KINDERGARTEN
KINDERGARTEN AND TECHNOLOGY
Safe Sites for Young Children
Safe Sites Adults can take Young Children learning about computers, internet, and technology.
preschool
TEACHES
SOFT SKILLS
NEEDED FOR FUTURE JOB TRAINING
When economist James Heckman was
studying the effects of job training programs on unskilled young workers, he found a mystery. He was
comparing a group of workers that had gone through a job training program with a group that hadn't.
And
he found that, at best, the training program did nothing to help the workers get better jobs. In some
cases,
the training program even made the workers worse off.
The problem was that the students in the training program couldn't learn what
they were being taught. They lacked an important set of skills which would enable them to
learn new things. Heckman, a Nobel-Prize-winning economist, calls these soft
skills.
You might not think of soft skills as skills at all. They involve things like being able to pay attention
and focus, being curious and open to new experiences, and being able to control your temper and not get
frustrated.
All these soft skills are very important in getting a job. And Heckman
discovered that you don't get them in high school, or in middle school, or even in elementary school.
You get them in preschool. And that, according to Heckman, makes preschool
one of the most effective job-training programs out there.<snip>
Children's Early Learning Environments Boost School Readiness In Low-Income Families
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/228816.php
Home learning experiences that are consistently supportive in the early years may boost low-income
children's readiness for school. Previous research has found that on average, children living in
poverty
are less well prepared to start school than children from middle-income homes. During home visits when the
children were approximately 1, 2, 3, and 5 years old, the researchers gathered information on how often
children took part in literacy activities (such as shared book reading), the quality of mothers'
engagements with their children (such as children's exposure to frequent and varied adult speech), and
the availability of learning materials (such as children's books). From this information, the
researchers calculated a total learning environment score at each age for each of the children. They also
measured the number of words the children understood and their knowledge of letters and words at age 5.
"The quality of children's environments over time varied greatly," according to Eileen T.
Rodriguez, survey researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., who led the study when she was at New
York University. "Some children experienced environments that were uniformly low or high in language
and literacy supports at all ages examined, while others experienced environments that changed as they
developed."
The researchers found that differences in the children's learning environments
over time predicted their readiness skills. As one example, children whose learning environments
were consistently low in quality across the four ages studied were much more likely to have delays in
language and literacy skills at pre-kindergarten than children whose environments were uniformly high at
all
the ages. "Our findings indicate that enriched learning experiences as early as the first year of
life
are important to children's vocabulary growth, which in turn provides a foundation for children's
later school success," notes Rodriguez. Experiences that occur as children are poised to enter
kindergarten also matter, particularly in contributing to children's early reading skills. "Home
learning experiences that are consistently supportive in the early years may close the school readiness
gap
of children from low-income backgrounds," notes Rodriguez.
The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/07/28/128819707/the-kindergarten-experiment July
27, 2010
How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life? There has always been
one
major caveat, however, to the research on the fade-out effect. It was based mainly on test scores, not on
a
broader set of measures, like a child's health or eventual earnings.
As Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, says: "We don't really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes."
Mr. Chetty and five other researchers examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been
part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. When Mr. Chetty and his colleagues
took another look at the students in adulthood, they discovered that the legacy of kindergarten had
re-emerged.
Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with
otherwise similar backgrounds, were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more
likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more. All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every
percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten.
A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.
Good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime - patience, discipline, manners,
perseverance. The tests that 5-year-olds take may pick up these skills,even if later multiple-choice
tests
do not.
Is the Value of Education overrated?
Can an education protect workers in today's global economy? In truth, unemployment has risen far
morefor the less educated. Education itself can make a difference. In the Project Star Tennessee
experiment, some classes did far better than others. The differences were too big to be explained by
randomness. (Similarly, when the researchers looked at entering and exiting test scores in first, second
and third grades, they found that some classes made much more progress than others.) Class size played
some role. Peers also seem to matter. But neither of these factors came close to explaining the
variation
in class performance.
IT IS THE TEACHERS Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the
differences can affect students for years to come. Mr. Chetty and his colleagues — one of whom, Emmanuel
Saez, recently won the prize for the top research economist under the age of 40 — estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year.
That's the present value of the additional money that a full class of students can expect to
earn over their careers. This estimate doesn't take into account social gains, like
better
health and less crime.
Bottom Line: Make sure your kid is the oldest one in the kindergarten class.
Kelly Bedard, a labor economist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, published a paper
with
Elizabeth Dhuey called "The Persistence of Early Childhood Maturity: International Evidence of
Long-Run Age Effects" in The Quarterly Journal of Economics in November 2006 that looked at this
phenomenon. “Obviously, when you're 5, being a year older is a lot, and so we should expect kids who
are the oldest in kindergarten to do better than the kids who are the youngest in kindergarten,” Bedard
says. But what if relatively older kids keep doing better after the maturity gains of a few months
should
have ceased to matter? What if kids who are older relative to their classmates still have higher test
scores in fourth grade, or eighth grade?
After crunching the math and science test scores for nearly a quarter-million students across 19
countries, Bedard found that relatively younger students perform 4 to 12 percentiles less well in third
and fourth grade and 2 to 9 percentiles worse in seventh and eighth; and, as she notes, “by eighth grade
it's fairly safe to say we're looking at long-term effects.” In British Columbia, she found that
the relatively oldest students are about 10 percent more likely to be “university bound” than the
relatively youngest ones. In the United States, she found that the relatively oldest students are 7.7
percent more likely to take the SAT or ACT, and are 11.6 percent more likely to enroll in four-year
colleges or universities. (No one has yet published a study on age effects and SAT scores.) “One reason
you could imagine age effects persist is that almost all of our education systems have ability-groupings
built into them,” Bedard says. “Many claim they don't, but they do. Everybody gets put into reading
groups and math groups from very early ages.” Younger children are more likely to be assigned behind
grade
level, older children more likely to be assigned ahead. Younger children are more likely to receive
diagnoses of attention-deficit disorder, too. “When I was in school the reading books all had colors,”
Bedard told me. “They never said which was the high, the middle and the low, but everybody knew. Kids in
the highest reading group one year are much more likely to be in the highest reading group the next. So
you can imagine how that could propagate itself.” [1]
HEALTHY CHILDREN Pre School / Kindergarten CHILDREN: EARLY
BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended No Screen Time At All For Babies Under 2, out of
concern that the increasing use of media might displace human interaction and impede the crucially
important brain growth and development of a baby's first two years.
Early Childhood A GUIDE FOR EDUCATION COORDINATORS IN HEAD
START
CHILDREN'S ACTIVITY TABLES
Please
keep in mind that participants are often shopping with young children; activities should be simple,
portable, and not too messy.
Kindergarten Entry
Skills
Overview of skills "considered necessary for a child when entering kindergarten." Topics
include
the importance of kindergarten entry factors as rated by kindergarten teachers (includes various social,
perceptual, motor, and language development skills), and expected cognitive and motor skills. Also
includes links to related sites. From the Clearinghouse on Early Education and Parenting (CEEP), part of
the Early Childhood and Parenting (ECAP) Collaborative at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.
Ready for
Kindergarten?
In this article five "kindergarten teachers from around the country ... share their insights on
helping your child gain the right mix of kindergarten-readiness skills." Topics discussed include
enthusiasm toward learning, oral-language skills, ability to listen, the desire to be independent, the
ability to play well with others, strong fine-motor skills, and basic letter and number
recognition.
Educational CyberPlayGround Recommends These Sites for Children
and
Adults learning about computers, internet, and technology
Skills Checklist for Kindergarten: Basic Mastery of Concepts ... media using the
computer
KINDERGARTEN AND TECHNOLOGY KEYBOARDING SKILLS START IN KINDERGARTEN
What Smaller Hands Need
Educational CyberPlayGround: Kindergarten Music,
Songs/Poems about shapes.
Find appropriate Kindergarten Music, Songs and Poems about shapes from ... Famous
Folkies
RELATED LINKS SUPPLEMENTAL CONCEPTS AWARDS Kindergarten Music Simple Beat I always
start
my
STARTER SITES for KINDERGARTEN AND TECHNOLOGY Promoting basic computer ...
appropriate activities. KEYBOARDING SKILLS START IN KINDERGARTEN Skills Checklist for
Kindergarten What Smaller Hands Need: A tiny
Teaching and Learning English: Why the English Language is
Difficult
and visual skills -- sometime during kindergarten . In fact, ... elementary school?
Printing in kindergarten and/or first grade ... to the tougher
kindergarten curriculum.
Find and get free computers, learn where to donate
and recycle computers
All U.S. schools and educational non-profits serving pre-kindergarten through grade ...
Children, ranging from kindergarten to special ed ... be used in the
kindergarten program
Find the science that shows why laughter and play is important for
learning
Childhood, condemns the increasingly academic curriculum in kindergartens and
preschools,
... that has transformed kindergarten into de facto ... preschool and
kindergarten practices
Music Teacher Resources, Online Music Lesson Plans: Educational
CyberPlayGround
Classroom use, teachers suggested resources for kindergarten through middle school.
NATIONAL CHILDREN' ... DRUMMING GAME and Steady Beat KINDERGARTEN MUSIC CONCERT
ATTENDANCE
Jason McElwain basketball Special Education Star and Links for
Educators
About 12% of students receive special education in at least one grade: kindergarten,
first-grade, and third- begin special education in kindergarten
Literacy and National Reading Statistics, Teaching Reading:
Educational
50 billion). In all, kindergartens through community colleges are spending $55 billion
--
75 .sickness and all that is left is 140. Kindergarten through the end of third grade
is
4
Changing Girls Attitudes Towards Computers in the
Classroom:
Educational
From kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second ... a stunning gender
reversal in American education. From kindergarten to graduate school
FORMS OF LIFE, KNOWLEDGE, aND BEAUTY
"Why Should the Kindergarten Be Incorporated as an Integral Part of the Public School System?"
By: Philander P. Claxton Journal of Proceedings and Addresses, National Education Association, 1913, 426-427.
Introduction
Friedrich Froebel, a German educator, was the originator of the kindergarten, and he founded the first one in 1837.
In 1840 he coined the word kindergarten for the Play and Activity Institute he had founded in 1837 at Bad
Blankenburg for young children, together with Wilhelm Middendorf and Heinrich Langethal. These two men
were
Fröbel's most faithful colleagues. He designed the educational play materials known as Froebel Gifts, or
Fröbelgaben, which included geometric building blocks and pattern activity blocks. A book
entitled
Inventing Kindergarten, by Norman Brosterman, examines the influence of Friedrich Fröbel on Frank
Lloyd Wright and modern art.
Friedrich Fröbel's great insight was to recognise the importance of the activity of the child in learning.
He introduced the concept of “free work” (Freiarbeit) into pedagogy and established the “game” as the
typical form that life took in childhood, and also the game's educational worth. Activities in the first
kindergarten included singing, dancing, gardening and self-directed play with the Froebel Gifts. Fröbel
intended, with his Mutter- und Koselieder - a songbook that he published - to introduce the young child
into
the adult world.
These ideas about childhood development and education were introduced to academic and royal circles
through
the tireless efforts of his greatest proponent, the Baroness (Freiherrin) Bertha Marie von
Marenholtz-Bülow.
Through her Fröbel made the acquaintance of the Royal House of the Netherlands, various Thuringian dukes
and
duchesses, including the Romanov wife of the Grand Duke von Sachsen-Weimar. Baroness von Marenholtz-Bülow,
Duke von Meiningen and Fröbel gathered donations to support art education for children in honor of the
100th
anniversary of the birth of Goethe. The first was Czech educator John Amos Comenius, who in the 17th
century
introduced the idea that schools should teach infants. Another influence was French philosopher Jean
Jacques
Rousseau, who wrote Émile (1762), a treatise on a child's education in nature. In addition, Froebel was
influenced by Swiss education reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who founded schools for infants in the
late 18th and early 19th century. From 1808 to 1810 Froebel studied and worked at Pestalozzi's school in
Yverdon, Switzerland, where he learned the principles of so-called natural education. Froebel was drawn to
Pestalozzi's teaching methods, which were designed to stimulate the natural curiosity of children and to
nourish their innate desire to learn.
Froebel developed his own ideas about education by combining his belief in scientific observation with his
philosophical belief in the interconnectedness of all things. In addition, Froebel was concerned that the
spread of industrialization would negatively affect the family, but he believed that kindergartens could
elevate the status of mothers and children. Froebel's ideas became increasingly popular in the 1840s, but
because kindergartens were associated with liberalism and free-thinking,
Fröbel's student Margarethe Schurz founded the first kindergarten in the United States at Watertown,
Wisconsin in 1856, and she also inspired Elizabeth Peabody, who went on to found the first
English-speaking
kindergarten in the United States - the language at Schurz's kindergarten had been German, to serve an
immigrant community - in Boston in 1860. This paved the way for the concept's spread in the USA. The
German
émigré Adolph Douai had also founded a kindergarten in Boston in 1859, but was obliged to close it after
only a year. By 1885 there were 565 private kindergartens in the United States serving 29,716
students.
Charity kindergartens—or so-called free kindergartens—for children of the poor became one of the main
instruments of the progressive women's and social movements of the late 1880s and 1890s.
Some of these schools were parts of settlement houses, such as Hull House in Chicago,
established by American social reformer Jane Addams. The teachers from these charity kindergartens often
made home visits and taught songs and games to mothers to use with their children. These meetings between
parents and kindergarten teachers eventually helped lead to the founding of the National Congress of
Parents
and Teachers, also known as the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA).
In 1873 the St. Louis public school system established the first public kindergarten in the United
States. Under the leadership of American educational reformer Susan Blow, St. Louis had 60
public
kindergartens by 1885. By 1910 most major American cities offered public kindergarten education. However,
once established in the public schools, kindergartens began to change. For example, they began to include
more preacademic training and preparation for first grade. In addition, as kindergartens became a part of
public education, some of their social work and outreach functions declined.