What exactly should kindergarten teach children?

ⅠPreparing for primary school. Recently, more than a dozen parents have asked me, how should I choose a kindergarten? Nowadays, various kindergartens have launched many special projects in order to compete for students. It is really dazzling. Many parents are confused about which one to choose. Nowadays, the quality of early childhood education has attracted more and more attention from parents. Every parent hopes that their children will receive a good education from an early age. So what kind of early childhood education is good? In other words, what should kindergarten education teach children? Today I want to talk about this topic from another angle, hoping to inspire parents. Let me ask you a question first? What kind of primary education is good? It’s hard to answer. Let me ask another question: What kind of junior high school education is good? It’s hard to answer yet. I’m trying to change my mind. What kind of high school education is good? This question should be easy to answer! The more people who get into college, the better the high school will be! If you want to go to university, your college entrance examination scores must meet the university\’s admission score. The results prove that you are fully prepared for the next stage of study and have the ability to further your studies. From this perspective, high school is a preparation for going to college. By analogy, junior high school is a preparation for going to high school, and elementary school is a preparation for going to junior high school. So, is going to kindergarten a preparation for going to elementary school smoothly? Ⅱ What kind of preparations should be made? I think that going to kindergarten is to prepare for successfully entering elementary school. When I say preparation for elementary school, some parents immediately think of letting their children learn subject knowledge. But this is not the case. The relevant research results of my country\’s primary school transition show that the most important factors affecting children\’s adaptation to school are social factors such as children\’s learning attitude, emotions, ability to interact with others, and communication status with classmates and teachers. The factor most closely related to children\’s performance in Chinese and arithmetic in primary school is not how much academic knowledge they learned in kindergarten, but their level of initiative development. Children who have a proactive learning attitude, take the initiative to ask questions when they don’t understand, and proactively seek help when they have difficulties have stronger learning abilities and better academic performance. Among the children who are not adapted to school, many of them were dampened in their early childhood and developed bad study habits. They have weak independent learning ability, low living ability, lack of game experience, poor thinking ability to analyze and solve problems, etc. Therefore, the preparation for kindergarten to enter primary school should be a comprehensive preparation for children’s physical, psychological, knowledge and ability, behavioral habits, etc. It cannot unilaterally emphasize one type, nor should the preparation of academic knowledge be equated with preparation for primary school entrance. This will bring serious consequences to children\’s later learning and development. Ⅲ How to make these preparations To make these preparations, early childhood education must strictly follow the requirements of the \”Guideline for Kindergarten Education\” and \”Guidelines for the Learning and Development of Children Aged 3-6\” promulgated by the Ministry of Education, and scientifically formulate the content of care and education. I believe that early childhood education mainly includes three parts: nurturance education, education in five major areas and education with special activities. ‌‌Nurture education‌: ‌Focus on cultivating children’s interest in learning and good habits. ‌Follow the child’s age characteristics and physical and mental development rules, ‌through game-based teaching methods,‌Reasonably arrange and organize children\’s daily life, and cultivate children\’s study habits, social skills and self-care ability. ‌‌Five major areas of education‌: ‌includes five fields: health, ‌language, ‌society, ‌science, and ‌art. The health field mainly provides children with reasonable and balanced nutrition, ensuring adequate sleep and appropriate exercise for children, so that children can fully feel family affection and care, and form a positive and stable emotional sense. At the same time, we help children develop good living and hygiene habits, improve their self-protection capabilities, and form life-long living abilities and a civilized lifestyle. The language field mainly creates a free and relaxed language communication environment for children, encourages and supports children to communicate with adults and peers, and allows children to say what they want, dare to say, and like to say. Provide children with rich and appropriate reading materials for young children, often read books and tell stories with children, enrich children\’s language expression skills, and cultivate children\’s reading interest and good reading habits. The social field mainly creates a warm, caring and equal collective living atmosphere for children, so that children can gain a sense of security and trust in positive and healthy interpersonal relationships, and develop self-confidence and self-esteem. The science field is mainly about discovering and protecting children\’s curiosity, and guiding children to learn how to discover, analyze and solve problems through observation, comparison, operation, experiment and other methods. Help children continue to accumulate experience and apply it to new learning activities to form lifelong learning attitudes and abilities. The art field only needs to create conditions and opportunities for children, so that they can develop feelings and experiences of beauty in nature and social and cultural life, and enrich their imagination and creativity. ‌Specialized activity education‌: ‌In addition to the five major areas, ‌kindergarten can also offer some special courses, ‌such as sports activities, ‌early reading, ‌creative crafts, etc., ‌to meet the interests and needs of children and ‌promote personalized development. I think early childhood education that can do this in a down-to-earth manner is good early childhood education!