PRESCHOOL EDUCATION

Preschool education or Infant education is the provision of education for children before the commencement of statutory and obligatory education, usually between the ages of zero and three or five, depending on the jurisdiction.

In British English, nursery school or simply "nursery" or playgroup is the usual term for preschool education, although the term preschool is also commonly used. In the United States preschool and Pre-K are used, while "nursery school" is an older term.

Preschool work is organized within a framework that professional educators create. The framework includes structural (administration, class size, teacher-child ratio, services, etc.), process (quality of classroom environments, teacher-child interactions, etc.), and alignment (standards, curriculum, assessments) components that are associated with each individual unique child that has both social and academic outcomes. At each age band, appropriate curriculum should be applied. For example, it would be normal to teach a child how to count 10 after 4 years old^. Arguably the first pre-school institution was opened in 1816 by Robert Owen in New Lanark, Scotland The Hungarian countess Theresa BrunszvikIn 1837, Friedrich Fröbel opened one in Germany, coining the term "kindergarten". followed in 1828.

The areas of development which preschool education covers varies from country to country. However, the following main themes are represented in the majority of systems.

• Personal, social, economical, and emotional development
• Communication, including sign language, talking and listening
• Knowledge and understanding of the world
• Creative and aesthetic development
• Educational software
• Mathematical awareness and development
• Physical development
• Physical health
• Playing
• Teamwork
• Self-help skills
• Social skills
• Scientific thinking
• Creative arts
• Literacy

Some preschools have adopted specialized methods of teaching, such as Montessori, Waldorf, Head Start, HighReach Learning, High Scope, The Creative Curriculum, Reggio Emilia approach, Bank Street, Forest kindergartens, and various other pedagogies which contribute to the foundation of education.

Creative Curriculum has an interactive website where parents and teachers can work together in evaluating preschool age children. The website is very user friendly and prints off many reports that are helpful in evaluating children and the classroom itself. The web site has a variety of activities that are targeted to each of the fifty goals on the continuum.

The International Preschool Curriculum adopted a bilingual approach to teaching and offers a curriculum that embraces international standards and recognizes national requirements for preschool education.

In the United States most preschool advocates support the National Association for the Education of Young Children's Developmentally Appropriate Practices.

Family childcare can also be nationally accredited by the National Association of Family Childcare if the provider chooses to go through the process. National accreditation is only awarded to those programs who demonstrate the quality standards set forth by the NAFCC.
Two popular Australian curriculums are the Emergent curriculum or the Building Waterfalls

program.