Building foundations

A group of youngsters at MulberryHouse International Pre-School develop their number skills through a game of bowling. In this setting (see inset), zero becomes just as meaningful as another digit.

There you will often see three-year-olds busily tracing the letters of the alphabet in both Thai and English, filling their exercise books with page after page of language activities. Numbers get similar treatment. The little ones start with counting and they don’t necessarily stop with ten. It doesn’t take long before elementary addition and subtraction appears on the menu as well.

It looks impressive and in some ways it is. But does it really give them an edge over youngsters who spend their early childhoods in less demanding environments?

Karen Jones, programme coordinator for the three- and four-year olds at Harrow Early Years Centre, doesn’t think so. “They can parrot numbers. They can count zero to 100 which is a fantastic feat, but does it mean something to them? Do they know what ten is? Do they know how to manipulate all those numbers?”

Radeane Dhammaraks, MulberryHouse principal

For young children this is best done through structured and purposeful play, Jones says. Radeane Dhammaraks, principal at MulberryHouse International Pre-School agrees. During the learning post’s recent visit to her school, the three-year-olds were learning their numbers through a game of bowling.

The children took turns rolling the ball at a set of miniature pins. After each turn, the child involved would put the fallen pins into a container while the group counted out loud.

The teacher also wrote the number into a grid on a whiteboard. Not surprisingly, one of the most common entries was zero, thereby giving the children a concrete understanding of a concept that remains abstract for many children learning in more traditional ways.

Both Ms Jones and Ms Dhammaraks are quick to point out, however, that academic development is only one part of preschool and probably not the most important part at that. Children must also develop socially, physically and creatively. “Above all,” says, Jones, “child development is confidence building.”

For many children, preschool starts at three. Under the British National Curriculum employed at both the Harrow Early Years Centre and MulberryHouse International Pre-School, this is the first year of the “foundation stage”. Even for youngsters at this tender age, the curriculum is a formal one requiring professionally trained teachers.

The preschool curriculum in action: FROM LEFT: Two-year-olds learn to play together at MulberryHouse. Harrow teacher Gwendolyn Fall stresses the importance of sharing. Harrow coordinator Karen Jones seeks to engender a love of books from the earliest ages.

“We have mathematical objectives. We have science objectives. We have language objectives. We have physical objectives. We have creative objectives,” explains Ms Dhammaraks.

What is conspicuously absent from the curriculum, however, is pressure. “We’re not pushing,” says Ms Dhammaraks. “We’re not saying ‘oh you are finished with this age level and you have to be at this stage.’”

Much thought goes into creating the right environment for learning to take place and for the children to grow both socially and emotionally. “At three, children are very egocentric,” Ms Jones says. “You go into a class and you just see lots of children playing. They’re playing near each other, but they’re playing their own game.

“We have to get them to try and include each other and play with each other. That’s very important and its important to get them to share and to understand that other people have needs as well.”

Classrooms at both schools are spacious and child-friendly. Gone are the rows of desks and chairs of the traditional classrooms. In its place are learning centres.

“A class is set up so you have different areas of learning,” Ms Dhammaraks explains. “You might sit at a table with a group of five and your other children can go do art or read a book or do blocks. They’re stimulating themselves. The whole room is set up so that the child is free to grow in many different areas.”

To the casual observer, the children’s play may seem random and unstructured, but Jones stresses that is not the case. “We know why we are putting our activities out. When they’re using building blocks, it looks like they’re just sitting on the floor building, but we’re talking about cuboids, cylinders and giving them that vocabulary.

“This is taller. This is shorter. This is wider. This is a very thin cylinder. This is a very fat cylinder.”

It is this constant communication and interaction that Ms Dhammaraks says is so often missing for children who stay at home. “Many working parents really worry about leaving their child at home with the nannies where they aren’t getting any communication – or what communication they’re getting is the native tongue of the nanny. Or they’re sitting in front of the TV,” she says.

Like everything else in preschool, reading and writing are meant to be fun. Memorisation is out and learning becomes a mix of play together with a bit of formal instruction.

“You’re introducing the letters when they turn three – through songs, by playing games,” Ms Dhammaraks relates. “You look at things that they relate to like the letters in their names or the days of the week.”

Strictly speaking, says Ms Dhammaraks, children no longer learn their ABCs. Instead they learn to read through phonics -- like the ‘mmm’ sound. “We might go ‘mmm’ like when it tastes good. Or whose name starts with an ‘mmm’? Mmmolly!”

The little ones also learn book skills, Ms Jones says. “We teach how to hold a book, how to use it and that a book is different from talking to somebody. You start at the beginning and you go all the way through. The text goes from this side to that side. Even though they’re not reading, they start to understand that words are different from pictures.”

Formal reading is not a priority at this early age, Ms Dhammaraks says. “It’s there for them, but I’m not going to push them beyond their capability. Each child is different. If they’re not ready to recognise more than one word – if it frustrates them, then I wouldn’t push them. There’s no hurry.”

Writing too is a very individual thing, but it does follow familiar patterns, Ms Jones says. “We encourage them to write what they want to write. At first it’s emergent writing, it’s their own marks.

“Some people say it’s scribbling. It’s not. You can learn a lot from children’s marks – what they understand about language and its different patterns. Eventually, you start getting regular marks and circles.

“Then they’ll start telling you ‘this says’ and we can start saying, ‘well, it starts with this sound. We can introduce writing that way. We go through the child,” Ms Jones stresses.

In some Bangkok preschools, assessment means a battery of formal tests and a class rank for each student. As you might expect, that is not the case at either Harrow or MulberryHouse.

“Parents expect to know where their children are in development, but we don’t do that in comparison to each other,” Ms Jones says. “You can only do something if you believe you can do it. If someone tells you that you are right at the bottom, you’re not going to think you can do anything.”

Harrow’s assessment of each child is certainly as thorough as any found in more test-oriented schools, however. The teachers keep an extensive notebook on each child in the foundation stage.

“We include our initial observations of where the children were when they came in, Ms Jones explains. “We include pieces of their work, such as their first drawing, so we know what their pencil control was like.

“We write comments on how the children settle and we include comments from the parents on what they’ve noticed. We write exactly where they are in each of the different areas and where we want the children to go next (targets). It’s very thorough.”

The “areas” Ms Jones talks about include personal, social and emotional development, communication, language and literacy, mathematical development and science as well as observations on a child’s small motor skills (hand-eye coordination, etc.) and gross motor skills (walking, running, how they manage on a bike, etc.). A child’s creative development is also assessed.

As a result, Ms Jones says they can very quickly pick out any learning weaknesses or disabilities a child may have. The school itself can provide expert help in many situations, but if the problem is more serious, they help parents find assistance outside.

MulberryHouse also accepts children younger than the foundation stage, even babies who come with their nannies. “I think that coming to school is good for them socially because they meet children out of their own family,” Ms Dhammaraks says. “It’s really important that children learn at an early age that they’re not the only one. There are friends and there are other adults in the world apart from just Mom and Dad. I think it makes more confident children and more well rounded children.”

There is plenty more for little ones to learn as well. Take science for two-year-olds, for example. “We can go out and look for leaves or maybe just look at an ant on the ground. That’s science. Then the children can come back in and draw a picture.

“Or we can look at the sky or the weather. They talk about weather in the morning. With the little kids, it’s fun to get little creatures like caterpillars and watch them grow. That’s all part of science,” Ms Dhammaraks observes.

“We do cooking and lots of hands-on things – lots of play dough and cutting things out. We have creativity goals – art goals. We put up easels and let them have free painting. Or we might have more teacher-directed and preplanned art. With a two-year old it doesn’t necessarily end up the way that you planned it, but it is still their own creation. If the head goes on the bottom, it’s still their creation.”

Of course, what works in preschool could work doubly well in the home. Both Ms Dhammaraks and Ms Jones would agree that parents, no matter how busy they are, should strive to maintain the level of interaction their children receive in preschool.