Kindergarten is the first place to prepare a Child for Life

The book presents appropriate approaches for children at the kindergarten stage. It is organized into four chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of the underlying principles and practice of Early Childhood Education. The other three chapters focus on art; compelling evidence exists that early arts experience has an impact on all aspects of a child's learning and development and that, in many ways, earlier is better. Early childhood thus presents both a unique opportunity and a unique challenge; a part of that challenge is to engage and support all who care for and educate young children in making the arts an integrated and vital part of their earliest experiences. We know that art understood as spontaneous creative play, is what young children naturally do; singing, dancing, drawing, and role-playing. We also know that the arts engage all the senses and involve a variety of modalities. When caregivers engage and encourage children in arts activities on a regular basis from early in life, they are laying the foundation for and even helping wire children's brains for successful learning specifically in literacy and aesthetics.