Preschool is more than just learning the alphabet, numbers, and colors. It’s where children make their first friends, learn to express their feelings, and start discovering the world around them.
Education and upbringing are important in a child’s early years. Many skills grow through play and interacting with others.
Preschool isn’t just a step before elementary school. It gives children a chance to learn and build skills through activities unique to preschool.
At Ekya Early Years, children get to explore and try new things.
Why is preschool important for children?
It’s hard to pinpoint when children, especially infants and toddlers, start learning, but it begins before preschool.
At a very young age, kids learn by watching adults, listening to conversations around them, handling things, and exploring the world.
Preschool builds on those early experiences. It’s often where children first interact with other kids in a group setting.
Beyond acquiring basic reading and writing skills, preschool education offers a number of other benefits. It helps develop communication, social, emotional, and motor skills, as well as problem-solving ability.
1. Learning to Be Independent
Imagine a toddler going through the motions of preparing a glass of water all by herself, tidying up her own area and even buttoning her own buttons.
These simple tasks may seem minor but contribute to a child’s independence, concentration, and coordination skills.
Montessori practical life exercises contribute to a child’s independence in preschool, and at Ekya Early Years, we practice activities such as pouring, classifying, cleaning, and organizing.
2. Learning to Express Feelings
Many preschool children experience feelings but may not be able to articulate them. Preschool helps children learn about their feelings, communicate them, and develop appropriate responses.
For instance, if a child feels frustrated because the tower fell, the teacher might help them understand the feeling, start over, or consider other options. Through storytelling, chatting, or playing, children learn about their feelings and how to manage them.
3. Developing Communication and Language Skills
Language acquisition is not simply about knowing the letters.
Language acquisition begins with key activities: listening, asking questions, talking through thoughts, telling stories, and having conversations.
Preschoolers learn language through stories, songs, talking, role play and interacting with their peers and adults.
At Ekya Early Years, language is developed through storytelling, phonics, reading and other language-based activities.
These early experiences form the basis for reading, writing, and pursuing further education.
4. Learning Through Play and Exploration
A child stacking blocks learns about balance. Playing with different objects helps a child understand correlations. Children playing with colours learn how materials change.
Play offers the child the opportunity to observe, experiment, predict, and find solutions to problems.
The idea of play-based education is important in preschool.
In Ekya Early Years, preschoolers learn concepts and ideas through Montessori materials, sensorial activities, research projects, and creative activities.
The Atelier is a place where children can work with a wide range of materials and engage in art and design.
5. Building Confidence Through Everyday Experiences
For a small child, doing something independently, joining group discussions, or starting a new activity is an achievement.
Preschool gives little ones regular opportunities to experience new things, make decisions, and learn to handle different situations.
Through practice and participation, the child becomes confident in their abilities.
Ekya Early Years provides an atmosphere in which children can learn and develop an understanding of various activities at their own pace.
6. Preparing Children for Primary School
The readiness for school implies more than just knowing how to read or count. It also means that the child is able to communicate, interact with others, follow rules of behavior, and engage in various activities.
Preschool is the ideal environment to acquire these skills properly. Children learn to be organised and follow the classroom timetable.
7. What makes Ekya Early Years different?
At Ekya Schools, the Early Years programme is for children from 2.5 right up to 6.
This is the old ‘analogies’ argument, based on similarities between methodologies such as Montessori and Reggio Emilia. We offer a variety of activities in the curriculum, including the following:
- Practical Life activities: Encouraging independence in daily tasks
- Sensorial Learning: The study of shapes, materials, sounds, and patterns using Montessori tools
- Language and Literacy: The process of acquiring communication skills through phonetics, former reading, and storytelling
- Early Maths: Understanding the basic principles of arithmetic through hands-on methods
- The Atelier: The study of ideas through artistic expression and experimenting with materials
Outdoor activities and socio-emotional learning. Instead of teaching everyone the same, teachers guide each student through experiences at their own pace.
8. Is skipping preschool really a mistake?
Development is individual to each child, and the early years are one of many settings where young people are educated.
Kids can learn to communicate, be independent, be curious, and communicate with others at preschool, at home, and in the community.
Nevertheless, it is true that a good preschool course does give them the opportunity to socialise with other children, to work with all sorts of materials, to become familiar with different systems and to be under the care of properly trained staff.
These experiences are all worth bearing in mind when you’re designing an approach to a child.
The primary objective is not simply to establish that a child can recognise letters and can count (though that’s part of it) but to show him or her the value of developing the skills which will enable them to be self-reliant and to communicate with others.
Explore Ekya Early Years Preschools in Bangalore
For those of you looking for preschools in Bangalore, at Ekya Early Years, children are taught using a Montessori-based methodology, where they learn through play and are encouraged to develop independence.
There are locations on the map below which offer preschool (for children aged 2.5 to 6 years). Some of the locations in Bangalore are:
Ekya Early Years – HRBR Layout (Central Bangalore)
Ekya Early Years – Byrathi (North Bangalore, close to Hennur and Kothanur)
Ekya Early Years – ITPL (East Bangalore, close to Whitefield and Doddanekkundi)
Ekya Early Years – JP Nagar (South Bangalore)
Ekya Early Years – BTM Layout (South Bangalore)
Ekya Early Years – NICE Road (South-West Bangalore, nearby Begur and Mylasandra)
All the educational approaches in the school are geared towards practical work, and the children acquire knowledge and develop their social skills.
Come to our early years Educational establishment or find a location closest to you.