CHAPTER 1

THREE, FOUR, AND FIVE

YEAR OLDS IN SCHOOL:

THE PAST IS PRESENT

FIGURE 1-1: The vocabulary of
schools for three, four, and five
year old children schools for
children under the age of six
have a variety of names.

Among these are the following:

 EARLY LEARNING PROGRAM- other terms used
to describe programs for children under six sponsored by
federal , state or local governments or privately funded.
 EARLY EDUCATION PROGRAM- any program for
children under the age of five.
 HEAD START- the Federal Program Providing
preschool experiences for three and four year olds,
prior to entrance into a five year old kindergarten
program.
 KINDERGARTEN- most often refers to programs
for four and five year old children. Most
programs will be sponsored by state or local
school systems; others, however, may be funded
by private associations, churches, civic
organizations, and for-profit childcare centers.
 Pre-kindergarten - the term used to
describe programs for children before entry into
kindergarten. Pre kindergarten program can
be sponsored by state or local school system,
faith-based organization or private association
or businesses.
 Preschool - refers to the school for children 4
years of age or under nearly 70% of all children
in our nation attend some form of private or
publicly funded preschool.
 School for young Children – any
program for children under the age of six.
 THE PAST

 Schools for three- four and five year old

children in our nation are not new. Friedrich
Froebel opened the first kindergarten in
Germany in 1837.
 He conceived of the kindergarten 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 the
garden.
 THE PAST

 Right from the start kindergarten was

recognized as a very different type of
school for young children. So lovely and
speculative were the first kindergartens
that they were once called A PARADISE
OF CHILDHOOD.
 When Froebel formalized his ideas of the
kindergarten, it was a time of absolute
idealism in Germany. Influenced by the
times and by the writings of Jean Jacque
Rousseau, Froebel a romantic, was
sometimes labeled a mystic. Certainly his
writings were mystical and obscure.
Froebel's major concern was for unity.
 He wrote "all is unity, all rests in unity, all
springs from unity, strives for and leads up
to unity, and returns to unity at last”.
 To ensure that children would learn
through play and self activity, Froebel
designed a series of gifts and occupations.
The gifts consisted of knitted balls, wooden
balls, cylinders, cubes, brick-shaped blocks,
surfaces, lines, points (beans ,lentils , seeds,
and pebbles), and softened peas or wax
pallets and sharpened sticks or straws.
 The occupations were solids (plastic clay,
cardboard work, wood carving), surfaces
(paper folding, cutting parquetry and
paintings) and lines (stringing seeds,
beans, perforating paper). In addition
songs, games, finger plays, and
movement and dance were included as
gifts and occupations.
 SOCIAL FORCES
 Social forces also led to the ready acceptance
or Peabody's Ideas. During the late 1880s and
1900s, there was a mew wave of immigration
to America. The German idealism and
methods of the Kindergarten appealed to
those whose goals were to prepare these most
recent immigrants for citizenship in their new
country. Churches and missionary leagues
founded kindergartens because of their
religious overtones of bringing children in unity
with God.
The kindergarten was so popular that
before long it was adopted as a part of
the elementary public school. In 1873,
Susan Blow, a long with W.T. Harris the
superintendent of St. Louis Public School,
opened the first public school
kindergarten.
 This move was pivotal to the maturation
of the kindergarten. Almost immediately,
kindergarten practices and methods were
challenged.
 Some complained that German Educational
methods were not appropriate in American
Schools; others argued over the cost of the
kindergarten. The age of the child was
another issue. Froebel and Blow wanted to
enroll three to five years old children, but
legal action challenging the school's right to
use public monies to operate programs for
children under the age of six led them to
change the entrance age to five and
charged a quarterly fee.
 CHALLENGES

 Once in the public school, the purpose of the

kindergarten was questioned. Rather than
bringing children to unity with God and
others, educators recommended that the
program ready children for "real" school by
preparing them to read. Conflict between the
kindergarten and primary teachers ensued.
 In an attempt to bring unity between the
kindergarten and early primary grades,
S.C Parker and Alice Temple wrote
UNIFIED KINDERGARTEN AND FIRST
GRADE TEACHING, thinking the book
would help promote "continuous and
delightful" educational experiences for
children.
 Changing ideas of children and how they
learn brought more changes in the
curriculum and methods of the
kindergarten. Stanley Hall's observations of
children, the way teachers charted their
growth and development, were of interest
to the "kindergarteners " the name for
kindergarten teachers and administrators.
Edward Lee Thorndike work on animal
learning, which led to the Idea that
learning occurred by connecting a stimulus
with a response, was also being considered.
 Perhaps most influential of all were the
writings and philosophy of John Dewey.
Dewey did endorse Froebel's belief in self
expression and creative play, but he
showed the kindergarteners how
involving children in their here and now
world, solving real problems, and asking
them to make choices and initiate would
develop in children the ability to think as
well as the skills and knowledge
necessary to become citizens in a
democracy.
 CONTINUAL CHANGE

 Social forces and new theories of child

growth development and learning brought
still more expansion to the kindergarten
along with more change. During the Great
Depression of the 1930s, the Works Progress
Administration funded nursery schools.
 CONTINUAL CHANGE
 The purpose of these schools was to provide
employment for unemployed teachers give
economically deprived children an educational
boost, and help families in need.
Kindergarteners wrote curriculum and taught
in these schools. The experience broadened
their ideas of both the curriculum and the
practices of the kindergarten.
 The next social force influencing
kindergarten education was World War II.
The Lanham Act, passed and funded by
the federal government, provided care for
children under the age of six so their
mothers could work in factories for the
war effort. Although these were preschool
programs, kindergarten teachers were
influential in developing and teaching in
Lanham Act centers.
 The Present
 Today nearly all four- and five-year-olds
go to school, and not just in America.
Schooling for young children, especially
kindergartens, is popular all over the
world, throughout England and Europe,
including Eastern Europe, the Far East,
South and Central America, and some
African nations. The British government
pro- vides three terms of nursery school
for all three-year-olds in the nation.
 Schoolsfor three-, four-, and five-
year-olds in the United States are
usually sponsored by the school
system and are designed primarily
for four- or five-year-olds. although
a few states sponsor programs for
three-year-olds. Although most
kindergarten programs are
sponsored by the public school,
some children attend an early
learning program in private schools
or as a part of a full-day childcare
program.
 Programs may be half day, full day, or
anything in between. Full-day programs
are popular because they offer children
more learning time and respond to
parents' needs for full-time schooling for
their children. Today more than 60% of
five-year- olds attend a full-day program,
and about a fourth of all four-year-olds
attend full day
 The Past is Present
 Look at a picture of one of the early U.S.
kindergartens and you will immediately
know that today's schools for young
children have changed dramatically
from those of the past. One photograph
taken in Susan Blow's kindergarten in St.
Louis, Missouri, shows children sitting at
tables, their hands folded waiting for the
teacher to show them how to fold,
weave, or perforate the paper in front of
them.
 Compare these passive children to the
physically, socially, and intellectually active
children observed in a three-, four, or five-
year-old classroom of today, and it is clear
that early childhood curriculum and practices
have evolved and changed.
 Even though very different from the past,
today's early childhood programs echo those
of the past. Many of the philosophical
underpinnings and ideals of the orignal
kindergartens, as well as their methods and
practices, are present in today's schools for
young children.
 Philosophical Similarities
Philosophically, today's schools share some
of the same philosophical views as those of
the past. Today's early learning programs,
like those of the past,
 view child development as the
foundation for the curriculum,
support teacher training, and
 perceive early education as a means of
providing early educational experiences
and social services for those children and
their families in need.
 Child Development

 Froebel, like the early kindergarteners, took

seriously Rousseau's command that all
education must be based on knowledge and
under- standing of children's development.
Froebel gave prominence to the developmental
needs and status of children's development.
Today Froebel's beliefs that all education is
built on a foundation of under- standing each
child's development continues . The National
Association for the Education of Young
Children and the National Association of Early
Childhood Specialists in State Departments of
Education delineates how all early childhood
teachers
need to understand the developmental
changes that typically occur in the years
from birth through age eight and beyond,
variations in development that may occur,
and how best to support children's learning
and development during these years.
The National Association for the Education
of Young Children states the following:
 Developmentally appropriate practices
result from the process of professionals
making decisions about the wel1-being
and education of children based on at
least three important kinds of information
and knowledge:
I. What is known about child development
and learning-knowledge of age-related
human characteristics that permits general
predictions within an age range about what
activities, materials, interactions, or
experiences will be safe, healthy, interesting,
achievable, and also challenging to children;
2. What is known about the strengths,
interests, and needs of each individual child in
the group to be able to adapt for and be
responsive to inevitable individual variation;
and

3. Knowledge of the social and cultural

contexts in which children live to ensure that
learning experiences are meaningful,
relevant, and respectful of children and their
families.
 Teacher Training

 Only teachers trained in the Froebelian

method were permitted to teach in the
early kindergarten. As the kindergarten
spread throughout the nation and the
ideas of Hall, Thorndike and Dewey were
adapted on a new and different type of
teachers.
 Teacher were asked to create a curriculum
instead of depending on Froebel's
prescription. A greater knowledge and
understanding of children came through
research on the way children grew and learn
was necessary
 Perceive Early Education as
Means of Providing for Children
in Need
 Early education is viewed as a way of
ameliorating or compensating for the
developing effects of living in poverty.
 Currently early education programs are
being supported on the grounds that these
will prepare children with the critical
language and pre-reading skills required
to achieve success when in first grade.
 Similarities in Practices
The past is also presents in today’s school for
young children in curriculum and practices.
Similarities include the continuation of:
 Circle time language and community
 Play as a model of learning ,
 Focus on equipment, materials, and
supplies and
 The involvement of parents.
 Circle Time
 The circle, the finger plays, and the songs
today's kindergarten are all reminiscent
of those of the original kindergartens.
Probably no one today believes that
sitting in a circle will bring children to
unity with god but children still or taught
songs and rhythms as they sit in a circle
or as in case in some classrooms on circles
painted on the floor.
 Play and Activity as Modes of
Learning
 Froebel's belief in the power of play and
activity continues. Today it is well
documented the children's play in a
vehicle for social emotional, and
cognitive development as well as a
reflection of their development.
 Play was the way children come to
develop the ability to use symbol and
understand their world.
 Familiar Equipment, Toys and
Materials
Instead of selecting and designing equipment
and materials for children on the basis of bringing
children unity, today's teachers select materials
and equipment that will do the following:
 help children recognize their own potential and
power. Open-ended material such as wood,
water or sand can be controlled by children.
Children must act on these.
 offer children novelty and challenge while
reflecting the familiar and experience life of the
children.
 invite exploration of the world beyond
the classroom and family. Dramatic
play materials invite children to
enlarge their perspective and expand
their understanding of relationship in
the world beyond their classroom.
 necessitate the involvement of others
and provide for the environment of
children with special needs. Materials
should be sufficiently flexible to involve
a number of children including those
with special needs.
 Involvement of Parents
 Early kindergarteners thought of parent
involvement as parent education.
 A more active, integral role for parents in
found in today's school than in those of
the past. Teachers to they continue to
offer parents practical information, but
parents are expected to be involved in
today's school as equal partners in their
children's education.