A study to investigate early childhood programs in relation to how well they prepare children for five year old kindergarten

Abstract

A strong effort needs to be taken to ensure that infants and children are read to in order to promote early literacy skills. This is the foundation for successful years of a child's schooling, especially upon entrance into five year old kindergarten. Without early literacy skills, infants and children tend to fall behind in school and do poorly. Daycares, preschool programs, Head Start programs, and four year old kindergarten programs need to take measures to make certain that they are utilizing positive literacy skills in their settings. The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze research regarding what positive literacy skills are and how they are used in various early childhood settings. Reading and writing techniques that enhance and influence children's ability to learn in the home as well as a school setting are discussed and emphasized. The early childhood programs that were chosen by the researcher were done so because they are the most frequently used settings for parents. Review and discussion suggested that the practice of early literacy skills, beginning at birth, do make a positive impact on children. Fortunately, the early childhood settings that were analyzed utilized these techniques which resulted in positive feedback from the five year old kindergarten teachers. Recommendations were made that prospective parents be made aware of how important early literacy skills are as well as encouraging them to become actively involved in the literacy process; to stress the need for more media coverage on the importance of literacy skills to make literacy a higher priority overall; and, to have caregivers and teachers involved in various schooling techniques to keep them up to date on ways to learn and teach literacy skills to children. In addition, further research is recommended to study the strong points and limitations of the early childhood programs analyzed in this paper to work at making early literacy a natural part of every child's upbringing.