The Early Learning Program for Toddlers: Is it too soon for some?
Childhood is precious and both children and parents should try and enjoy every single second of it. That’s because it won’t last long!
For that reason and others, some question whether or not an early learning program for toddlers is a case of starting too soon and reducing even more the unhindered freedom of childhood.
The Early Learning Program for Toddlers
It’s important to understand that such programs have nothing at all to do with a child being encouraged to perform or be tested and monitored. There is no pressure and the objective is for toddlers to have fun and play. They’re not in a conventional teaching environment – even if they could understand the concept of such, which they can’t!
To see just what is an early learning program for toddlers, it’s necessary to think a little about what is happening in a toddler’s life.
Toddlers are explorers
To some extent, this analogy is perfectly correct.
As they begin to toddle, they’re exploring the world around them. That world is a very strange place and to them, something akin to an adult exploring an alien planet. There are huge numbers of things they don’t recognise and which, possibly, could constitute either danger or fun.
They’ll evaluate and learn and as they do so, they will expand their knowledge and experience base at a terrifyingly quick rate. They go from recognising a few safe and trusted faces, toys and locations (such as their bedroom), to touching and feeling new things plus getting to new places under their personal motive power as opposed to a parents’ arms or a pushchair.
The learning they go through here is truly prodigious and it is arguably the most learning-intensive period of our lives.
What does that mean for an early learning program for toddlers?
The above process is natural and almost unavoidable. Whether anyone is involved or not, toddlers will engage in learning.
The early learning program for toddlers is, therefore, nothing radical or revolutionary nor is it something ‘different’ that is being inflicted upon toddlers.
The objective of such programs is simply to help toddlers maximise their exploring experiences by presenting them with structured and new opportunities to discover more about their surrounding world.
The alternative to that is to simply allow toddlers to explore as they wish without any external assistance and structuring. Such approaches won’t do any harm but they might not allow a toddler to maximise their true optimal potential for learning about the world they’re now a part of.
All toddlers benefit
There is now ample research to show that virtually all toddlers benefit from participating in an early learning program for toddlers.
These benefits are academically clear, lasting into the earlier school ages up to around 7-8 years of age. After that, they are statistically harder to pick out but what is shown in the analyses is that such children tend to have a greater appetite for participation in learning as they progress through schooling. That in turn equates to less absenteeism and a marked reduction in the need for remedial schooling at later ages.
It is also clear that children who were allowed to engage in a toddlers’ program also have a greater later inclination towards attempting higher education than those who were not.
How it works
In this brief article, we don’t have the space to explain in more detail how we use such programs and how they work in practice.
So, we’d like to invite you to come down to see us and our program in operation. We’ll be glad to answer all your questions at that stage and explain how our programs differentiate us from some other providers.
Just call us for an appointment. We look forward to seeing you.
