Play School or Pre school for toddlers, learning activities and their benefits to children

A Pre-school or a play school refers to schools for very young children, that is, those below 3 or 3 1/2 years of age in India, preceding formal compulsory education. Play Schools are gaining popularity in India in today's scenario where nuclear families are becoming more common in cities and towns. Both the parents will go to work and the young children cannot be left at home alone. Play Schools helps parents to overcome this difficulty. They are a boon to working parents.

Play Schools or pre schools are good for toddlers because the children seem to learn faster in these schools when they interact with other children of their own age. Experts suggests, it would be better to send children to play schools at the age of 2 and a half years itself. Children seems to learn everything that they hear or see from birth. The basic growth of children will get a boosting if they are able to arrange whatever they see and hear in a proper way in the their mind. The success of play schools is that the toddlers will acquire this ability from the play methods adopted by pre schools.


Benefits of Play Schools : The major benefit of play schools comes from the fact that they help toddlers fight separation anxiety. In nuclear families, children depend on parents for each and everything. When they go to play schools, they would be spending a couple of hours away from home and this will help them to become more independent and confident.

Play Schools help children in many ways:

Self protection
Adjusting with the environment
Control of the bodily activities

Good behavior in the society

Indian Play schools prepare children for study in bigger schools. When the little ones start going to the play schools, a daily routine sets in their lives which would help them to perform better in the formal school. The children will be able to adjust to the formal school routine without difficulty.

Preschool Learning Activity

At play schools, children are exposed to basic pre school activities which will help them to be independent faster. Many play schools use the common household items for learning. When they use carrots or beetroots for slicing, they learn that their mothers spend a lot of time for this activity at home. Children enjoy making chapatti balls and spreading them. They learn to hold the pencil properly between the fingers.

Children learn the basic etiquettes in a play school. The schools use small cups and trays to make the children understand that when they give tea to the guests, they should smile and do this. Other basic manners like how to greet people, manners when they talk with others, how to respect their elders are also learned by the children in play schools. Children will also learn to share toys with their friends, eat food for themselves and identify their possessions.

Learning Language and developing skills Another big advantage of play schools is that as the children interact with other children of the same age, they tend to develop their language skills at a fast pace with more vocabularies to their credit. To grow self confidence in a child, it is necessary that he/she should have good language and communication skills. Children with good communication skill are proved to be good at writing and reading also.

Many play schools use "Sand paper letters" for introducing language to toddlers. Children can use their fingers on the dotted letters fixed on a hard board and recite them. By doing this they will understand the shape and structure of the letters much better. Children will be able to understand Mathematics better in play schools by using various shapes and
figures which will be used to make them count the numbers, add the numbers etc. They will be introduced to shapes like circles, rectangles, squares etc.

By playing with the blocks, children will be able to learn various colours, patterns, shapes and balancing. Children are allowed to scribble with his first drawing brush. Most play schools display the drawings, colouring sheets, patterns made through hand prints, etc. done by children, so that they will be encouraging the children to do better. The display will make
the children feel important and noticed. Children are made to learn songs and nursery rhymes in play schools. These songs and rhymes will help the children learn things faster. Also most
play schools teaches dance and songs. Children are made to listen to theme stories and later make them enact the different roles in these stories.

Through this activity, children are taught the basic and important rules in life like obeying parents and teachers, maintaining discipline, speak truth and much more like these. Identifying the right play school for your children Sending a child to play schools can be definitely advantageous. But it is very necessary that you should identify the right school for your child. The school should follow a correct teacher-student ratio and should be following the correct pre school methods.