Preschool & Kindergarten

Kindergarten  (help·info) (German, literally means "children's garden") is a name given in many parts of the world to the earliest stage of a child's structured classroom education. more...

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Typically this involves 3-6 year olds. In some places kindergarten is part of a formal public or private school system; in others it may merely refer to nursery school (pre-school) or daycare.

History

Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel officially opened the first kindergarten on 28 June 1840, to mark the four hundredth anniversary of Gutenberg's discovery of movable type. Froebel created the name Kindergarten for the Play and Activity Institute, which he had founded in 1837 in the village of Bad Blankenburg, in the small principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Germany. The first kindergarten in the United States was founded in Watertown, Wisconsin by Margarethe (Margaretta) Meyer Schurz (wife of activist/statesman Carl Schurz). Margarethe Schurz initially taught five children in her home (including her own daughter Agatha) in Watertown, Wisconsin, but was so successful that she opened her first kindergarten in America in 1856. While Schurz's first kindergarten was German-language, she also advocated the establishment of English-language kindergartens. The first English-language kindergarten in America was founded in 1859 in Boston by Elizabeth Peabody, who received her first exposure to a kindergarten from Margaretta Schurz in Watertown. Margaretta Schurz’s older sister Bertha Meyer Ronge opened Infant Gardens in London (1851), Manchester (1859) and Leeds (1860). The first publicly financed kindergarten in the United States was established in St. Louis in 1873 by Susan Blow.

Kindergarten systems of various countries

Australia/New Zealand

In the state of New South Wales, the first year of primary school is called kindergarten. In Victoria, kindergarten is a form of, and used interchangeably with, pre-school. In Queensland, kindergarten is usually an institution for children around the age of 4 and thus the precursor to preschool and primary education. Other states and territories may or may not follow either model. In South Australia, school for children age 3 to 5 is called Early Learning Centre or Preparatory School. In New Zealand, kindergarten consists of the first 2 years before Primary School, from age 3 to 5.

Bulgaria

In Bulgaria, the children go to kindergarten at the age of 3 and leave it at 6, to go to preschool class (1 year) and after that they go to primary school.

Canada

In Ontario (as in some parts of Wisconsin in the U.S.) there are two grades of kindergarten; junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten (JK and SK). In Ontario, both the senior and junior kindergarten program, under the umbrella title of 'Early Years' are optional programs. Mandatory schooling begins in grade one. Unlike in France, kindergarten is called la maternelle in Canadian French and JK as prématernelle within the province of Québec. Within the French school system in the province of Ontario, JK is referred to as la maternelle and SK as jardin d'enfants, a direct translation of kindergarten. In Western Canada there is only one year of kindergarten. After kindergarten a child moves to the first grade.

Read more at Wikipedia.org