What do you learn in pre kindergarten

Pre-K Preschool Curriculum - PreKinders

By Karen Cox | Affiliate Disclosure | Filed Under: Teaching Tips

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What should Pre-K children learn?

These are typical concepts that Pre-K children explore in school, but should not be required to master before entering Kindergarten. Children learn these concepts at their own pace. What is learned in Pre-K is considered a “bonus”. Children are taught with hands-on materials, songs, and games. They are assessed by observation and work samples.

Pre-K Math Curriculum

• Matching: objects, symbols, shapes, patterns, etc.
• Same and Different
• Sorting by various attributes: color, shape, size
• Patterns: AB, AABB, ABC, and possibly AAB, ABB
• Identify numerals 1-10 or more
• Counting objects to 10 or more
• One-to-one correspondence of objects when counting
• Sizes: small, medium, large (3 – 5 sizes)
• Shapes: square, rectangle, circle, triangle, oval, hexagon, rhombus (diamond)
• More, Less, Same
• Time: Day and Night, Sand Timer
• Weight: Example, what weighs more or less in a balance scale
• Measuring with non-standard units

Pre-K Literacy Curriculum

• Exposure to alphabet: letter names and sounds
• Recognize, spell, write first name
• Hold a pencil, marker, crayon correctly
• Retell familiar stories
• Draw pictures and dictate sentences about stories and experiences
• Answer questions about stories
• Repeat simple nursery rhymes and fingerplays
• Phonological Awareness: rhyming, syllables, alliteration
• Concepts of print: left to right direction, holding a book right-side-up
• Build new vocabulary
• Build listening skills
• Strengthen visual discrimination
• Sequencing
• Develop fine motor skills: play dough, scissors, writing utensils, Legos, etc.

Pre-K Science

• Explore science tools: magnets, prisms, magnifying glasses, etc.
• Experience the world through nature walks, gardening, and other explorations
• Observe insect life
• Observe plant growth
• Observe weather and plant life during each season
• Measure and mix ingredients in cooking activities
• Identify basic colors and explore color mixing
• Make observational drawings and dictation
• Explore the world with the five senses
• Investigate animals, the homes they live in, the food they eat

Pre-K Creative Arts

• Explore a variety of art processes: painting, drawing, sculpture, weaving, collage, etc.
• Use a variety of art materials: crayons, tempera paint, watercolor paint, colored pencils, markers, oil pastels, art chalk, clay
• Experiment with mixing paint colors
• Sing traditional songs and songs that enhance the curriculum
• Participate in movement songs and dances
• Use scarves, rhythm sticks, and bean bags to practice rhythms
• Use a variety of children’s instruments
• Participate in dramatic play
• Dramatize familiar stories
• Act out the movements and sounds of animals

• Practice problem-solving skills in social situations
• Work in groups or with a partner on a variety of projects
• Share classroom materials with the group
• Practice using manners: please, thank you, excuse me, table manners
• Communicate his/her needs
• Take care of his/her own basic needs: clean up, roll up nap pad, fasten clothing, use tissue as needed, etc.
• State personal information: first and last name, age, school name, city, state, country
• Explore types of work and workers
• Explore modes of transportation
• Participate in projects to help others in need

For Christian Schools only:

• Listen to Old and New Testament Bible stories
• Recognize that plants, animals, and human beings are God’s creations
• Recognize that God created families to love and take care of one another
• Learn about God’s love
• Listen to stories of the life of Jesus
• Learn Jesus’ teachings to love God and love others

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About Karen Cox

Karen is the founder of PreKinders.com. She also works as a full-time Pre-K teacher in Georgia. Read more...

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16 Things Kids Learn in Preschool

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Ever wondered what your kids are really learning at preschool when it seems like they’re just playing all day? The good news is that if it seems like they’re “just playing” then the school is doing something right!

Learning during the first 6 years is about building skills through play.

This does not only apply to babies and toddlers. Preschoolers learn best through play, when using their whole body and engaging the senses.

You may be wondering what a preschool curriculum should include or what subjects are focused on. This is not really that important. There is no curriculum-in-a-box, but rather a set of abilities and skills a preschooler should develop.

Some preschools choose to use set themes around which to plan play activities; others let themes develop naturally (learning about caterpillars when a child finds one in the garden). 

A good quality preschool will give your children a well-rounded education through a balance of free play and well-planned, adult-guided play.

So, what do kids learn in preschool? Here are 16 things.

Physical development starts with developing gross motor skills – the large muscles of the body.

At preschool, your children will be moving nonstop. Movement is the most important skill to develop first in the early years as it is necessary for all other learning.

Children must develop skills such as strength, hand-eye coordination and agility.

They also need to develop two important senses – vestibular and proprioception – responsible for balance and body awareness.

Movement is important as it stimulates learning, improves concentration, gives the brain oxygen and works both sides of the brain. Good gross motor skills also lay the foundation for fine motor skills. 

Some examples of gross motor activities:

• Throwing and catching balls
• Playing hopscotch
• Singing action songs
• Playing with bean bags
• Balancing on beams
• Climbing and hanging
• Skipping and hopping
• Running and chasing games

Fine motor coordination – the development of the small muscles – is a prerequisite to learning how to write and is necessary for performing everyday tasks.

In preschool, children spend a large portion of their day working on these skills.

Fine motor skills are developed through all kinds of art activities, such as:

• Drawing
• Painting
• Cutting
• Pasting
• Box construction with waste materials

They can also be developed with other fine motor activities such as:

• Pegboards
• Puzzles
• Threading and lacing
• Playing with pegs
• Playing with construction toys (Lego is great)
• Moulding playdough

Developing a pencil grip and learning to form letters starts with all these kinds of fine motor activities.

Preschool is where the foundations for mathematics begin. No child ever learns maths in the first grade. The type of maths they learn just becomes more formal.

In the preschool grades children learn:

• Rote counting (such as counting up to 20)
• One-to-one correspondence (reliably counting objects)
• Classifying
• Sorting
• Length
• Capacity
• Weight
• Area
• Temperature
• Time
• Space
• Shape 

These concepts are learned while having pure fun – in the sandpit, while baking, playing with water, building with blocks and even while tidying up.

Problem solving is an important life skill and one that must be developed early on. Learning this in preschool also helps children with mathematical problem solving during the formal grades.

Problem-solving skills are built during simple activities such as:

• Construction play
• Building puzzles
• Playing board games
• Resolving problems during social play

Preschool is a language-rich environment where children’s vocabulary expands dramatically. 

They learn sentence construction, the use of grammar and tenses, the meaning of words, etc.

Language and vocabulary are learnt throughout the day while:

• Having circle time discussions.
• Singing rhymes and songs.
• Playing games.
• Playing alone and with friends.
• Learning about a theme.
• Playing with toys, equipment and other materials.
• Listening to stories.

Writing starts with developing important pre-writing skills through play and art activities.

These four skills are specific requirements for learning to write and will be the focus during preschool:

• Pencil grip
• Crossing the midline
• Learning about letters and their formation (through play, not formal writing)
• Learning to form patterns (for example drawing big waves or zig-zags which mimic the shapes found in letters)

Listening is one of the most important and often underdeveloped skills. This should be a focus area during preschool. 

Children learn to listen by doing these kinds of activities:

• Listening to stories
• Playing games such as Broken Telephone or I Spy
• Following instructions
• Class discussions
• Music activities

Although your children are learning to listen at school, it is highly recommended to focus on these skills at home too. Children with good listening skills are much more successful and capable at school.

Here are some listening games you can play at home. 

Music in preschool is about so much more than just developing musical skills.

Music develops children’s:

• Vocabulary
• Understanding of rhyme, syllables and sounds
• Auditory perception
• Concentration
• Fine motor skills (finger plays)
• Gross motor skills (action rhymes)
• Mathematical skills (counting rhymes)
• decision-making skills (games such as musical chairs)

Visual and auditory perception are the two main building blocks of learning to read. 

Children develop their visual perception during preschool with the following types of activities:

• Activities that teach about shapes and colours
• Patterning activities
• Puzzles and tangrams
• Card games
• Memory games

10. Auditory Perceptual Skills

Auditory perception is the brain’s ability to make sense of what the ears hear. It is vital for being able to learn sounds for reading.

These kinds of activities develop auditory perception:

• Reciting rhymes and poems
• Playing with instruments
• Playing sound games
• Playing word games

During preschool children develop all the necessary pre-reading skills to set them up for learning to read formally.

Learning to read requires developing sound knowledge (auditory perception) and symbol knowledge (visual perception), as explained above. 

These are the five main pre-reading skills:

• Print awareness – understanding that written words convey meaning.
• Motivation to read – exposure to books that ignites a desire to read.
• Listening comprehension – the ability to understand what is heard.
• Letter knowledge – informal exposure to letters and their sounds during play.
• Phonological awareness – being able to hear sounds in words (beginning, middle and end sounds).

Children are exposed to these kinds of activities:

• Playing rhyming games 
• Playing word games 
• Games involving hearing syllables
• Playing listening games 
• Following instructions (single and multiple instructions)

At school, children also strengthen their memory, a skill they will rely on for learning throughout their education.

These are the kinds of games that are often played in preschool classes:

• Memory card games (get your own cards by downloading the FREE set of printables at the end of the post).
• Circle memory games such as “I went to the shops and I bought a…”. Each child has a turn to add an item, but must first recall the entire list before adding their item.
• List games such as “Categories”. Pick a category (e.g. fruits) and go around the circle asking each child to add the name of one fruit. No fruits may be said twice so children must remember which ones were already mentioned 

As children explore and interact with their environment and nature, they also learn about early science concepts. 

A great example is learning about physics by discovering the properties of water during water play:

• Water makes sand heavier.
• Water influences the texture of sand.
• Water falls through space (e.g. through a sieve).
• Air (wind) moves water.
• Water is a liquid because it pours.
• Water takes the shape of the container it is poured into.

Where better to learn social skills than in preschool? Children are surrounded by friends and adults and they learn to interact appropriately with others.

Throughout the day children learn about:

• Taking turns
• Sharing 
• Considering the opinions of others
• Showing empathy
• Cooperating and negotiating
• Resolving conflicts
• Leading and following
• Creating and following rules in games to encourage positive interaction

Preschool is where a child’s creative spark can really be ignited.

There are many opportunities throughout the school day where children develop their creative expression:

• During art activities – painting, constructing, drawing
• Musical activities – dancing, singing and playing with instruments
• Playing with construction toys
• Drama and puppet play
• Telling stories
• Fantasy/ dress-up play
• Outdoor play (e.g. building forts)

Last but perhaps most importantly, the greatest takeaway for young children at preschool is their growing independence.

Children learn to take care of themselves and show a sense of responsibility and a desire to be competent.

There are endless opportunities for this:

• Regular tidy-up times
• Taking accountability for actions
• Looking after belongings (shoes, bags, books, etc.)
• Self-care (going to the bathroom, washing hands, etc.)
• Making choices throughout the day (during free play or activities with choice)

And there you have it. That is certainly not a complete list as your kids are learning so much but that is more or less a summary of what skills a preschooler should have.

Here is a detailed school readiness checklist if you’d like to delve into each developmental area more.

Be wary of preschools that focus on academic skills. This is developmentally inappropriate and, as you can see from the list above, play is important during the early years.

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ENGLISH ALPHABET FOR CHILDREN – EnglishPapa on vc.ru

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The alphabet itself, of course, will be the same, from the usual 26 letters, for children and for adults. But the methods for studying it differ for different age groups. For children, it is worth choosing simpler and more playful ways. We will tell you why children need to learn the alphabet at all, and about ways to teach preschoolers the English alphabet.

Why learn the alphabet

The first thing that comes to mind is to learn to read and write. However, in order to read, it is not enough to know the alphabet alone. An alphabet is simply a sequence of letters; knowing the letters, unfortunately, will not help you learn to read! To be able to read, you need to know the sounds of the English alphabet and the image of the letter that we see when we read or remember when we want to write something.

So, in order to learn to read and write, the first step is to learn the alphabet, but do not stop there, continuing to master the sounds. Knowing the alphabet, the child will be able to read and write down his first and last name, e-mail address, and start reading simple stories. In addition, knowledge of the alphabet is necessary to find words in alphabetical order, for example, in a dictionary.

When should children start learning the English alphabet

Some parents think that English letters should be started around the second grade, when the child has mastered the alphabet of their native language. In fact, you can start learning even earlier. The child is ready for reading and writing when sound-letter images are formed and fixed in his head. This process will take time and special exercises to memorize and practice the letters and sounds of the English language.

Most children begin to recognize a few letters between the ages of 2 and 3, and by the age of 4 to 5 can recognize almost all letters. Thus, you can start teaching children the alphabet when they are about two years old, but you should not force and wait for serious results. But full-fledged training can be safely started from the age of five.

The advantage of learning the English alphabet at preschool age is also that children do not know their native written letters, so the risk of interference (the consequences of the influence of one language on another) will be less.

5 tasks for learning the English alphabet for children

The child needs additional motivation so that learning does not cause rejection. For this, various game methods are used, among other things.

Songs about the alphabet

Most likely, many of you have heard the simplest and most famous song for learning letters in English:

A-B-C-D-E-F-G

H-I-J-K-LMNOP

Q-R-S

T-U-V

3

Y and Zee

Now I know my “ABCs”

Next time won’t you sing with me?

A great place to start, but there are a lot of songs like this, and you can choose a new one every time, practicing letters and having fun.

One of the important points that early childhood development educators pay attention to is that children should move from singing a song to being able to pronounce and indicate letters without a melody. So don't stop singing!

Letter Games

One of the simplest games is letter matching. You can take a board with a poster on which the alphabet is printed in large letters. You will also need magnetic or paper-cut letters. Have preschoolers match the cut out letters to the letters on the board. Where is the letter "A"? Place the cut out "A" on top of the printed "A" on the poster. And so with all the other letters.

Another example of a letter game: write the alphabet in large size on a regular sheet of paper. Then take some plastic (magnetic) letters and hide them in a bucket filled with strips of newspaper. Have the child find and pull out the letters from the bucket and place them over the correct letter written on the sheet. You can also ask your child to name any word starting with that letter, if you have already learned the words.

More interactivity

Do not just teach children certain letters, but connect them to active activities and lead them to independent conclusions.

Dedicate each week (each lesson) to a specific letter. Prepare a box that you will fill with different items for a specific letter. For example, today you are learning the letter “A”. Put an apple (apple), an airplane (airplane), an alligator (alligator), an acorn (acorn), an arrow (arrow, toy, safe) in the box. Do not immediately tell the children what letter the objects hidden in the box begin with. Ask them if they can guess which letter they will be learning this week just by looking at the items in the box.

Comprehensive approach

Learning only letters and repeating them all the time can quickly bore children. Therefore, connect other tasks. For example, today you are learning the letter “R”. Let the children name various red objects, because red begins with the same letter - red. That is, you do not just learn words starting with this letter, but you add other competencies as well.

Delicious alphabet

Try baking cookies or jellies in the shape of letters. This is not only a fun, but also a delicious way to learn the English alphabet. It is also a great opportunity to organize a joint lesson with a child. In addition, there are pre-made letter-shaped cookies, and you can help repeat the learned letters during tea time. Have the child name the letter representing the cookie they are about to eat.

When your child is learning the English alphabet, try to use every opportunity to repeat the letters with the help of the environment. When going on a tour or a walk, ask your child to find a letter on the street or building sign. Continue to practice letter recognition throughout the day so that the lessons become ingrained in your memory. And the result will not keep you waiting.

The author of the article: Irina Videneeva is an EnglishPap teacher and methodologist

This is why it is so difficult to achieve the perfect English accent / Sudo Null IT News0001

If you are learning English as a second language, you will have an accent. Even if you have reached the fluent level and can discuss existentialism in English without any problems, any native speaker will still understand that you are not a local.

Working with an accent is optional, but the most difficult part of learning English. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger spent about five years of constant study to learn how to speak with a good American accent.

Scientists have recently found the reason why it is so difficult to get rid of the accent. Today we will tell about it.

Accent is formed already in early infancy

Scientists at Princeton University conducted an interesting study in 2017, the results of which were published in the journal Current Biology.