When parents tour our preschool, they sometimes ask me, “Will my child be ready for kindergarten?” It is a fair question, and I answer it directly: yes. Our children leave preschool knowing their letters and letter sounds, comfortable with numbers and basic mathematical reasoning, able to listen to stories and discuss them, able to hold a pencil and write their name, and attempt to spell. They are ready.
But I usually try to give parents a longer answer, too, because the kindergarten-readiness question, while reasonable, is the wrong question to plan a child’s whole education around. Longitudinal research data on our curriculum, HighScope, and the resulting classroom structure did not show that the program’s graduates were better at kindergarten. It showed that they were better at life — at staying in school, at working steadily, at staying out of trouble, at building stable families, and raising children who did well in turn. That is the deeper outcome that HighScope-rooted programs, done well, produce. It is what we are aiming for.
Additional analysis of research on preschool education indicates four basic results that further support the use of our preschool curriculum and classroom structure:
- Early academic skills matter enormously, and there is no responsible reading of the longitudinal data that suggests otherwise.
- The wrong kind of academic preschool, what researchers sometimes call “schoolification,” can produce brief gains that vanish or even invert by elementary school.
- Pure free-play preschool, with no intentional instructional planning, leaves real learning on the table, particularly for children who don’t get rich learning environments at home.
- The strongest evidence supports a third path: guided play and playful learning, and that path looks different at age three than it does at age five.
The principle is this: young children learn academic content best when that content is part of a meaningful, joyful, choice-rich activity with an adult who knows the destination. Drill-and-kill produces a fade-out of learning. Wandering during free play results in significant missed learning opportunities. Guided play, when done properly, produces both engaged children and lasting academic gains. This is our preschool’s daily goal.
Finally, I know choosing a preschool is a deep act of trust. You are asking another set of adults to spend a significant number of hours with your child during years when their character, habits, and relationship to learning are being formed in ways that will last a lifetime. The right preschool is not the one with the slickest brochure or the longest list of instructional skills on a kindergarten readiness checklist. It is the one whose teachers really know children, have a deep knowledge of content, and know how to bring the two together with genuine love.
If you would like to see what that looks like in practice, on an ordinary school morning, come visit us at Kalamazoo Country Day School. We don’t put on a show for visitors. What you see is what we do every day.
The right question is not academic or play. The right question is: how does this preschool turn play into learning? We will be glad to show you our answer.
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