Preschool

If you could invent a preschool from scratch, what would it look like?

What feeling would you want the kids to have when they first walk through the doors?

What feelings would you like the parents to have when they first walk through the doors?

What would you want the children to learn? To feel? To know? To understand by the time they walk out the door?

What kind of teachers would you include? What would you want to pay them? What would you want their relationship with the kids to look like? The relationship with the parents?

Where would the arts be in this preschool? At the periphery? At the core?

I'd really like to know.

I'll tell you why later.

Comments

[Denise]

A preschool needs colors and shapes inviting children to explore. I like the idea of preschools with imagination stations, and places to touch and try new things, and cozy corners for looking at books, and time to go outside and explore God's world. Preschool children need a predictable routine within which time is made for explorations of words and sounds, of colors and textures, of stories and music. A place where teachers guide and encourage and expose children to new ideas and experiences, while nurturing them and modeling love and kindness and respect. Preschool should have a place for parents to be comfortable--for them to bond and share experiences--maybe a short coffee time after drop-off for parents to actually interact and not just pass in the hallways. And preschools should have times for parents to share in school activities with their children.

[Heather]

I second everything that Matt said, and add this:
It should be a beautiful place. A place where wood and fabrics are what children touch most and plastic is seriously limited. A place that God's beautiful creation surrounds and enters. A place where great children's literature abounds, and like Matt said, the arts - not crafty projects, but real art of many varieties - is also central. And blocks. Lots and lots of blocks to build things with.

It should be a place where wonder and curiosity and joy and love and respect and interdependence are the norm, for children and adults alike.

[Rich]

Beautiful!

[Matthew Hawks]

I fi I could invent a preschool...

It would be a place of warmth and laughter. It would be a place of nurture and growth. It would be a place where the adults of tomorrow are allowed the luxury of being the kids of today. It would be a place with enough structure to bring out the best of child-like curiosity and insatiable need for knowledge, but not so much structure as to supress that need. It would be a place where those qualities that make kids that age so fun to be around are encouraged, even nurtured. Qualities like curiosity, thirst for more, hunger for attention, brutal honesty, and the capacity to come as close as they will ever come to complete unselfish love.

I think I described the teachers pretty well also. I want teachers that as a natural part of who they are love my kid as much as I do. What would I pay them? As much as possible.

I wanted to say that it would be a place where kids would want, even need to go whenever possible but as the father of a 4 year old, I would rather my kid tell me he doesn't want to go then when I pick him up tell me he doesn't want to leave. It would be a place where parents feel the sense of wonder and curiosity that is nurtured in the kids. A place where there is complete confidence and trust that whatever hapens, they wished they could be there just to see the look on their kids face when something really cool happened, like writing something. It would be a place where love and respect are not just paid lip service but modeled and lived.

The arts...I would like to say they belong perhaps not at the core, but very close. Very close indeed...

peace
be well
may God Bless you in a surprising way today
Matt