The Wonder of the Preliterate Child
I didn’t push my kids to read early. Their early childhood years were full of meaningful play and lots of stories read aloud to them. Their world without words-in-it-yet was innocent and beautiful.
When you ride down the road in your car, what draws your eyes? My eyes focus on words—signs and billboards of all types. My eyes linger on “for sale” signs in front of houses and businesses, even though I’m not in the market to buy anything.
The preliterate child sees something different. He or she notices the clouds, the birds, the trees, the houses, the mountains, the colors of our world.
When my daughter was two, she was fascinated with flags. I wouldn’t notice them until she’d say, “flag merca, flag merca, flag ginia, flag ginia,” meaning flag of America, flag of Virginia, two flags that fly together everywhere around town. How is it that I never notice them? Because my eyes are drawn to words. Try it sometime. Try not to look at words as you drive down the road –it’s nearly impossible.
I’m envious of the preliterate child’s ability to see the world, to notice the things I miss because my eyes focus on words. And I am puzzled by how our culture fails to cherish this very short period of time when a child sees the wonder of a wordless world.
Instead, we are afraid our kids won’t read in time. We want to make sure they have academic training in preschool and kindergarten because we have been told that early reading is good, a sign of intelligence, and a sign that our student is off to a running start. This educational philosophy has been with us in America for decades, but it’s not good for kids.
Recently, researchers out of Vanderbilt University tracked nearly 3,000 four-year-olds in Tennessee to try to figure out whether an academically-oriented preschool would give low-income kids an advantage in subsequent grade levels over kids who didn’t attend the academically-oriented preschool. [Learn more here]
The results? The control group who didn’t attend the academic preschool performed better on all academic measures by third grade than those who attended the academically-oriented preschool. The performance gap between them widened by 6th grade along with the number of diagnosed learning disabilities and school infractions.
In short, this means that those children who started academic learning later performed better, behaved more appropriately, and enjoyed school more by the 6th grade. Basically, forcing kids to learn academic facts too early stifles their learning.
At Selah Academy, we believe PreK-Kindergarten kids learn best through experience and discovery. We believe kids should be active participants in unhurried, meaningful learning. We value reading great children’s literature to kids. We know children have enormous potential to encounter God and that giving them a beautiful space and ample time helps them seek God personally. We think cooking and eating together teach kids math and science, not to mention manners and hospitality. We believe cognitive development and social-emotional learning happen when kids and adults play games together. We think learning should be fun and that school should be a place kids love. We believe in the wonder of the preliterate child.
Paula Cook, Director and Founder of Selah Academy