Ky’shawn Turner, left, and Jadean Chin, both 4, make simulated meals in the play kitchen at Beautiful Beginnings, the state’s first public pre-kindergarten program. Behind the boys, Victoria Rojas, lead teacher at the school, plays with other children.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Four-year-old Ky’Shawn Turner reached into a cabinet labeled “refrigerator” and filled his arms with plastic food. He put a leaf of “romaine” and a “tomato” in a pot and set it on a “cooktop.” He moved it back and forth. He stirred the plastic stew — designed for wear and tear from little hands.

Several other boys set the table in the housekeeping nook. Over at the sand table, another group of boys learned about taking turns while they stood elbow to elbow digging for dinosaurs.

And at a pint-size table, a group of girls glued decorations onto papers of different colors that would serve as mats for photos of family, a theme reinforcing the importance of key relationships in their lives.

Welcome to the state’s first publicly funded pre-kindergarten program, where children not only learn about letters and numbers, they develop the self-control they will need to be good listeners — ready to learn in kindergarten and first grade, experts say.

And they learn cooperation and perseverance, skills that later in life contribute to fewer behavior problems and an improved high school graduation rate, according to research on the long-term impact of early childhood education.

RHODE ISLAND was one of 12 states that had no investment in early childhood education until the opening this fall of seven state-sponsored pre-kindergarten classrooms in four cities — Providence, Warwick, Central Falls and Woonsocket.

The $1.1-million budget pays for seven classrooms in a variety of settings, including Beautiful Beginnings Child Care Center on Elmwood Avenue, where Ky’Shawn Turner attends school.

Education Commissioner Debora A. Gist says she hopes the results of the one-year pilot program will lead to an expansion of publicly supported preschool.

The children in the pilot program, which is free, were selected by lottery. Eligibility was open to all 4-year-olds in the target communities, regardless of their parents’ income.

Education experts say that high-quality preschool programs benefit all children. Even though income is not a factor in the Rhode Island demonstration project, researchers say the most dramatic differences generally show up in studies of children whose families can’t afford a private preschool.

Youngsters from low-income families can be 18 months behind in academic readiness and language development by the time they start kindergarten, already too much of a gap to be closed by remedial programs in grades one, two and three, according to a prominent researcher who has been hired by Gist to evaluate the pre-kindergarten program.

In New Jersey, which has introduced publicly funded preschools in high-poverty areas, the rate at which children are held back in school has been cut in half, from 1 in 10 to 1 in 20, said W. Steven Barnett, codirector of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.

IN PROVIDENCE, research suggests that as recently as three years ago, almost a third of children arrived in kindergarten ill-prepared to learn their letters.

For Schools Supt. Tom Brady, investing in the program is a no-brainer.

Providence and Central Falls have contributed $300,000 and $150,000, respectively, to the program, which was started by the Department of Education with $700,000 from the General Assembly.

Brady has experience with early childhood programs in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., where children emerged with phonetic and vocabulary skills that he said were “head and shoulders” above those of peers who had not had a high-quality preschool education.

Parents need no convincing of the value of early childhood education.

Dorota Gbudzyna, who speaks Polish at home, said she and her husband are “double happy” that their daughter, Monica, won a lottery for one of the 18 spaces in the pre-kindergarten class at Woonsocket Head Start.

Monica is picking up English at school in a way she would never learn it at home, Gbudzyna said.

Young families like her own, limited to one income while one parent stays home with the children, cannot afford to pay for private preschool, said Gbudzyna. She cares for a 2-year-old daughter and a nine-month-old, while Monica attends school.

One of Monica’s classmates is Bryan Gaulin. The Gaulin family recently returned from a two-year stay in China, where Bryan attended preschool.

Bryan’s mother, Lisa, said she now has a better understanding of the reasons why Asians are such high achievers.

The education of children begins as soon as they can walk and is open to all, regardless of income, Gaulin said.

“We, as a country, need to start looking at the education system and compare it to the rest of the world,” she said.

“We are not even close when we compare the U.S. with [China’s] education system,” Gaulin wrote.

“When we raise well-educated children, we build a better America for the future,” she said.

Proponents of early childhood education include prominent economists, most notably Nobel Prize Winner James Heckman of the University of Chicago.

HIGH-QUALITY early childhood education has a lasting impact on the development of qualities such as motivation and persistence toward a goal, which are just as important in becoming a good jobholder as someone’s academic ability, Heckman has concluded.

Historically, policymakers have balked at the up-front costs of a good preschool.

The pre-kindergarten classes cost $9,300 a year for each child, enough to pay state-certified teachers competitive salaries and demand of them the same caliber of professionalism that is expected of any public school teacher.

A quality preschool program “is not baby-sitting,” said Melissa Deitrick, director of Beautiful Beginnings in Providence. “It is play with a purpose. We want children to be learning something while they are playing.”

Both Beautiful Beginnings and Woonsocket Head Start are accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which sets the gold standard for preschool education across the country.

The other five sites for the state’s program are: Progreso Latino in Central Falls, Highlander Charter School and Ready to Learn in Providence and Providence Center/Imagine Preschool and Westbay Community Action Children’s Center, both in Warwick.

All the state-sponsored pre-kindergarten programs follow educational standards that promote the social and emotional development of children — such as their ability to get along with others — as well as building a foundation for reading and writing, math and science.

But the classrooms do not operate in isolation. The program is designed to build bridges between home and school by regularly reporting progress and educating parents about the purpose of their children’s play.

The emphasis on working with parents, as well as social and emotional development, reflects scientific research that has found that the early relationships of children with important people in their lives have far-reaching influence on the hard-wiring of the young brain, extending to academic performance.

In Jenah Morrell’s class in Woonsocket, the first week of school was devoted to the theme of respect.

She started to read her class a book, “We are all alike … we are all different,” written by a group of kindergartners for other young children.

Then the class broke up, several boys heading for the blocks and other children going to housekeeping or the sand table, where, among other things, they practiced working together.

Meanwhile, Morrell sat down a small group with colored paper, yarn and buttons, and guided them in making self-portraits.

As children practiced their technique with paper, pencil and glue, Morrell fed a conversation that promoted language development. For some, like Cherylind McCollum, the exercise also fueled creativity and leadership.

Before she was done with her face — light pink with straw-colored hair and blue eyes — Cherylind announced that it wouldn’t do by itself. The head needed a body, she said, and, by herself, proceeded to make one — with all the pieces in the right places — lickety-split. For the other children, Cherylind was the one to watch.

gmacris@projo.com