When discussing their programs, what emerged was the absence of program. Their centers had dressing-up boxes, "caves", castles, towers, boxes of toys, blocks, free-choice books, paper and crayons play-yards, sandboxes, swings and slides etc. Children were dropped off, engaged in "exploratory play", had a snack, more exploratory play. then were either picked up or had lunch and were then picked up. A longer day was "anti-child" they said.
None of the center owners or directors offered any justification or suppport for this, they assumed that this approach was the only one appropriate for such a young age and tjhat anything else was also anti-child, which was of course left undefined. In essence, they were charging quite high fees around $1000 a month, for child-minding.
I think all shared a poorly-understood idea of experiential or skills based learning, or perhaps they lacked any understanding at all. With this approach, which includes Montessori, Reggio Emilia and inquiry and is sometimes also known as "active learning", students are guided by the teacher, activities or materials to explore specific concepts or to develop intentionally-selected skills, attitudes and values. The technical term for this is "program". The opposite is the unguided, unstructured, unfocussed laissez-faire approaches described above.
The program here lies in what the teacher or the center intends the child(ren) to develop. For example, if the value of sharing is important, children might be taught to asked to pass around the snacks or to give out the cookies or to cut up the bananas rather than a bowl of snacks being placed in the middle for a smash-and-grab free-for-all.
I think we were one of the derided pre-schools. We had established specifc targets, for each level, for example knowing numbers or names of the parts of the body or being able to give their address and telephone number to a polic officer. However we used playful strategies to reach and exceed these targets such as games, songs, rhymes and puzzles.
Our handwriting target was being able to write during K, so PK-3 was focussed on fine-motor development with markers, paintbrushes, crayons, fat pencils, thin pencils, scissors, mouse and keyboard etc. Children colored, cut-and-pasted, traced - the prompts were related to the units so one week they might be coloring or tracing or folding pictures of cats and dogs in a "pets" unit and another cars and fire-trucks in a "transport" unit. There was always a choice of prompts and rarely did students not want to work all of them.
I remember one regional professional development meeting we hosted where one of these playful directors was horrified that we asked our three year-olds to color inside the lines. (They couldn't, they were three, but they were learning to do so. We also asked them to rinse their brushes between colors when painting to avoid everythgn becoming brown or purple.) She then reacted with great enthusiasm when she saw the G1 - 2 free-expression paintings. Of course they weren't, they were the PK-4 students' work. They were able to do this because they could control their paintbrushes, because they had learned to color inside the lines, the yhad learned not to mix colors.
I remember one regional professional development meeting we hosted where one of these playful directors was horrified that we asked our three year-olds to color inside the lines. (They couldn't, they were three, but they were learning to do so. We also asked them to rinse their brushes between colors when painting to avoid everythgn becoming brown or purple.) She then reacted with great enthusiasm when she saw the G1 - 2 free-expression paintings. Of course they weren't, they were the PK-4 students' work. They were able to do this because they could control their paintbrushes, because they had learned to color inside the lines, the yhad learned not to mix colors.
I am not against play-based approaches. We had structured class-time where the teachers had planned the activities and intended learning outcomes, punctuated by unstructured breaks or recess where students were free to do what they wanted and to play with whoever they wanted. The play-yard contained a mixture of equipment and "stuff" which could be freely adapted to the students' needs at the time.
During class time, we used learning centers and one was usually "expressive", ie exploring the unit's topics or contents such as with a dress-up or related toys. The transportation unit had 100 small toy cars which were used for counting, grouping etc but were also available for expressive play. The quantities unit had cups and bottles and 5-gallon paint cans full of water which were then used for other measuring activities such as pouring water over each other.
I am not against the "play" of the centers described above. What I am against is the lack of clarity in these centers' and directors' language and in their descriptions of what they do and offer, and the negativity and dismissiveness towards other programs. Developmentally appropriate practice means providing right for each child, and for some this means an "academic" pre-school.
Footnote : one of the main proponents of the play approach was the director of a center located in a prestigious suburb which had a reputation due to its location. To a large extent, parents were attracted by its reputation, we knew this because they would tell us since we were on the same visit circuit. In my opinion, one of the main functions of any educational level including pre-school is to prepare students for what comes next, not to be an end in and of itself. What we also knew and that these parents didn't was that many of this center's students struggled when they first reached elementary school since they had not been prepared to sit, listen, take turns, wait and so on. Again, a lack of clarity in what this center did and offered,
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Further Reading
"most learning centres choose to adopt the either/or approach, either focusing too much on academics or too much on unstructured playtime, also known as ‘free play’."
"play-based early years programs are focused on teaching and learning. In such programs, play can be in the form of free play (activity that is spontaneous and directed by the child), and guided play (also child-directed, but the teacher is involved in the activity as a co-player) with intentional teaching."
"In play-based child care, teachers tend to swing between letting the children play and doing teaching activities.”
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