Preschool: The foundational skills

Once the semester was over, we decided we were ready to branch into some more academic based lesson plans. The Moms felt strongly that it was our role as a Mother to provide the core of academic instruction to our children and that the preschool would be more of an opportunity to enhance skills and allow them to be practiced in a more school type setting with peers. Since the children were on various levels, we opted for something we could easily accommodate/generalize.

We decided to focus our instruction around the foundational pre-primer skills children need in order to be successful in reading and math (as seen below in bold). We then combined the main theme with a sub-theme that helped us in our lesson planning ideas.

Below is a brief explanation:

•       Bigger/Smaller: Children need to identify the differences between big and small in all areas of their environment. This helps in identifying that things have differences and how to group these differences.

•       Animals

•       Children can identify which animals are big and which are small

•       Geography

•       Children can identify things (buildings, parks, homes, etc) as which are big and which are small

•       More or less: Children need to identify when something has more and when something is less in all areas of their environment. This helps in seeing growth, regression and progression.

•       Sharing  

•       Children can identify who has more and who has less

•       Measurement

•       Cooking or measuring activities with the focus being on more and less

•       Same and different: Children need to identify when things are the same and when they are different in all areas of their environment. This helps is identifying how things do and do not work together.

•       Cultures/world

•       Discussing how things are alike and different in other cultures/places

•       Patterns

•       Focus on looking at patterns and which ones are alike and which ones are different

•       Matching: Children need to practice to proficiency the skill of matching like objects, pictures and words. Matching is the foundational skill in beginning to use symbols and representation, which leads to strong phonics skills.

•       Memory/matching games

•       Play these games with focusing on matching

•       Letters to words

•       Children can match the first letter of a word to the whole word or picture of the word

•       Basic colors: Children need to identify basic colors in all areas of their environment. And how these colors aid in identification of people, places and things.

•       Signs/community/mixing colors

•       Children can identify various colors on signs in our community. Could also do a color mixing activity here.

•       Seasons

•       Children can identify various seasons based on the main colors that are associated with those seasons

•       Shapes and sizes: Children need to identify basic shapes and sizes in all areas of their environment and how these shapes and sizes interact to create the things all around them (e.g: a house is made up of a rectangle shape, square windows, triangle roof, etc). This aids in comprehending that a whole is made of pieces and pieces make a whole.

•       Patterns

•       Children can create patterns use various shapes

•       Scavenger hunt for shapes

•       Children can find shapes in their environment

•       Categories: Children need to practice to proficiency the skill of putting items into categories as to train the brain on how all things fit into groups.

•       Healthy eating 

•       Children can categorize healthy and unhealthy foods

•       Bugs/animals

•       Children can categorize bugs and animals

Last day of class is a party/graduation