Home Preschooling

Although in past years, preschool has been considered nearly mandatory for most children, today, a growing number of parents are rebelling and keeping their children home through preschool.

The Argument For Preschool

The argument for preschool has been that children must attend in order to be socially and academically prepared for kindergarten, which in itself was once considered the preparatory level of education. Today, however, kindergarten now mimics the previous first grade, and children are expected to arrive at school already knowing everything that was previously taught in kindergarten. Statistics are regularly quoted showing that children who attend preschool are more likely to finish college and avoid jail as adults.

Typically, a well-run but not elitist pre-school will teach skills similar to these:

·         Art skills such as coloring, painting, clay, cutting, and gluing

·         Social skills—playing well with others, sharing, taking turns

·         Conformity—standing in line, conforming behavior to that of peers, making appropriate comments, dressing like others, sitting quietly during instruction

·         Pre-academic skills such as alphabet, numbers, shapes, and minimal sight reading

·         Separation from parents

Some preschools are also very intense and a child may enter kindergarten with a first or second grade education. These schools often have very competitive entrance requirements and high tuition costs.

Arguments in favor of preschool include the need for socialization skills, formal academic training, and training in school-related skills, such as standing in line and listening to teachers.

The Argument Against Preschool

Parents who fight this trend agree that an educated child is more likely to succeed in life; they disagree that this education must take place in a formal school setting. They fear the impact of forcing children into structured institutional life too soon, and also express concern over the impact premature separation from parents can have on the child’s family bonds.

Parents note these skills have been taught in the home for many generations. It is only in the recent generation that preschool has become nearly mandatory, largely corresponding to the increase in numbers of children in daycare. When more children had one parent at home, it was considered standard for parents to teach many of these skills themselves and many grandparents successfully started kindergarten without a formal preschool education in their childhood.

The skills typically taught in preschool are not difficult to teach. While specialized training may be needed to teach these skills to a large class of children from a variety of backgrounds, parents begin teaching their children from the moment of birth, and most find it no more difficult to teach the alphabet than to teach toilet training. Parents are already experts at teaching their own children, by virtue of daily experience and strong knowledge of the child's abilities and learning styles.

Parents who oppose preschool generally feel the child benefits more from increased time spent learning with the parents. In addition, they feel the home environment creates a more personalized learning experience, where skills are taught when a child is ready, and that this teaching can be done in a more natural way than a structured school experience allows.

Socially, many parents believe the preschool environment often introduces young children to unacceptable behaviors before a child has learned what the parents consider acceptable, and before they have the self-control to avoid inappropriately emulating their peers. Parents feel it is best for a child to develop social skills under the watchful guidance of parents, and in a more diversified environment than age-controlled schools. They feel excessive time spent with peers at a young age can lead to peer-dependency, reducing a child's ability to develop independently or in a way that meets the standards of the family.

Methods of Teaching Preschool in the Home

Child-led curriculum

Formal Learning

Some parents practice a more formal method of preschool education, either to simulate the traditional preschool experience, or because the parent enjoys teaching and the child enjoys “playing school.”

During this formal school time, a parent may plan a formal curriculum similar to that taught in traditional preschools, with story time, crafts, physical skills, and academics. It is often built around a monthly theme chosen by the parent or chosen with assistance from the child. Often other children are invited to participate from time to time. Some parents form co-ops and take turns teaching a small number of children as a supplement to home education. Many of these children are being prepared to attend traditonal schools at age five.

Eclectic Learning

Parents often employ a mixture of the two methods, having a formal learning time for several hours a week, and blending learning into the everyday home experience as well. This allows the child to experience a certain amount of structure while still having extensive time to pursue his own interests under the guidance of a parent.

Creating a Stimulating Home Environment

Parents who teach their preschoolers at home generally have homes that contain all the important elements of a preschool, in order to inspire learning. They have educational toys, a wide variety of books supplemented by frequent library trips, quality children’s music, stimulating videos, art supplies, gardening materials and other items that help children learn. Children are encouraged to use their time well, although a child who has been taught to enjoy learning seldom needs encouragement to do so.

Parents take advantage of a child’s natural curiosity and interest in the world around them. They may spend hours watching an ant hill or taking apart an alarm clock to see what’s inside. Parents explore these curiosities with their children, and help them to maintain an enthusiasm for their world.

Parents also try to utilize real-world experiences. Instead of playing in a play kitchen, a homeschooled preschooler is likely to be found in the real kitchen, learning to make real cookies. Besides learning to cook, he is also learning fractions, and perhaps even reading skills. A child might set the dinner table, counting plates as he does so. He will learn colors by sorting the family socks. He will explore the alphabet as he finds letters in his real world. Field trips, also known as family outings, are frequent.

Social skills involve far more than interacting with same-age peers. A well-socialized child will know how to interact with people of all ages. A homeschooled child might spend a few hours in a nursing home, play with an infant, and chat with the scientist next door, all in the course of a normal day. His social world will mimic that of the real world, not the artificial world of a preschool.

Standard school skills, such as standing in line, are done by taking a child to the grocery store. Playing with others is done with the child’s own friends or at the park. Taking turns, sharing, and speaking kindly are taught within the family structure. Children often spend a few hours a week learning under another adult at church or in a community class of some type in order to learn to obey other carefully chosen adults.

Children who come from an intellectually stimulating home, and who spend a great deal of time with adults are likely to begin school at or above grade level with their more traditionally educated peers.

For more information:

Treasured Time for Homeschoolers

Toddler Homeschool

Preschool is No Answer

Starfall (free and low-cost reading instructional materials online)

Brightly Beaming Resources (Free online curriculum parents can easily carry out from birth through preschool.)

A to Z Home’s Cool (the ultimate homeschooling website)