How To Nurture a Love of Learning in Preschool-Aged Children

Preschool programs help grow a child’s love for learning through curiosity and exploration, immersion in a positive learning environment, and an emphasis on play-based learning. By encouraging a growth mindset as well as collaboration and socialization, early childhood programs cement a love for learning and a desire to work together. 

The Kinderschool Program at Las Vegas Day School implements these critical ideals in a calm and nurturing environment. These early childhood essentials are upheld as fundamental to a child’s early education. Additionally, the program focuses on the complete social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development of children through these ideals.

Now, let’s delve into the strategies and practices that can effectively nurture a love of learning in preschool-aged children.

Encouraging Curiosity and Exploration

Children are born curious and with a desire to explore. When children can satisfy their curiosity through safe, self-initiated, and playful exploration, learning occurs naturally for them. 

How We Do It At LVDS

Las Vegas Day School’s preschool program encourages curiosity by implementing activity centers and free play. The use of a theme-based curriculum integrates pre-reading, literature, beginning writing skills, math, social studies, and science through the use of learning centers and teacher-led instruction. Children are taught the development of large and fine motor skills, and they are introduced to various enrichment activities, such as Spanish, music, art, and physical education, each week. They also attend weekly story time in the library.

Activities

There are a number of activities that promote curiosity and exploration in children. Giving children materials that they can control and manipulate easily, such as blocks, balls, play dough, and art materials further encourage the development of their curiosity and exploration. Tuning into your child’s curiosity and allowing it to guide your experience not only encourages this development but underlines their importance in the world around them.

Creating a Positive Learning Environment

Small children learn through doing, discovering, exploring, and observing. A positive play environment for preschool-aged children is one that fosters and encourages these ways of learning.

How We Do It At LVDS

One of the most important strategies employed by Las Vegas Day School is the implementation of learning centers in the classroom. At each learning center, students will find items that help guide their learning and understanding. Materials allow students to mimic learned activities in a self-guided manner.

The learning centers, along with various other materials and tools, encourage your child’s development through hands-on experience and play-based activities along with educational, age-appropriate academics.   

Play-based Learning

Play-based learning has faced some harsh critics. Many think that their children play at home, and at school, they should be learning. Research shows, however, that the “distinction -between “learning” and “play”- is a false one”, according to author and early childhood educator Erika Christakis. She goes on to say that play is the “defining feature” of all mammalian development  and those who learn through it enjoy longer life expectancies and more robust social-emotional development.

How We Do It At LVDS

Play is in fact how young children learn best, and the structure of the Kinderschool program at Las Vegas Day School incorporates that understanding directly. The Kinderschool program favors learning through exploration and curiosity.

Activities

Social, play-based learning is even at the heart of some instructor-led learning. When children learn their ABC’s at Las Vegas Day School, they don’t complete individual worksheets but rather gather around a blackboard with all of the letters of the alphabet and learn the sounds, letters, and words that start with these letters for instructor-led learning. Each of the learning centers in the classrooms feature opportunities to play and explore while laying down fundamentals of math, social studies, and science through exploration.

Encouraging a Growth Mindset

In a growth mindset, intelligence can be developed, and people with a growth mindset tend to work harder because they know they can improve. When a growth mindset is fundamental in a child’s early education, they naturally lean towards this mindset through curiosity and exploration.

How We Do It At LVDS

The preschool program at Las Vegas Day School is designed to foster a growth mindset and teach children to learn through their own eyes. By encouraging a child’s natural instincts of curiosity and exploration, their intuition is developed and their intelligence is increasingly elastic.

Activities

The enrichment specials that children attend at Las Vegas Day School are particularly important in nurturing a growth mindset, as they challenge children to understand and explore beyond their comfort zones. Spanish enrichment is an excellent example; not only do children pick up parts of the language, but they have a further understanding of different cultures and nationalities. 

Collaboration and Socialization

Collaboration and socialization are essential tools in the growth and development of children and, in fact, the growth and development of our society. In early education, these tools help children to understand the world outside of themselves, share educational experiences with other children, and understand that working together helps with projects and overall learning.

How We Do It At LVDS

Throughout their experiences in the Kinderschool program at Las Vegas Day School, children partake in group activities, are given separate roles to fulfill as they work together, and make friends. Collaboration and socialization is encouraged in and outside of the classroom. Values such as mutual respect, trust, sensitivity to others, communication, recognition, and decision-making are also developed.

Activities

Group work, learning centers, specials, and instructor-led learning all work to help develop collaboration and socialization. By teaching students to work together on a project or assigning roles, every student sees their own value, and that of everyone else. Collaborative learning and socialization skills become well-developed and refined beginning at a very early age.

Kinderschool at Las Vegas Day School: Instilling a Passion for Learning

The importance of nurturing a love for learning at this precious age cannot be understated. Children in early childhood are learning the fundamental building blocks that they will use throughout the rest of their lives. 

At Las Vegas Day School, our Kinderschool program is designed specifically to instill a love for learning in its students. These programs are built to foster a love of learning through play, collaboration and socialization, and through the development of a growth mindset. By creating a positive learning environment, Las Vegas Day School also gives its students the perfect place to stretch their educational wings and learn in the most meaningful ways possible.

If you’d like to learn more and find out if your child is ready for Las Vegas Day School, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to help your little one grow.