Center for CSUN’s Youngest Students

As a group of preschoolers huddled around her, Cal State Northridge President Blenda Wilson illustrated how to get children interested in books.

“Red bird, red bird, what do you see?” Wilson read out loud. Before she turned the page to a picture of the bright-feathered creature, six preschoolers shouted, “A yellow duck!”

In her annual visit to the campus preschool and day-care center, Wilson said that today’s successful college students were yesterday’s youngsters who were eager to read. As she looked around the playground at 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds noisily scampering about, Wilson said she saw the college kids of tomorrow.

“I think reading is the most important skill,” Wilson said. “Read and have a sense of math competency--you can leave out a lot of other things, but if [children] don’t do that well, they’re hampered for the rest of their lives.”

The Associated Students/CSUN Children’s Center avoids learning by rote, such as drilling children to recite the alphabet, said center director Arlene Rhine. Instead, she said, teachers, some of them CSUN students, use games and storytelling to get kids interested in reading.

“We’re giving them a lot of hands-on work at their level,” Rhine said. “We’re challenging them but not pressuring them.”

Wilson said she practiced the same education methods in her early career days as a reading teacher.

The children’s center takes youngsters 2 through 5 years old, most of them children of CSUN students who are dropped off when their parents are in class or at work, Rhine said. About 105 children are enrolled this semester.

The university subsidizes 45% of day-care costs for most students. For low-income students, the day care is free, Rhine said.