Preschool Cognitive Development: Pre-Academic Skills
Pre-Academic skills are the foundation of your child’s academic learning. They are the building blocks that your child needs for future academic success. Research shows* that strong pre-academic skills lead to academic competence once a child reaches school age, and that academic competence leads to higher levels of motivation and self esteem.
Pre-academic skills are a part of your child’s cognitive development. I group pre-academic skills into three categories.
Early literacy: This is all about exposing your child to a language rich environment. This includes interest and understanding of books and simple stories, beginning phonemic awareness, and recognizing familiar logos and signs.
Math & Science: At this age we think of math as the basic understanding that letters and numbers mean something. Exposure to colors and shapes, matching, sorting, size order, and beginning counting are all part of this skill. Science is all about explorations. This includes observing and asking questions about their environment, cause and effect, and starting to use descriptive terms.
Pre-writing: Scribbling is the beginning of writing. As it progresses, children will start to be able to imitate drawing a line down, a line across, circles, and plus signs. These skills eventually lead to forming letters.
The first five years of a child’s life are critical to their development. Learning begins way before a child starts school and that’s why exposing your child to a language rich environment where they can play, explore, have new experiences, and follow their natural curiosity is so important. It’s valuable to keep in mind that for young children their ability to learn these skills occurs in their natural environments and in the context of play. Play is powerful!