I am hoping that if I tie the blog to my preschool more, it will be easier to keep up with postings. With the start of a new preschool year, I want to remind parents that though I have always had the goal of preparing children for school, and in the beginning years focused much more than many others on the academics of using a pencil, learning letters, sounds, reading, counting, basic math skills, etc., I always knew that free play – time to hang out and enjoy being preschoolers was a given.
Over the years, with everyone else coming to the conclusion that I did, that preschoolers CAN learn academics, the focus has changed to a point I no longer feel comfortable with……….it feels way too much like pressure; pressure for me to teach, for parents to provide structure in many forms, and for such little children to perform!
Initially, CrabbieMasters was created to make teaching more fun for ME! (I didn’t like having to be the ‘boss’.) As it turned out, this approach eliminated a lot of stuff that got in the way of enjoying learning. Teaching became much easier too. As the pressure for kindergarten readiness grew, I saw the CrabbieMasters as a means of helping kids keep a balance. Recently, as early childhood pressure seemed really out of control, I wanted to have more of a voice and thought I would go beyond the website and teach community ed. I soon learned about the need for licensure as a parent educator. At first I thought it would be lots of theory that may or may not match with what I believe to be true after 30 plus years of working with children and their parents. I couldn’t have been more wrong. And guess what one of my major discoveries is? I am far from alone in seeing that too much running from one activity to the next and excessive pressure is not good for children.