learning opportunities for young children.

When initially conceived by Fredrick Froebel (1782-1852), Kindergarten was seen literally as “a garden in which two- to six-year-old children could grow as naturally as flowers and trees grow, bud, and bloom in a garden” (Seefeldt & Wasik, 2002, p. 5).  However, Kindergarten has since taken a more formal place in the spectrum of educational programs for children and, as such, has evolved into a more formal place in the spectrum of educational experience.  For example, Herman (1984) observed that, in the context of the diverse range of experiences typically available to today’s children, “The Kindergarten can no longer be viewed as an isolated experience; it is part of the early childhood education continuum involving pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten, and the primary grades” (p. 9).  In other words, the importance of Kindergarten in children’s learning process cannot be overlooked.

Educational research has revealed several considerations that guide our support of Kindergarten.  These include:

Improvement in student achievement
Enhanced literacy component
Educating the “whole child” in a nurturing environment
Provision of a developmentally appropriate learning environment

Much of the educational research concerning Kindergarten has concluded that not only are there considerable learning gains associated with Kindergarten attendance but also that those gains appear to be sustained for a significant period of time during children’s school years.

In an extensive longitudinal study with 554 students from Edmonton Public Schools, da Costa (2004) made several important findings.  These findings include:

Children who have access to Kindergarten programs (particularly those from educationally deprived backgrounds) are more likely “to acquire the skills needed to become emergent readers” (p. 22);

Kindergarten for children who come from homes in the middle range in terms of socio-economic status (SES) “surpass their middle and high SES peers in terms of emergent reading skills by the end of their Kindergarten year” (p.22).

Recent studies by a variety of researchers conclude that Kindergarten is an ideal way to provide the learning opportunities required for young children.  Rothenberg (1995), drawing on the work of Drew & Law, Katz and Housden & Kam, points out that this is so because the extra time each day provides the teacher with the opportunity to construct a learning environment that:

Emphasizes language development and appropriate pre-literacy experiences;

Allows children to integrate new learning with past experiences through project work and through mixed-ability and mixed-age grouping in an unhurried setting;

Involves children in first-hand experience and informal interaction with objects, other children, and adults;

Allows teachers to work with parents to share information about their children, build understanding of parent and teacher roles, emphasize reading to children in school and at home, and set the stage for later parent-teacher partnerships;

Offers a balance of small group, large group, and individual activities;

Provides assessment of students’ progress through close teacher observation and systematic collection and examination of students’ work, often using portfolios; and

Allows the development of children’s social skills, including conflict resolution strategies. (p. 2)

In general, the literature concerning programming for Kindergarten stresses the importance of literacy, choices, space, pacing, play, and the nature of social activity in the design of appropriate Kindergarten learning experiences.