There are some adults, even some parents, that don’t understand the correlation between play in a preschool and future performance in the schoolroom for young children. These people still believe that preschools and kindergartens exist to give students a head start in their education.
With getting good grades and test scores becoming increasingly crucial in securing a place in the best schools all through a child’s educational career, this way of thinking is completely understandable. Parents are becoming anxious to give their children every advantage they can to help them secure the best education and provide them with the chance to have a good career later on in life.
But the purpose of the education given by the international preschools in Thailand is not to give their students a head start in their education. It’s to ensure the children under their tutelage have developed all the skills they need to absorb, appreciate, and completely understand what they will learn later on.
Developing the Senses
Every child makes use of every sense when they first begin to explore the world around them. They use the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. But they also use movement, spatial awareness and balance in determining the limits of their own abilities and how things around them react to their interaction.
This is what has confused adults who view preschools and kindergartens as a head start in education. They see children in these classrooms colouring, dancing, or playing on a jungle gym and fail to see how these activities help a child learn how to count or read.
They are missing the extremely important first step of a child’s development of the tools they will use to explore the world around them and learn independently. This development is furthered by using sensory play as a fun and useful activity that allows the child to use their own curiosity, intellect, and energy in a structured environment that focuses the development where it’s needed.
Encouragement and Interaction
Sensory play by the time children reach preschool age usually includes the development of language and social skills, which will be very important once the child begins to regularly articulate thoughts and ideas that require explanation and invite questions. By grouping children together and giving them focused activities to explore, the educators encourage this exploration as well as the interaction among the child’s peers that prepares them for this discourse later on.
They become comfortable with learning together and sharing ideas and thoughts with their companions. And while their busy exploring, their motor skills become stronger, their language skills are exercised because of the ongoing interaction, and they begin to explore the intellectual aspects they will use every day throughout their education.
Discovering the Intellectual Tools
They learn the concepts of counting; they see the correlation of words on the pages of stories being read to them by the teacher and realise what letters are. They learn the difference in colours and shapes and begin applying this knowledge to what they see in the world around them.
They are slowly improving their intellectual awareness and preparing themselves to learn. But it’s the ‘play’ aspect of these fun activities that keep the child interested and engaged. The way the day is structured and the activities the children are presented with are carefully choreographed to offer them the best opportunities to develop the sensory aspects that need to be developed.
In many of the classes, several of the senses are exercised at the same time. There may be a class where the children are divided into teams, and they have to complete an obstacle course before drawing an object together. In this scenario, the social skills, physical skills and fine motor skills all get a workout, and the child sees the activity as simply a fun task to complete with their classmates.
It’s this emphasis on making the preschool day full of fun that confuses the anxious parent who wants to get their educational money’s worth. They don’t understand that their child is in the best programme possible for academic success later on in their education.
Preschools that focus on the development of the individual and use sensory play as a large part of the desired results turn out children that are better problem solvers. They are also more collaborative, are more creative, and are better able to apply skills learned in different areas to solve a particular problem.
International Preschools in Thailand Specialise in Sensory Development
International schools prepare students to enter university by offering advanced programmes and better quality of instruction than public schools can provide. And more and more parents are seeing the benefits of placing their children in these schools to give them the best chance of success later on in life.
International preschools in Thailand offer the same level of programmes and instruction on a developmental level. They know that the developmental stage of a child’s life is the best chance they will often have to learn skills that will serve them well in many different applications all through life. And teaching these skills is the passion of these dedicated teachers and educators in Thailand.
If you want to learn more about both the theory behind the preschool programmes and the way they’re put into practice in a Bangkok preschool before enrolling your child, contact Raintree, preschool in Bangkok. Please make an appointment and meet with some of the teachers of the preschool programme and get a tour of our campus and facilities.
By enrolling your child in our preschool programme, you’ll allow them to develop fully and have the confidence to explore the world around them.
