Early Childhood Education Programs

As you watch your children grow, take those first steps, learn and play, your greatest hope is that they will carry that joy, curiosity and love of learning that you see now into their future lives. Naturally, you want to do everything that you can to help them achieve success and a well-developed social, emotional and intellectual life. One of the best ways to give your children a head start in their social and intellectual development is to put them in an early childhood education program.

What is Early Childhood Education?

Early Childhoo Education gives children a head start!

Early Childhood Education is a set of educational theories, practices and programs that focus on children as young as infants to around age eight. A subset of early child education, known as infant/toddler education, is focused on children from birth to age two.

Most infant/toddler education takes place informally, at home, with parents and loved ones. Family socialization with young children is vital to their healthy development. But the positive effects of formal early childhood education programs, such as an accredited preschool education, is now widely recognized by early education experts as being just as crucial to a child’s intellectual development.

How Will My Child Benefit from an Early Education Program?

The benefits of early childhood education and preschool programs have been shown in study after study for many years. These benefits of preschool are perhaps one of the most solidly proven subjects in educational research. In fact, if this article were to detail the entirety of the benefits of early childhood education and preschool, it would run on so long you would probably stop reading it. So we will keep it to a few key findings.

According to an article in Psychology Today, brain research has revealed that the human brain undergoes a crucial cognitive development period at an early age. If the necessary cognitive stimulation is lacking at this critical time, the child may experience deficits in cognitive ability that would otherwise not appear.

The article goes on to point out that studies on the effects of quality preschool education indicate that preschool education provides children with skills vital to later success. A survey of 28 year olds who had received a preschool education revealed that they had better paying jobs and life security than those 28 year olds who did not attend preschool.

In depth studies have recorded additional long term benefits. A famous long term of study of the impacts of preschool and early education programs, called the High/Scope Perry Preschool study, found that preschool attendees have fewer behavior and metal health problems, are less likely to get into trouble with the law, earn more income and have high school and college higher graduation rates.