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The Trend Toward All Day Kindergarten

Home » Early Learning » All Day Kindergarten » The Trend Toward All Day Kindergarten
Posted by Your Guide on March 1, 2006 8:24 PM

There is no mistaking that there is a growing trend toward all day kindergarten programs. Many factors have contributed to this trend. The increasing number of single-parent homes has created a need for additional assistance on educational levels. One working parent, no matter how hard they work at it, will not have as much time as they would like to prepare their child for formal educational endeavors. Dual-income families are under similar time constraints when it comes to educating their young children.

The call from these families has been for increased learning opportunities for their children from the public school system. Because of the disparity between the child’s preschool years, their kindergarten year, and then subsequent years in elementary grades, parents are asking for a modified schedule from their child’s school.

A preschooler who has been involved in preschool classes, a day care setting, or even a home day care environment is accustomed to spending several hours a day away from home and/or their parents. But many public schools still operate their kindergarten programs based on the idea that children need a shortened kindergarten day in order to allow for naps and unstructured time during the portion of the day they are away from school. After the kindergarten year, these same children are back in the all-day routine.

Another reason parents favor a full day kindergarten setting is that they feel that children respond better to a full day in one setting, rather than a morning in one environment and the afternoon in another. Invariably, these two settings will have different expectations, even when both environments are of the highest quality. Children have been shown to thrive most in environments when the expectations were consistent and the routines were predictable.

Other reasons that support all day kindergarten programs include the fact that children of this generation have been exposed to more learning opportunities through educational television programs, computerized learning games, and more exposure to environments away from home, and other children during their preschool years than children just one generation ago. All day kindergarten programs have shown significant learning opportunities for children in disadvantaged areas, even when educational programs and games, preschool opportunities, and day care have not been a part of their preschool years.



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