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Recently, a friend of mine with a 3-year-old son posted on her Facebook status, "Parents, do you think 2 years of preschool is needed?" She received a wide variety of responses. This was mine:The reality these days is that preschool is the new pre-K, pre-K is the new Kindergarten and Kindergarten is the new first grade. So yes, preschool has become less of a luxury and more of a necessity when it comes to preparing your child for classroom success.
But don't just enroll your child in any preschool. Especially in the year before Kindergarten, make sure his preschool teacher knows what phonemic awareness is (a pre-reading skill where kids learn to hear, blend, break apart and manipulate sounds) and that he gets lots of practice with it. He will benefit from that practice regardless of whether or not we've gone a bit crazy putting more academic demands on kids at a younger and younger age.
But don't just enroll your child in any preschool. Especially in the year before Kindergarten, make sure his preschool teacher knows what phonemic awareness is (a pre-reading skill where kids learn to hear, blend, break apart and manipulate sounds) and that he gets lots of practice with it. He will benefit from that practice regardless of whether or not we've gone a bit crazy putting more academic demands on kids at a younger and younger age.
