ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

My motto at school with my four year old class is 'simple, slow and steady'. The children need to be engaged with each other and with the teachers. In my class of 15, I have children that crave the teacher's attention and others that just love to invent games with friends. The last thing I want my children to do is sit at a computer or tablet. I want them talking, actively engaged in conversation and the world around them. I have no doubt they could master this game. Even young babies seem to grasp how to work their parents' smartphones. They have their whole lives to spend dominated by technology. This early childhood period should be spent in active, creative play. As I have stated in other posts, I don't even like the word curriculum to be associated with preschoolers. Learning is natural until we make it manufactured---learning is everywhere, all around them every day of the week. We, as teachers need to be available to support that all important social-emotional development and be willing to converse and share with the children. What do children want and need? The love and support of their parents and teachers, food in their bellies, clean clothes and a roof over their heads--not an algebra app at 4. Then we'll wonder where the obesity problem comes from---let kids be kids, we make it harder than it should be.

I question why a four-year-old child needs to play a game on a screen with an end goal of learning algebra. Would children enjoy the experience? Probably, but I know children would sit staring at a screen for hours regardless of whether they were learning anything or not. They would also enjoy eating a carton of ice cream. Just because they would enjoy it does not mean that the experience should be allowed or encouraged.
The goal should be to encourage dispositions to learn for an entire lifetime. Four-year-olds should be playing with real people and real objects-not sitting in front of a screen so that they can reach level 100. If the point this individual is trying to make is that 4-year-olds have incredible brains and unimaginable capacities to learn-we get that. Piaget, Constance Kamii, George Forman, Lilian Katz, as well as countless others have given us so many examples of the higher level of cognitive functioning young children can demonstrate. The challenge for teachers and families is always to figure out how to engage young children's brains with hands-on activities and creative experiences that are thought-provoking and full of magical moments. These types of learning opportunities enable children to explore, think, problem solve, and elaborate while remaining interested and curious. Sitting in an environment that encompasses a solitary interaction while gazing at a screen and punching a keyboard is rather mind numbing -no matter what content one is learning. So, I am not enthused about this screen game.
Finally, the creator of this game seems to be only concerned about children's cognitive development. In early childhood education, we know that the development of the whole child remains the goal of many of our efforts. In fact, the social and emotional development of children remains front and center. If children do not develop social competence and positive emotional health, it does not matter how smart they are. As adults, they will be plagued with numerous social and emotional issues that will negatively impact their ability to be fully functioning members of society.