Preschool activities encompasses many different parts of the day in a preschool classroom.

One of the most common ones is circle time. Circle time in a preschool classroom is when lots of information is imparted to the young children through many avenues. A common daily preschool activity is calendar time.

Calendar time is when preschool  teachers introduce the days of the weeks and measurements of time like today, yesterday and tomorrow.

There are many concepts that can be learned from the calendar itself and I will give you some of the categories of what can be learned through these activities and questions that the children can be asked to help with their learning. Of course these are only examples to get you started in thinking of many more questions to get the children thinking.

Time

• What is today?
• How many Tuesdays do we have in September?
• What day comes before Tuesday?
• Let’s say the days of the week out loud
• What would you like to do tomorrow? What day is that?

Numeral Recognition:

The children can locate the numerals on the calendar and you can ask them questions pertaining to the numerals

• What happened on the 10th?
• When were there birthdays in the month?
• Can you find the day we came back from vacation?

You can also have other numerals that are identical to the ones on the calendar and have the children match them up.

Counting:

Many counting experiences can be done during calendar time.

• How many days until we will go our trip?
• How many days do we have to wait until Susan’s birthday?
• What did we do 3 days ago?
• How many children have birthdays this month?
• How many sunny days did we have this month?

You may want to keep an ongoing record of how many days there are of school. For each day put a small bean in a jar and periodically the children can count them. Or you can have a monthly counting jar.

Daily attendance helps with counting as you count how many children are here each day

Patterning:

Patterns can be created on the calendar as the date is put up. Numeral cards can be created to represent different patterns like color, shape, or size. The children can read the pattern and predict what is coming next.

Sorting:

At the end of each month the children can count and identify how many days there were in that month.  A month card can be posted in the correct group of an ongoing display showing the number of days in each month.

Though calendar time  can really be applied to math curriculum it would generally be included under preschool activities as it is done with children that are not even doing a math curriculum.

There are many ways to make calendars. Some can be on a large oaktag with the whole month laid out as a real adult calendar, or you an have a circle calendar with 7 days of the week around the diameter of the circle. A clothespin can be put on to indicate each time it comes around.

The children can also make their own calendars using any number of children’s crafts ideas they can find to decorate their calendars.

Reading strategies in the preschool and kindergarten classroom change all the time.

In my days in Bank Street College it was reading as a language experice than it moved to whole language, now its emergent literacy.

Whatever its called there are certain reading strategies that are part of all of these concepts that help children to learn and be better readers..

Children love to draw and paint and then to tell you about their artwork. When they do that, write it down. Write down stories that they tell you, words that they tell you, and write your own stories for them.

What this does  is it teaches kids that reading is “talk written down”. Many kids don’t make that connection so easily.

Aside from having their words written down it is important to have as much writing all around them so they get used to seeing the written word and relating it to something specific.

Children’s names are particularly important to them and in the classroom you can make use of ALL of the children’s names.  Kids learn very quickly when what they are reading is so close to their hearts, their names. By doing many of these activities in no time at all the children will know how to read every child’s name in that class.

• Put their names on their cubbies
• Make an attendance chart that is large and visible with their names
• Create a memory game with the kids names
• Have a job chart up with rotating kids names
• Names should go on all of their artwork
• Or they can have their names in a box that you can use to tack up next to their art displays on the walls.

Other forms of reading around the room include:

• Weather charts
• Calendars
• Block signs
• Labelled signs on bulletin boards
• Recipes
• Labelled items in the classroom

As children get used to your writing things they say down and seeing language all around the room , it sparks great interest in reading more and writing. And as we know the more interest there is in a subject the  quicker they learn it.

As you  write for and with the children be very carefulthat your handwriting is clear and legible manuscript writing.

If we want the children to learn good reading and writing habits we must make sure that they are seeing wrods as close to manuscript as possible, clear and legible. (Even if we usually can’t read our own handwriting).

If you are a home school parent than you can do many of the same activities as a classroom teacher by labelling items in the home and doing lots of writing with the children. I guess you can’t spend too much times on names as that is quite limited in a home school environment.

Kindergarten curriculum’s are run in different ways and learning takes place in various ways.

Traditional preschool teachers who believe that education is the imparting of knowledge to their students separate play from real learning. There is play time and then there is learning time. Learning can take place during circle time or by sitting at the tables using workbooks.

An integrated preschool or kindergarten curriculum believes that learning should take place mostly during play time or as what we call it in Bank Street School of Education “Work period”

Firstly the setup of a kindergarten classroom has to be such that it encourages moving from center to center as opposed to all sitting at table in the middle of the classroom

You can actually see a diagram of a kindergarten classroom setup which shows how the classroom is broken up into different corners or areas.

A work period usually needs to take place in a center based classroom. This means that there are various centers set up in different corners or areas of the room where the teacher will make materials available for the children to work with.

When a curriculum is decided the conscientious teacher will tie in all of the areas in the various centers to reflect what they are learning in the classroom.

I am going to talk about 3 of the most common centers in an early childhood classroom and what should be going on in each of them:

Block Area-Should consist of a complete  set of unit blocks with an assortment of wood people and trucks. You can often add signs and other things that pertain to what the kids are studying in class.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children explains in greater detail more of the benefits of block play.

In a nutshell, blocks are extremely helpful for helping the children with beginning math concepts and recreating their world in the concrete. In future post I will be offering suggestions on how to get the most out f the block area.

Housekeeping area- Should be set up with a children’s table and chairs, and lots of housekeeping paraphernalia. After the children have taken visits or trips somewhere you can change over the housekeeping area or the dramatic play area to be that place like a fire station or a fruit market.

Art area- An extremely important place where the children can do all of their preschool crafts for holidays plus all of their creative non process art.

These are only 3 of the many centers you can have. There can be a science table, a math table, a manipulatives center, a computer area, a cooking area etc.

Depending on the space you have and how much you are willing to invest in  learning how to give kids educational activities during their work period will determine how successful your work period can be.

All areas no matter which you choose  should be clearly defined and all items in the areas should have pictures or clear labels of where they belong.

In the art areas there can be pictures or drawings of scissors and crayons, paper etc. so the children can know where the stuff can be returned.

In the block area you can outline a picture of the block size and paste it on the shelf so the kids know where those blocks go.

The fewer items you put out the better off you are. It’s better to add then to take away and too much is overstimulating. You can always take away stuff that is not being used and then bring it back a few months later there will be lots of excitement about the new items.

I will be posting many more interesting and informative things about the various centers and how to get the most out of them.

Discipline in the preschool classroom does not always mean getting the kids to behave. It can mean something as simple as setting the tone of the classroom by speaking to the children correctly. This way you often can avoid real discipline or potential discipline problems.

I am going to give you some basic tips on how you can set a positive  tone in the preschool classroom by showing you some of the different ways you can phrase the same thing.

1. Notice details of a child’s behavior instead of saying things like good boy and good girl. You can say   You did a good job…You’re a good cleaner…That was hard but you did it anyway. These comments are less global and more specific and make the child feel good about the specific thing he did.
2. Don’t tell the child that he or she is a bad boy or girl instead can say ….I’m sorry that is not allowed; Or  Come let us try to find something  else to do. One can be firm without being punitive.
3. Saying you’re cute or wonderful is not helpful either. Saying Your hair looks really nice today or I really enjoyed working with you…or    You did a very nice thing to your friend by giving her your chair goes a lot further in building up self esteem because  it is recognizing something they did and had control over as opposed to things like their looks that they have no control over.
4. Do not encourage competition by showing off one child’s work over another. The child complimented will feel just as good if complimented in private while the child hearing it will feel inferior.
5. When a child is doing some kind of kids crafts or other artwork then  instead of saying That’s beautiful, you can notice what they did in the artwork and comment on it like I see you used red and yellow and blue or You used a lot of paint and moved your arm strongly. This makes the child notice the work she did herself and feel good that someone else really noticed what she did.
6. Get down with the children physically when you really need to get a point across. It is a lot easier listening to an adult when they are at your level as opposed to towering above you.

Just try to implement some of these examples and you will be setting a positive, comfortable tone in your classroom that will help avoid discipline problems from the outset.

A Classroom setup is very conducive to how children learn.

There are many ways that teachers wet up their classrooms with a great focus put on decorating the classroom walls. Bulletin boards are often done through great collaboration with other teachers and adults. the problem is often that when decorating the early childhood classroom, children are not taken into account.

By this I mean, that if our goal is to educate the children shouldn’t our classroom be decorated FOR the children NOT for the parents.

To that end I have laid out 4 basic ideas that will help you decorate your nursery, kindergarten or early childhood classroom with the children in mind.

1. Uncluttered walls: For some reason many preschool teachers seem to think that in order for their classroom to look cheerful and welcoming, they have to plaster the walls with all kinds of cutesy and supposedly educational signs and pictures. What tends to happen, however is that children tend to tune out when there is too much stimulation and don’t see anything. The trick is to put less up, keep it uncluttered and the children will notice what’s there.
2. Hang low: Why is it that you see ABC’s and other assorted things hanging in early childhood classrooms that are at the top of the room Don’t people realize that the kids are way down on the bottom. If you want the children to see what you hang up…hang it low enough so that they can see what you have prepared for them to see without craning their necks.
3. Hang stuff together with the children: If you can hang the wall hangings together with the children they will be much more involved in what is hung up and will refer back to things more often as they remembered it going up it involves them more.
4. Decorate with children’s artwork:There is nothing that makes a preschool classroom look more cheery than children’s artwork hung on the walls. I know you may want to have things hung up before the children begin school so maybe you can prepare a space that has a beautiful border that says  “Kids work” or something like that and as soon as they make some paintings or drawings,  frame them nicely and hang them up

Remember you want the children involved and everything you do in the classroom should be focused on what the children can gain from it.( Even something simple like the walls of the classroom.)