Preparing Young Children to Enter School Ready to Learn

The Florida Department of Education (DOE) indicated that twenty percent of Floridas children entering public school are identified as "not ready to learn." Many early childhood educators have said that a five-year old entering school for the first time, beginning the journey of a lifelong education, may already have missed some crucial opportunities for learning that can never be recaptured (Newman, 1997). From the standpoint of brain development, children start school relatively late in life. Long before youngsters master their ABCs, their brains have passed many developmental milestones. Yet, education policy has not addressed how children learn before they arrive at school or how parents can be helped to enrich the home environment so that their children will be ready to learn when they reach school age. The purpose of this study was to determine if young children who experienced a brain enriched learning environment prior to starting school, enter school ready to learn.