The first day of elementary school can be scary – for both the student and their parents. Luckily, Grove City offers a variety of preschool programs that ensure your child is confident and ready when they start kindergarten.
While most K-12 learning happens within the four walls of the classrooms, preschoolers may benefit from getting outside to learn more about their world.
The Grove City Parks and Recreation RecSchool program, which runs September to May each year, offers children 3-5 years old an opportunity to gather with their peers and teachers for one to three half-days per week.
RecSchool is held in the Kingston Center and the green space surrounding it with the exception of two field trips. The program introduces kids to nature while also priming them on important developmental skills such as recognizing numbers, shapes, colors and letters.
To foster a love of nature, RecSchool students may get involved in growing plants or raising fish as well as taking trips outside and gathering sticks, pinecones and leaves.
Recreation supervisor and RecSchool facilitator Michele Demmy, believes children learn best through play, and what better playground is there than the great outdoors?
Researchers agree with Demmy. According to “Beyond traditional school readiness: How nature preschools help prepare children for academic success,” a 2020 study published in the International Journal of Early Childhood Environmental Education, “play location may be an overlooked aspect of classroom quality that contributes to the development of both peer play and learning behaviors. … A natural setting may be more conducive for preschoolers than an indoor setting for promoting various areas of play and learning.”
Facilitating the RecSchool, Demmy has seen the benefits of outdoor learning firsthand.
“Exploring nature as a young child is key to their development and appreciation of nature,” she says. “It’s great for their mental health, for their physical health and also social health.”
The research presented in the article, which can be found on the U.S. Department of Education’s website, also indicates that children who attend outdoor learning programs may have better-developed social skills compared to children in non-nature-focused learning environments.
“Nature preschools can be effective in promoting positive peer play interactions and learning behaviors and thus can make important contributions to school readiness,” the article states.
One of Demmy’s biggest goals in the program is arming children with independence and confidence in their own abilities.
“But what we really want children to leave preschool with is an enthusiasm for learning basic academic skills and also a can-do, I-am-capable attitude, so they know that they can tackle new problems,” she says
In addition to RecSchool, Grove City Parks and Recreation holds Play School Together, an evening program where parents and their children can learn and play together through song, games and other classroom activities on a weekly basis. Demmy says she recommends parents attend these programs so that they can be a part of their child’s development.
“We’ve worked closely with parents on referring services or devices and plans so that we can be in a good partnership with that parent, creating consistent expectations and consistent responses to the child’s struggles, to help that child grow and move forward from wherever the child is,” she says.
Also available through Grove City’s Parks and Recreation department are sports leagues including tee-ball, basketball and soccer. Joining a team is great for staying active, learning teamwork and developing motor skills.
But the parks department isn’t the only group that offers a development program for Grove City’s youngest residents. The Grove City Public Library also offers activities for kids to grow and learn.
To promote pre-literacy skills, the library hosts storytimes where children can interact by singing along to rhymes. This helps expand children’s vocabulary and knowledge of letters. It also is good practice for children to get used to sitting still and paying attention for a longer period of time.
At the South-Western Special Education Preschool, also referred to as South-Western Preschool Center or SWPC, children of all abilities learn together in “peer modeling.”
The curriculum for SWPC follows Ohio Department of Education and Ohio Department of Special Education standards to ensure its students are ready for kindergarten when they leave. The classes at SWPC have 12 students each – typically six peer models and six students with special needs.
Maisie Fitzmaurice is an assistant editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at mfitzmaurice@cityscenemediagroup.com.
Is your child ready? According to Ohio Department of Education standards, before starting kindergarten, your child should be working toward or be able to:
- Keep hands to self
- Share, take turns and cooperate with peers
- Listen and follow directions
- Communicate needs
- Tie their shoes, zip their coats, button their clothes
- Use the bathroom independently
- Write and spell their own name
- Hold and use a pencil, crayon, or marker as well as building blocks and safety scissors
- Clean up their space
- Identify numbers, letters, shapes and colors
