Nursery World - Worksheets are no substitute for any real-life experience

I applaud Julian Grenier's article 'Mark my words' (1 February), for I feel strongly that children are being institutionalised too young and that somehow the importance of play and its significance in the development of pre-school children has been pushed aside. I totally agree that worksheet-based teaching not only fails to extend children's thinking, but it also does not allow them to draw on their experiences. An activity based on the rhyme 'Five little speckled frogs', for example, where the children are able to act out the song using toy frogs - which enables them to understand the concepts of counting to five and backwards - is far more likely to be remembered and understood than colouring in a worksheet that has five frogs on.

I totally agree that worksheet-based teaching not only fails to extend children's thinking, but it also does not allow them to draw on their experiences. An activity based on the rhyme 'Five little speckled frogs', for example, where the children are able to act out the song using toy frogs - which enables them to understand the concepts of counting to five and backwards - is far more likely to be remembered and understood than colouring in a worksheet that has five frogs on.

Unfortunately, staff in too many nurseries believe that they must provide parents with evidence of their child's ability to write numbers or words by way of a worksheet. But parents' expectations will change if it is shown that learning through experience has far more of an impact on a pre-school child's development than conventional reading and writing.

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