The Benefits of Online Preschool

As the world continues to become increasingly digitized in the way we work, learn, and socialize, more and more parents are opting for online preschool for their children. In this post, we’ll go over the benefits of online preschool, online preschool programs, and how you can get started today.

What Is Pre-K?

Pre-K is short for pre-kindergarten, a voluntary classroom-based preschool program for kids aged five and under. Pre-K has been shown to play a pivotal role in early childhood education and cognitive development. Pre-K is focused on building a child’s social, physical, emotional, and cognitive development.

Benefits of Online Preschool

Online preschool shares many of the same benefits as traditional preschool, including:

Encouraging Independent Learning

When a child stays home, it’s likely they have one-on-one attention from a parent or caregiver. But when they attend preschool, the teacher has many other children to attend to. This teaches children to learn to play on their own and learn as they go — helping them develop the independence that is crucial for the rest of their lives. Preschoolers are often given tasks to complete independently, either in-class or before class, such as painting quietly or completing a number-tracing worksheet. Other times, they may be asked to bring their favorite board book or object from home and discuss why it's so special to them with their classmates and teacher. All of these activities introduce them to the independence they need to succeed in the rest of their schooling and lives.

Inspiring Curiosity

Children learn many different things at preschool, from colors, shapes, and animals to social skills. All of these new skills inspire them to become more curious about the world around them. You can encourage your child's natural curiosity out of the classroom by supplementing their online preschool learning with at-home activities. For example, if your child is learning about animals in class, you can take them on a weekend trip to a working farm or petting zoo. Seeing the things they're learning about in class in real life will get their imaginations running even faster and spark more curiosity.

Promoting Reading and Math Skills

Studies show a strong connection between early competence in math and success in school. As such, many experts believe that early math skills may be the strongest predictor of later success in both reading and math.

Reading is another area where the sooner the child starts learning and practicing, the better they fare down the road. Like math, reading is a truly foundational skill that is necessary for a broad range of subjects and assignments throughout a child's education and life, from test-taking to completing projects in history, science, public speaking, and into their adult careers.

Preschool has been shown to promote reading and math skills through fun classroom activities like counting, playing store, and reading books as a class. By teaching math and reading in fun and engaging ways, students are introduced to skills that are critical to setting the foundations for lifelong math and reading skills.

Aiding Social and Emotional Development

At preschool, children get exposed to many other children and have to learn to play well with others and share their toys. They also learn to take the feelings of their classmates into consideration, which is key for emotional development. The preschool classroom schedule also helps them learn the importance of predictable routines and showing up on time while promoting independence as they learn to follow daily classroom routines independently. Preschoolers also learn how to interact with authority figures by interacting and respecting their teacher and the classroom rules. Teachers model developmentally appropriate language to help them deal with any conflicts among classmates.

Online Preschool Classes

At Outschool, we have a number of highly engaging and interactive online preschool classes and activities, including:

In the ongoing  Preschool Time for Preschoolers, learners are presented with letters and sounds, the calendar, numbers, music turn-taking and sharing, games, and more.

Outschool’s Pre-K & Kindergarten Circle Time, Curriculum, Core Concepts, & Handouts meets five days per week for 30 minutes. Students sing songs, count as a group, and interact with their peers and participate in social activities.

In the ongoing Preschool Time With Mrs. Michele, students work with a certified preschool teacher in a preschool-type atmosphere to practice the days of the week, months of the year, letters, numbers, colors, shapes, science, sharing, and more.

The Preschool with Disney Friends class teaches students letter recognition, phonics, number, shapes, and colors with the help of some fan-favorite Disney characters.

Browse Outschool’s preschool classes for yourself by clicking here.