Just as a garden needs tender nurturing, a young child needs to be nurtured in tenderness, in preparation for kindergarten. First things
first: pre-schoolers need experience getting along with other kids. It
seems that this critical point is sometimes neglected when we only
talk about reading and arithmetic in pre-school education.

How does a two-year-old react when another child grabs the toy that
he was about to grab? It's unlikely that anything that an adult says at
that moment will immediately satisfy both children; but carefully letting children work out their own problems helps them to learn, and in a few
years they will play together in better harmony, knowing that all will
be well in their overall playtime periods.

Allowing pre-schoolers to work out their own difficulties has obvious
limitations: Even minor abuses between children requires immediate discouragement, for hurtful behavior is bad for both children. But the overall policy of self-learning is critical to a child's development.

Now to reading: Learning letters is fine; but learning that written words
have meaning--that is supreme, for it can inspire a child to learn. As strange as it may seem, an average two-year-old can memorize words
if an adult carefully uses a very few flash cards and enthusiastically gives positive encouragement.