Literacy can be fostered in many different ways within the preschool curriculum. In our classroom, we read, write, draw, and sing about letters. Each week, your little one is introduced to one letter relating to the monthly theme.
During the course of the week, students participate in a variety of activities surrounding that particular letter. For the week of the fish, we talked about the letter F.
To encourage their understanding of this exciting letter, we wrote large Fs (with Miss Carrie’s help) on the sidewalk with chalk. Students then “filled” these letter Fs in with toy fish.
Using seashells, play dough, and toy sharks, we created an ocean habitat for one of our favorite sea creatures: the shark!
We began this activity with a discussion of the shark, where they live, what they eat, and how they survive within their slippery environments!
This kind of play involves all of the senses. It is called sensory play, and we use it in our classroom all of the time! Why do we love this kind of play? For many reasons! For one, sensory play allows children to form mental images about what they are seeing.
Adults already do this naturally, but in young children, it is still developing.
Sensory play also involves the combining of different materials. These combinations are very important for the scientific exploration of cause and effect.
Sensory play can also foster language and cognitive reasoning, as students create various dialogues for the characters in their sensory environments. For example, your little ones discovered that predatory sharks could be hidden by creating “hiding spots” with rocks. They communicated this to one another, and had to manipulate the rocks to hold their sharks down, as many of them floated and were unable to sink.
Lastly, are the prosocial interactions that are fostered as a result of sensory play. These interactions develop as students discuss and share their experiences with one another.
A jetty is a long, narrow structure that protects our coastlines from fluctuations in weather and tides. They also delay erosion, and can indicate depth to nearby boaters.
Jetties can be constructed from a variety of items such as rocks, concrete, wood, earth, and stone.
Because young children learn best by participating in their learning experience, we decided to create our very own jetties!
Using rocks, white clay, and gel, we created structures designed to keep coastlines healthy and happy.
Research in early childhood education demonstrates the significance in exploration and discovery within the learning environment.This facilitates reasoning skills (finding out what works and what doesn’t), creativity (developing alternative ways to manipulate materials), and problem solving.
Constructing a jetty targeted these areas specifically because it encouraged your little one to plan out how their jetty would look, gather and arrange materials to initiate the process, and think critically as they engineered their structures.
Creative art activities can help children in all areas of development. The first of these involve your little one’s large and small muscle development, as well as their eye-hand coordination. Using crayons, markers, and paint brushes helps children practice the fine motor control they will need for writing later on. The second, involves social development.
When children work together in the art area, they learn to share, to interact with others, to be responsible for cleanup, and to put materials away. These are positive and important changes for social learning. The third domain includes cognitive development. Young children can learn the names of colors and shapes through creative art activities.
They find out what happens when they mix two primary colors together and get a secondary color. Giving them materials, and then asking them to draw or paint an image in their minds, helps them develop observational skills needed for science. Lastly, is emotional development.
Through creative art, children may be able to represent experiences that they cannot verbalize. They may draw pictures out of proportion, exaggerating things that are important to them. For this creative art activity, we used fabric, jewels, fabric paint, our fingers (along with paint brushes), and our imaginations to create our very own ocean scene!
With the aid of colorful illustrations (including googly eyes) we discussed what it means to add something to an object. In this case, there were two paper sea creatures.
Underneath each creature was a number. Between each creature was a “plus” sign.
A class discussion was then initiated as a means to relay the meaning of this exciting symbol.
We then added a counting element to this activity. Using googly eyes, we practiced adding them to our marine friends. Using real life items illustrates this complicated concept for young children, and enables them to make connections not allotted by simply using a paper and pencil.
Manipulating colorful materials also provides instant feedback, which enables students to create meaningful connections between a concept and its application to real world situations.
Though preschoolers are unable to yet read, there are several activities they can partake in that promote literacy.
One of these activities is recognizing letters.
To encourage focus, and promote an experience that will facilitate their pre-reading skills, your little one played a matching game.
For this activity, your little matched upper and lowercase letters (placed on plastic crabs) with letter stickers on a piece of paper, and paired each one with it’s match.
I am very excited to talk about our adventures in math! By using googly eyes and paper cut-outs of sea creatures, we had the opportunity to practice our counting and number recognition. For the activity, each participant was given googly eyes and sea creatures with various numbers written on them.
They then placed the correct number of googly eyes on the paper, counting as they did so. After this, we talked about what the various numbers looked like. How “1” has a straight line like a pole, how “2” looks like a seahorse, and how “3” looks like bear ears. By counting, young children gain an understanding of concrete relationships. As they coordinate the counting with the adding of the eyes, your students learn that each object gets one number.
In gaining insight of concrete relationships, they further their comprehension that things can be given many different labels, and still have the same meaning. Preschoolers also need experiences to relay the meaning of symbols. They may look at a number on a piece of paper, but not make the association between that number and an amount. By providing the opportunity to see the number and count actual three dimensional objects, students participate in an effective developmental experience.
Role play is a type of pretend play where children get into character and act out a role or real life context. While role play is a fun, and playful activity, it is also a key component of learning. It is an active, social activity where children can get into character and use their imaginations to reflect on and develop their knowledge. This kind of learning is therefore an effective way for children to make sense of the world around them. For this activity, we pretended to be marine biologists! Using markers, paper, and clipboards, your little one looked at a variety of observation stations and recorded what they saw. These observation stations were set up like real ones in the field. Plastic animals were submerged in water and your little ones observed them like real scientists! They then compiled their findings into notebooks that they took home!
Using crackers and fish diagrams of varying numbers and amounts, we learned and revisited counting and Arabic numerals!
Each child was given a group of goldfish crackers, and a row with a different number on it.
The children were then asked what the number was, to put their fish on the quantity (displayed as fish), and to count their fish as they did so. These goldfish rows ranged from 1-10.
Once again, we are using things that our little ones are naturally interested in to teach about counting, numeral recognition, and patterns!
Not limited to just numbers, preschool math incorporates a broad range of skill sets and knowledge including sorting, colors and recognizing groups and patterns.
These activities teach our little ones about problem solving and using logic. This activity also involved fine motor skills, as they manipulated Their fish and attached them to their rows.
For this activity, we combined clay, rocks, and sea shells to learn about crabs!
By using clay, we created habitats for our little creatures and learned a new word: detrivore!
Crabs live among the rocks, and often eat the remains of what other fish live behind. This is what a detrivore is! The children delighted in manipulating the clay, and providing the perfect home for their little crab.
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