For many modern parents, preschool has gone from an alternative option from daycares during the day, to a practical necessity. According to Brightly, the preschool years form a window that is critical to the developing child for self-regulation. Children who are enrolled in preschool or pre-K programs have a consistent leg up on their peers who don’t start any form of schooling until age five with kindergarten.

Preschool Teaches Social Skills

Children in preschool are exposed to an environment where most of the people around them are their peers, rather than authority figures. Peer interactions in preschool provide a critical opportunity for these children to learn how to make friends and cooperate, skills that will be crucial to their success in school and work.

Preschool Teaches Children to Self-Regulate

Play with peers that children aren’t fully familiar with can inevitably bring about minor conflicts. These conflicts teach children conflict resolution, a crucial skill in emotional self-regulation. The skill of learning to control their emotions while dealing with others is a critical lesson for success in life.

Preschool Boosts Pre-Literacy Skills

Preschool children are generally too young to be able to read. However, read-aloud stories and songs are crucial building blocks of language. These skills will bridge the gap between early speaking and full literacy later on. Pre-literacy builds on children’s natural excitement and sense of play to create a basis for learning how the world of words will work in their lives. This excitement will form a natural bridge to further learning of language.

Preschool Builds Choice Into Children’s Routines

Since preschoolers get to choose their learning activities as they engage in them, a preschooler’s decisions about what play or activity they get involved in both build their confidence in their ability to learn, and create information about what they’re involved in. Lifelong passions like writing, art, science, math, and music can be formed in the handful of short years before Kindergarten.

Preschool Challenges Cognitive and Motor Skills

Literacy, math, cognition, physical coordination, and fine muscle control are important skills and activities to be building in the first years of education. Children in preschool are challenged in both their hand-eye coordination as well as their cognitive skills, allowing them to grow in multiple ways.

Give Washington Ready Start a call today if you’re looking to enroll your child in an early-learning childcare program. There are still many spots available in our top-rated, small-setting preschool. Between free meals, transportation, and teachers with educated backgrounds, your child will learn creativity, independence, social skills and so much more in order to set them up for success in Kindergarten.