Early Childhood Education

Education is an essential mechanism for the development of human beings. It mainly enlarges, enriches and improves the individual’s image of the future. A man without education is not a human but an animal.

Early childhood care and education which extends from two to six years of age is a period of great importance where the child seeks to acquire control over the environment. He starts preparing himself for exploring his environment to know its components and to know how it works. This period is also very ideal for learning. A child thus acquires new knowledge and skills through his curiosity, ideas, adventure, skills and activities. Educationally this period is therefore very significant and makes a way for an effective learning for

Parents at home provides a caring and loving environment for two and half year of initial stages where the child is not getting any kind of formal education. In a country like India values have given an utmost importance and thus values are the foundation stones for the rich heritage, cultures and traditions and thus parents make the child learn all the basic social skills and inculcate the moral values in the child at his initial years. In the past times, the moral values or the ‘sanskaras’ were transmitted mainly within families, through the traditional child caring and rearing practices which were commonly shared and passed on from one generation to another, But however, there have been changes in the family structure as well as the social context in the last few decades. Early childhood development is thus now can be acknowledged as the most important period of human life in terms of learning, expansion of human capabilities and achievement of human potential, because at this stage changes occurs rapidly in the social, emotional, physical, cognitive and other areas of development, which in turns lays the foundation for later development. The Bernard van Leer Foundation along with others, has also compiled certain evidences about the critical and rapid changes in the early stage of life. The positive impact of early childhood development on the social participation in primary school and higher schools is well documented in many studies (Arnold, 2007; Mustard, 2005; Young, 2002). Researches in the neuroscience confirms that the crucial brain development occurs in the form of establishment of neural synaptic connections and pathways more particularly in the first 3 years of life (Shonkoff, & Phillips, 2000; Mustard, 2007). The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (2010) also confirms that the