Transcript

Welcome to lesson 2. In this lesson, I’ll be talking about the main components of preschool. 

I’m sure you’ve wondered, what exactly do I need to be teaching? Or am I forgetting anything? This lesson is designed to give you an overview over the two main components of preschool: math and literacy. 

Now I’m not saying this is all they need to learn, but these are the two biggest subjects to work on in preschool. In the next lesson, we will cover the other skills to work on.

Literacy is huge in preschool. If you read to your child as babies and toddlers, you’ve already been working on this. Reading to your child is so important and it helps them in many ways. I’m going to be going over four things for literacy:

1. Reading readiness skills

2. Alphabet

3. Writing

4. Oral language

Reading is one of life’s most important skills. Reading books to your child and making that part of your daily routine is HUGE and will really benefit them. As preschoolers, they are learning so much as you read. Here are some of the reading readiness skills they learn from just being read to and exposed to a variety of books.

1. Print and book awareness – this is the earliest introduction to literacy. It basically means understanding that print is organized in a particular way. Children begin to develop this as infants and continue to develop throughout early childhood.

Here’s what to work on:

a. holding a book

b. turning pages

c. reading from left to right

d. reading from top to bottom

e. letters and words hold meaning

f. differences between a letter and a word

g. illustrations correspond to the text

h. books have a front, back, and author

i. where to start reading j. return sweep (when you get to the end of a line, you go to the next line and start on the left side)

k. punctuation marks

How to work on concepts of print:

• read lots of books

• always read the title

• point to words with your finger as you read

• have your child turn pages

• invite your child to explore books, writing, and drawings

• do hands-on activities that go from left to right

• point out punctuation marks

• ask your child questions as you read

2. Listening Skills – One skill children should work on is the ability to listen to read alouds. Here are some of the benefits:

a. It helps with print and book awareness

b. An amazing way to bond and engage with your child

c. Builds motivation, curiosity and memory

d. Helps children cope during times of stress and anxiety

e. Develops an imagination 

f. Broadens their vocabulary and helps with oral skills

g. Creates a positive association with books and reading

Information found here: http://www.reachoutandread.org/our-story/importance-of-reading-aloud/

3. Comprehension Skills – As children listen to books, they develop comprehension skills. The more you do this, the stronger their comprehension will be. 

Here are some comprehension skills your child should start to develop in preschool:

a. Retelling information from a story – this may be lots of details, but overtime they will start to retell the main concepts

b. Sequencing the story – at the beginning, it may just be sequencing 3 pictures to tell a story. As they grow, they can develop this further.

c. Predicting – asking questions and making predictions before reading

d. Making connections with the story, character, or setting

e. Asking questions and answering questions

f. Determining the main idea and even summarizing (this is an advanced skill!)

Parents play a big role in this! To help with this, try some of these:

• Ask questions before, during, and after you read

• Pause and allow your child time to think and express their ideas

• Build on your child’s interests and create opportunities for discussion

• Take time to explain what harder vocabulary words mean

• Ask your child if they made any connections with the story

Whew! That’s a lot in just reading readiness! I’m sure many of you already to these things, but I hope you found it helpful to see it all listed out. Now let’s move on to what they need to know regarding the alphabet. 

As you know, learning their ABCs in preschool is incredibly important. In fact, it’s the foundation for reading. But what exactly do they need to learn? First, they need to know how to identify the letters. I hope by now you’ve already started doing this, through songs, videos, puzzles, games and more. One thing I want to add…please don’t use flashcards! There are so many more effective ways to teach the alphabet. 

Start simple. Don’t quiz your child on all 26 letters of the alphabet. Start with just a few and build upon that. I’m a big believer in not using Letter of the Week curriculum and instead doing alphabet letter activities all throughout the year. In fact, in my curriculum Home Preschool Made Easy, I have a simple plan that starts with learning to identify the letters, learning to write them, learning the sounds, and by the end of the curriculum they are learning rhyming, syllables, and even reading CVC words.

Along with identifying uppercase and lowercase letters, they should also learn the order of the alphabet and how to match uppercase letters to lowercase letters. Next, they should learn to identify their sounds, or a fancy word called phonemic awareness. In preschool, they should try to master knowing most of the sounds, but it’s not a requirement for kindergarten. It will just make learning to read a lot easier. 

Here are some other skills your preschooler can work on to help them be strong readers. Let me remind you that these are not necessary, but if they are ready to move on, here’s what I would work on:

• Rhyming

• Syllables

• CVC words – or word families

• Blends and digraphs

• Sight words

Alright, let’s move on to writing. At this age, preschoolers will learn how to hold a pencil correctly and learn how to write letters and numbers. It’s not an overnight process and will take time! In the next lesson, I will be talking about fine motor skills. Developing this first will help the writing process tremendously! At first, you may have to teach your child how to hold a pencil. My friend Heather from Growing Hands-on Kids has an excellent blog post about the stages of holding a pencil. https://www.growinghandsonkids.com/pencil-grasp-development-for-writing.html 

There are 4 stages of writing in preschool: 

 1. The very first stage of writing is actually scribbling! Scribbling is actually really important and it helps kids get for familiar with holding a writing utensil. Just make sure to call it writing, not scribbling! (even though it may look that way!) 

2. The next stage is pretend writing. For example, if you’re sending a letter to grandpa and your child wants to write his name, he may draw symbols that don’t look anything like his name, but to him it reads his name. 

Here are some ways to practice writing each day: 

*Have a journal where YOU write sentences that your child says. For example, after a fun day at the zoo, have your child tell you his favorite part while you write it down. Read it back to him, pointing to each word. This is a great way to model writing. 

* Write a morning message to your child each day. Repeat the words you write. 

* Have writing materials to use during pretend play. When you play grocery store, encourage your child to write a shopping list. These writings may all be scribbles, but eventually your child will start to write in a way that look like letters and words. 

 3. Now you may be wondering, at what point do you formally introduce writing to your little one? I start teaching my children to write alphabet letters when they have a good understanding of the alphabet and their fine motor skills are strong enough that they can hold a writing utensil. I use sandpaper letters in my lesson plans. I love these! They trace the letters with their finger before ever learning to write them with a writing utensil. 

4. The fourth stage is creative spelling. This is when the child knows how to write some letters and has some understanding of how letter sounds work. On their own, they are creatively spelling words (and maybe sentences!). Here’s a tip for this stage: do not spell every word for your child. When they have to write their own spelling, children must think about letter-sound relationships. It actually helps them with reading! 

We’ve talked about beginning reading and writing, so let’s also talk about oral language. This is so important in the preschool years! Did you know that oral language is significant because of the strong link with learning to read and write? I read in an article that by the age of 3, a preschooler’s vocabulary consists of approximately 2,000-4,000 words! In this stage, preschoolers are learning to use language to convey how they are feeling, to communicate with others, to ask questions, to think about things, and talk about imaginary situations. That’s why I love dramatic play activities. It allows children to use language to “act out” situations. All of these components to literacy are important. Young children need writing to help them learn about reading, they need reading to help them learn about writing; and they need oral language to help them learn about both. They all work together! So there you have it! These are the literacy skills preschoolers should work on. Don’t stress out if your preschooler can’t do all of these things, but keep working on them to help your child become a successful reader and writer! 

MATH

Another important subject to cover in preschool is math. Developing number sense in preschool is HUGE and should be worked on throughout the year. Teaching math to preschoolers is fun because you can do so much of it through daily life activities. Preschoolers don’t need worksheets and instead should learn through play and hands-on activities. 

Here are four things to teach in math: 

1. Patterns and Relationships – here are some skills you’ll work on: 

• Sorts by color, shape, and size 

• Orders several objects based on one attribute 

• Recognizes simple patterns and can duplicate them 

 There are so many activities for sorting and creating patterns. I love using colored pom poms and counting bears for this. 

2. Number Concepts 

• Counts to 20 

• Counts objects with meaning to 10 (one-to-one correspondence) 

• Matches numerals 

Some kids learn to count as early as toddlers and some need more help in the preschool years. I think the biggest concept to work on in preschool math is learning one-to-one correspondence. One-to-one correspondence is a foundational math skill for preschoolers to learn. It can take months or even an entire year for preschoolers to master this skill, which is why it’s important to keep practicing it! 

3. Geometry 

• Identifies 4 shapes: circle, square, triangle, and rectangle 

• Demonstrates concepts of directional concepts (up/down, right/left, high/low, over/under, in/out, behind/in, beside/between, front of, above/below, inside/outside, far/near) 

Shapes are a lot of fun to teach to preschoolers! They don’t need to know a lot about shapes, just be able to identify them. Directional concepts can be taught through many play activities. 

4. Measurement  

• Shows understanding of and uses comparative words (big/little, large/small, short/long, tall/short, slow/fast, few/many, empty/full, less/more) 

• Starts to estimate

Measurement is very simple for preschoolers. You can simply work on this by asking your child questions while doing activities, such as playing with a sensory bin. 

 Like I mentioned earlier, developing number sense is huge. Number sense isn’t something that can be taught, it’s something that is caught or developed over time. There are 4 early numeracy concepts: 

1. verbal counting – kids need to count in order correctly aloud 

2. counting objects – counting aloud as they count objects 

3. cardinality – knowing that counting tells them “how many” 

4. subtilizing – know how many without counting 

 Wow! That was SO much information! I promise that knowing all of this will help you as you do preschool with your little one. This is the CORE to teaching preschool, so I promise you the next lesson won’t be quite as intense! See you over in lesson 3!