The first 5 years of life are by far the most important to nurture if you are looking to bring about a child’s full potential. By age 3 the brain has already begun to lay the foundations of its functional architecture, and by age 5 the brain has already undergone so much rapid growth it has reached 90% of its total lifespan development. The foundation laid during the first 5 years determines not only how one will acquire all new future information, but also how one will respond and behave in new experiences.

Early childhood experiences directly impact the brain’s functional architecture, which makes nurturing this development one of the most critical practices for parents to provide to their children. Studies have shown that children who do not receive any early childhood education enter primary school less prepared and have a statistically lower student achievement rate in later years. Neurological research has also shown that the preschool years are critically sensitive years for learning because as the brain develops over time, it has more difficulty facilitating a change in behavior. A high quality preschool experience is the best preventative measure for future gaps in student achievement.

Every preschool-aged child has four primary domains of development: Physical, Social and Emotional, Cognitive, and Language. Early childhood education — preschool — aims to provide learning experiences that specifically target these domains using developmentally appropriate methods.

Nurturing a child’s development creates benefits that last a lifetime. What follows is an exploration of how preschools provide experience and practice within the four primary developmental domains to help build a strong and successful foundation for a child’s future.

While the gross motor movements of preschoolers may seem elementary (these include such movements as climbing, running, jumping, throwing a ball and pedaling a tricycle), it is crucial for children to master gross motor movements in preschool due to the marked correlation between gross motor delays and cognitive delays. While the correlation between motor development and cognitive development has been researched since the 1950s, modern science has increasingly and rapidly supported these theories. Recent studies have found that the development of early gross motor skills directly impacts later school-age cognitive development, particularly in the brain’s executive functioning system where things like the brain’s processing speed and working memory are affected.

Fine motor skills begin to emerge throughout the preschool years as well, and children typically begin to master many new skills such as the pincer grip, which allows them the ability to use their thumbs and index fingers to successfully fasten a button and work a zipper. Along with these practical life skills, fine motor skills are also essential to master for kindergarten readiness — fine motor skills include the ability to properly hold tools such as pencils, scissors or glue sticks. Mastering the proper grip and practicing the proper hand-eye coordination of a tool such as a pencil helps strengthen a preschooler’s fine hand-eye coordination. This provides a foundation for later school skills, such as tracking words while reading and writing with precision.

Preschool curriculum dedicates significant time out of the daily schedule to target gross and fine motor skill practice. Typically, preschools provide two hours of outside play for gross motor exercise. Equipment can include age-appropriate tricycles, jump ropes, balls, space for running, and more. Preschool curriculum also targets fine motor skills by providing children with opportunities to hold writing and art utensils, as well as other activities such as puzzles that require fine muscle movements.

Social experiences are a vital part of a child’s development. Social experiences help to develop important skills such as cooperation, maintaining relationships and having positive interactions with adults and peers. Preschoolers who have successfully reached their social developmental milestones can actively participate in planning and creating games with a group, as well as negotiate the rules of the game with others. Building strong social skills in preschool prepares children for the cooperation and teamwork required for kindergarten and future academic work assignments.

Emotional skills allow children the tools to accurately express, compare and describe their emotions, as well as to recognize how personality characteristics can affect one's own thoughts and behaviors. Having strong emotional awareness skills is crucial to acquiring other advanced skills, such as balancing cognition and emotion (otherwise known as self-regulation). Self-regulation refers to the intentional process of controlling one's emotions and behavior. Self-regulation allows children the ability to stay focused for extended periods of time — by regulating their emotions, they are able to control behaviors that otherwise might distract them. Research has shown that the intentional use of self-regulation predicts school success.

Preschool curriculum helps promote self-regulation skills by providing scheduled time and opportunities for students to focus on a particular activity. Research has shown that children engage in private speech, which is a kind of word play that helps them intentionally self-regulate and control their behavior to focus their attention on the task at hand. Preschool teachers also help to develop self-regulation skills by modeling and facilitating appropriate behaviors throughout the day with reminders, positive reinforcement and natural consequences.

Significant cognitive changes occur throughout the preschool years. For starters, preschoolers begin to increasingly advance their abilities to store and recall memories and details of past events. Another significant cognitive change involves preschoolers' abilities to form mental images, or symbolic thought. Symbolic thought opens the door of imagination to a child and provides the necessary cognitive requirements for creative play and storytelling, as well strengthening their social skills. Through these cognitive changes, preschoolers can express themselves and communicate with more accuracy, which equips children with the tools necessary to investigate curiosities and explore their surroundings using meaningful observations.

Preschool curriculum strengthens a preschooler's new cognitive abilities by creating opportunities for the preschooler to explore his or her curiosities and communicate, as well as to document findings by recalling personal experience and collecting data through tallying or drawing. These skills help provide children with a more accurate understanding of the world around them; observation and documentation skills can facilitate a child’s understanding of natural processes such as photosynthesis, seasons, the life cycle and other complex natural phenomena.

Preschool curriculum also provides children the opportunity to practice and advance their mathematical skills and understandings, which will ultimately give children the necessary number knowledge to be prepared for kindergarten. Preschoolers explore and experiment with spatial relationships, such as building with blocks and completing puzzles. Preschoolers also practice counting, number recognition, simple math operations such as changes in taking away or adding more, patterning, measurement, shapes, number sequencing, and classification through sorting.

Preschoolers gain many practical life cognitive skills in preschool, such as understanding their expectations and the order of the daily routine at both school and home. Preschoolers also advance their comprehension of time with fundamental concepts such as now, soon and later. In addition, preschool curriculum helps children accurately identify natural causes and effects, such as knowing a sharp point may pop a balloon or understanding the effects of force — like knowing that stepping on a toy may break it. All of these developments can contribute to easier morning routines, smoother transitions to bedtime and overall meltdown prevention.

Throughout the preschool years preschoolers begin their primary development of mental lexicon, or the mental reference of word associations which include word characteristics like phonetics, syntax and contextual meaning of words. Preschoolers repair or revise their communicative capabilities by increasing their vocabulary quantity, changing word order in a sentence, using accurately descriptive words and by utilizing their linguistic skill to clarify what they are trying to communicate. Advanced sociolinguistic comprehension and skill also emerges throughout the preschool years. For example, preschoolers can understand what situations require polite words and how to simplify speech or directions for a younger listener. These increasing advancements in a child’s mental lexicon require a mass input of experiences with words in different contexts as well as facilitators and models that use rich vocabulary with grammatical and contextual accuracy.

Preschool curriculum targets the advancements of age appropriate linguistic milestones. Preschool teachers understand the current development of a child’s mental lexicon and work with the child to practice accurate letter associations such as pronunciation, letter phonetics, syntax and word context. Preschool curriculum not only provides student with skills to verbally express themselves in new ways, but it also introduces children to print, letter recognition and writing. Acquiring a strong foundation of language comprehension in an early childhood education setting is the most critical development in acquiring reading skills. Preschool curriculum tackles the prerequisite skills for kindergarten readiness, as well as facilitating more creative skills such as narrative skills. Narrative skills begin to emerge throughout the preschool years, and teachers help facilitate these skills by exercising various techniques such as elaborate styles of storytelling or by guiding a child’s storytelling through prompting the child with appropriate questions.