Unlike older children, preschool age children are unable to learn through abstract or passive methods. Young children learn best by direct hands-on experience. The need to actively explore and manipulate materials and toys; discovering answers, properties, relationships, skills and concepts for themselves. Classroom experience needs to be concretely relevant to a child’s personal knowledge and maturation level. Often this is referred to as age appropriate or developmentally appropriate curriculum, an approach that meets educational goals based on research on how young children learn best. Some researchers and policy makers tell us, ” Play is the work of childhood”. It is a child’s very personal way of interacting with their world and learning to master the possibilities in it. Preschool curriculum is much more than meets the eye; it’s the very serious endeavor of starting a life-long path of learning, and having a little fun along the way!

  It looks like play but it meets an academic goal:

• Block building – Mathematical goals (spatial concepts, problem solving, balance and weights, cooperation)
• Stringing beads – Mathematical goals (correspondence counting, patterns, sequencing); Literacy goals (visual motor coordination, left to right concepts)
• Finger plays and rhymes – Literacy goals (auditory discrimination, phonetic skills, auditory memory, concept comprehension, visual motor coordination, vocabulary development)
• Concentration game – Literacy goals (visual discrimination, symbolic decoding, visual memory, concept development; Mathematical goals (matching and classification)
• Drawing and painting – Literacy goals (symbolic representation, visual memory, visual motor coordination, creative expression)

We hope these materials have enable you to understand the amount of care and consideration that goes into to planning a quality and worthwhile preschool experience for your child. 

Adapted from Joni Levine, Child Care Lounge