Article - Toddlers Trade Toys for Textbooks - Pre-K Reading | Sylvan Learning

• Home
• About Sylvan
• Press Room
• Articles
• Toys and Textbooks

• Print this page
• Share this page

Toddlers Trading Toys For Textbooks

With competition for the best preschool and kindergarten classes becoming more intense, school readiness is top-of-mind for parents of young children. With a greater demand for children entering kindergarten to be ready to learn to read, a growing number of families across the country are enrolling their preschool-aged children in tutoring programs.

Research confirms the value of early education for young children. Pre-kindergarten programs that support effective teaching practices lead to important growth in children's intellectual and social development, which is critical to their future academic success. High quality programs that provide challenging but achievable curriculum engage children in thinking, reasoning and communicating with others. With adult direction and guidance, children respond to the challenge and acquire important skills and concepts that prepare them for elementary school. Many parents also believe that enrolling in early education programs helps foster confidence and a life-long love of reading from an early age.

Addressing this emerging trend, Sylvan Learning Center introduced an early reading program for children as young as 4 ½ years old. This interactive program is designed to make reading fun from the start and gives children a foundation in reading that will prepare them to enter the classroom with confidence. By the end of any beginning reading course, children should be able to recognize words, distinguish colors, print their names, write capital and lowercase letters and more. A beginning reading program can become an invaluable part of parents’ efforts to ensure that their children enter kindergarten with the necessary language, cognitive, and early reading skills – laying the groundwork for their future academic success.

How can parents tell if a structured academic program is right for their child? Ask a qualified tutor for a reading readiness assessment. If the child is not ready, parents should continue to read aloud with their child and consider having him or her reevaluated in three months. A few months can make a dramatic difference in a young child’s development.

To start the reading adventure with preschoolers, Sylvan recommends the following:

• Set aside time for reading and storytelling, which help stimulate reading and writing skills.
• Read aloud to help spark imagination and orient children to oral language and written words.
• When reading aloud, point to the words on the page as you say them. Follow the sentence with your finger so that children begin to recognize how words appear on the page.
• Read often with young children, but don't expect them to focus for long periods of time.

Children love to learn, and the early childhood years — well before kindergarten begins — are the most important years for a child's reading development, when they're absorbing everything around them.

Learn more about Sylvan's reading programs today! Email your local center or call 1-888-EDUCATE.