KINDERGARTEN



Is a form of education for young children that serves as a transition from home to the commencement of more formal schooling. Another definition, which overlaps with early childhood education and preschool, is education for pre- and emergent-literate children before the age of 6 or 7. Children are taught to develop basic skills and knowledge through creative play and social interaction, as well as sometimes formal lessons.

In most countries kindergarten is part of the preschool system of early childhood education. Children usually attend kindergarten any time between the ages of two and seven years, depending on the local custom.

In the United States and anglophone Canada, as well as in parts of Australia (New South Wales, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory) kindergarten is the word often restricted in use to describe the first year of education, or primary school. In some of these countries it is compulsory, that is parents must send children to their kindergarten year (generally, at age 5). In the United States, many states widely offer a free kindergarten year to children of five to six years of age, but do not make it compulsory, while other states require all five-year-olds to enroll. The terms preschool or less often, "Pre-K," (formerly, nursery school) are used to refer to earlier age-group education in the U.S.

In British English, nursery or playgroup is the usual term for preschool education, and kindergarten is rarely used, except in the context of special approaches to education, such as Steiner-Waldorf education (the educational philosophy of which was founded by Rudolf Steiner).

HISTORY



Many origins are claimed for the first kindergarten. In Scotland in 1816, Robert Owen, a philosopher and pedagogue, opened an infant school in New Lanark. Another was opened by Samuel Wilderspin in London in 1819.The first kindergarten in Hungary was founded on May 27, 1828 by the countess Theresa Brunszvik (1775–1861) in her residence in the city of Buda under the name of Angyalkert (Angel garden). Soon the concept was reproduced all over the Hungarian kingdom, becoming a popular institution among the nobility and the middle class.

Later, Friedrich Fröbel (1782–1852) opened the first institute of preschool education outside Hungary, on June 28, 1840 to mark the four-hundredth anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of movable type. Fröbel created the name Kindergarten (Children's Garden) for the Play and Activity Institute, which he had founded in 1837 in the village of Bad Blankenburg in the small, former principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Germany. The success of Fröbel's institute of preschool education in Germany led to the universal denomination of Kindergarten for this kind of institutions, with which it was exported to the rest of Europe and the World.

The first kindergarten in the United States was founded in Watertown, Wisconsin, by Margarethe Meyer-Schurz in 1856. It was based on Friedrich Fröbel, whom she was intrigued by in Germany. Her sister founded the first kindergarten in London, England. cite WatertownHistory.org, later that year, Peabody founded the first English-language kindergarten in America in Boston, following Schurz's model. The first free kindergarten in America was founded in 1870 by Conrad Poppenhusen, a German industrialist and philanthropist who settled in College Point, NY, where he established the Poppenhusen Institute, still in existence today. The first publicly financed kindergarten in the United States was established in St. Louis in 1873 by Susan Blow. Elizabeth Harrison wrote extensively on the theory of early childhood education and worked to enhance educational standards for kindergarten teachers by establishing what became the National College of Education in 1886.

PURPOSE

Children attend kindergarten to learn to communicate, play, and interact with others appropriately. A teacher provides various materials and activities to motivate these children to learn the language and vocabulary of reading, mathematics, and science, as well as that of music, art, and social behaviors. For children who previously have spent most of their time at home, kindergarten may serve the purpose of helping them adjust to being apart from their parents without anxiety. It may be their first opportunity to play and interact with a consistent group of children on a regular basis. Kindergarten may also allow mothers, fathers, or other caregivers to go back to part-time or full-time employment.