How Does Nursery School Benefit the Child?

What can the kindergarten offer the child?
Will it help 'Susu' overcome her shyness, or calm Jamil's incessant fidgeting? Shall I send my child to the nursery so that I can go out to work?...

There are no easy answers to such questions unless you consider the school's setting and how it fits the child's nature. Here is Jamil, always in motion, full of fancies — filling a barrel with bubbles, or painting a wall, and performing strange imaginary feats which he can express more clearly at school. Suad, on the other hand, is quiet and takes no interest in the company of other children; yet at her age — three and a half — a child begins to give and take with his playmates. Samir and Nabil need no companions, for they are twins and delight in each other's company. Children of four, or of three and a half, are happy at school if the eye of a capable teacher watches over them; but children in the second year of life

need the company of their mothers, and with it they are content, for companionship matters little to them; yet it should be given them in light doses at first — say an hour's play each day with two or three other children in surroundings of their own, under their mother's care.

Illness may hold back a child's growth, so that he remains cut off from companions even after reaching the age of four; here he needs his parents' affection and the warmth of home... Fouad's confidence in himself was shaken when he sensed the coming of his little sister; he did not understand why he was sent off to school so quickly, and he could not escape the belief that his parents preferred the new baby to him. The parents would have done better to bring him into the school atmosphere several months before the little girl's arrival, so that he would not lose his faith in their love for him.

The nursery is a help to many families in our present age. It supplies children with the games their age demands, and it blends play with work, so that the child does not feel the strain of the latter, being absorbed in the delight of the former. He also tries out the ways of life in his own little world, among children of his own age. The school is heaven's message to the child ruled over by the elders of his family: there his tongue and his thinking are set free. It also helps parents to understand their children in the growing stage, for on their visits to the school they become acquainted with the parents of the other pupils and with the teachers, and observe how the other children behave. And how many a mother is forced by life's harsh circumstances — illness, or the death of her husband, or his desertion — to go out to work; what better helper can she have with her child

than the school? It is essential that the child remain bound in thought and feeling to his mother, so that she may help him with some of his problems. In the kindergarten the child comes to know playmates and goes to visit them, and this is a first step in life. All children long for adventures; the adventure may be a ride on the train, watching a warship at sea, or a visit to an animal farm. The school provides them with many excursions, and so they see what is new to their child lives.

There is another side to upbringing: gathering the children of one neighborhood at the home of one of their playmates, whose mother takes on the role of supervising their behavior and their games, each mother taking her turn. In either case, parents must not stray too far from their children's world!...