Preschool
The Tri-County Preschools offer services to children in Ashland, Holmes and Wayne Counties, using a curriculum that is aligned to Ohio's Early Learning Content Standards. This curriculum allows teachers to prepare children for kindergarten using developmentally appropriate practices. The framework for the curriculum is the Assessment, Evaluation, Programming, System (AEPS) which is scientifically research based and is supported by the Ohio Department of Education.
Research has shown that quality preschool has a positive and long lasting impact on children. We welcome you to visit the following links, as they demonstrate the impact of preschool as well as the advances in early education.
Pre-K Now: Characteristics of Quality Preschools
ODE: Ohio's Preschool Content Standards
Welcome to the 2011 - 2012 School Year!
We continually examine our program to bring the best teaching practices to each and every classroom. Our staff participated in a focused study group recently where the newest research on developmentally appropriate practices were discussed. The teachers and therapists are eager to apply these new findings to their classrooms and daily interactions with children. Please visit the National Association for the Educators of Young Children's website to learn more about developmentally appropriate practices.
Tri-County Preschools are a service of Tri-County ESC Department of Special Education
Additional Resources
Registration Information
Referral Process
Site Locations
Preschool Handbook
Services
Fast-Paced Cartoons Like SpongeBob May Harm Children's Brains
Bloomberg Article: Children who watch fast-paced cartoons like SpongeBob SquarePants perform worse when asked to follow rules or delay gratification than kids who spend time drawing or watching slower, educational programs, a study found.
The 4-year old children who watched nine minutes of SpongeBob on Viacom Inc.'s Nickelodeon channel performed only half as well on tasks as those who spent the same amount of time drawing or watching Caillou, a Public Broadcasting Service educational program about a 4-year old boy, said Angeline Lillard, lead author of today's study in the journal Pediatrics.
Programs that are fast paced and feature unrealistic events may over-stimulate the brain, making it harder to trigger executive function, a process used to complete tasks, Lillard said, Children may also mimic the characters after the show ends and not concentrate. Parents need to consider how frenetic a show is, as well as its content, when deciding what their young children watch, she said.
"We don't know how long this effect lasts," Lillard, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville said. It may be that children recover quickly. Certainly, immediately after, there was a strong impact particularly on the most challenging tasks."
Animated Sponge:
In the study 60 4-year olds were split into three groups. One group watched a truncated episode of "a very popular fantastical cartoon about an animated sponge that lives under the sea." Another saw a truncated episode of a "realistic PBS cartoon about a typical U.S. preschool aged boy." The third was given a paper, crayons and markers and spent the time drawing.
The children were then asked to play games that involved following rules and an activity in which they had to delay having a snack. Those who watched SpongeBob performed worst on all tasks, while overall those in the drawing group and the Caillou group performed about the same.
Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's Research Institute states, "These children's brains were tired from all the stimulation, and then the expectation that they focus on something became a challenge for them."
A typical preschooler spends about 4.5 hours a day watching television or DVDs. Children today start watching TV at 4 months of age compared with 4 years of age in 1970, Christakis said.
Ari Brown, a pediatrician in Austin, Texas, said "There are questions about the long-term effects on children based on the amount of television they watch, the types of shows and how the shows are structured. " He also states, "Parents should get their kids to finish their homework first before they sit down and watch TV."