Preschool

LANGUAGE ARTS

Communication and self-expression are the primary functions of language. The goal of the Preschool language arts curriculum is to build upon existing skills to create a community of active and interested communicators. Language skills involve reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Using these skills children enhance interpersonal relationships in the classroom. Teachers encourage children to practice expressive language skills like learning how to rhyme, singing songs, and reciting poems. Role-play and dramatizations of favorite books provide students with opportunities for successful communication and "book language."

Exposure to all aspects of language through print-rich environments and child centered, multi-sensory activities lay the foundation for future literacy readiness. Books are always available in the classroom library and teachers often read stories at the children's requests. Pre-writing opportunities are abundant as children engage in painting, drawing, digging, and sculpting. These activities strengthen the hand musculature that they will need for later writing tasks. Children interact with the alphabet through activities like matching, Bingo, letter scavenger hunts, puzzles, and magnetic letters. An explanation of children's work, transcribed by teachers, helps students to recognize the symbolic nature of print. Children often transition to making their own "words" by a scribble, stream of letters, or even inventive spelling. Children also practice stroke development and letter formation through drawing and tracing activities. Through literacy experiences children gain phonological processing skills, language skills, and pre-writing skills that will lead them to the writing and early reading they will practice in Prekindergarten.

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Preschool Objectives: Language Arts

Pre-Reading

• Become aware of letters

• Begin to recognize letters in own name

• Begin to understand the connection between print and the spoken word

• Enjoy looking at books and being read to

• Acquire book knowledge (front and back, left to right)

• Begin to acquire phonological processing skills (rhyming, word segmenting)

Pre-Writing

• Explore painting and drawing

• Attach meaning to scribbles

• Move toward using a developmentally appropriate grasp

• Begin to write letters

• Begin to write name

Language Skills

• Repeat parts of songs and finger-plays

• Retell stories

• Articulate with increasing clarity

• Participate in small and large group discussions
• Ask questions
• Begin to differentiate between comments and questions
• Follow 1-2 step directions
• Develop an understanding of information presented verbally
• Use developmentally appropriate grammar

A small group of children sit together during reading time. As they turn the pages of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, by Eric Carle, they become engaged with the rhyme, repetition, and illustrations in the book. As they continue to "read" one child suggests she will turn the pages while another states, "I'll read this to you." The students begin to note the relationship of colors to animals as they keep turning the pages together. By the end of the story they are simultaneously "reading" as more children join this small group of friends.

Noting their interest, the teacher decides to read the story to the entire class a few days later. With the use of several visual aides including a storyboard with Velcro characters, the teacher displays each character in front of the group. She turns each page, encouraging one child at a time to come forward and place the appropriate character on the storyboard. After the story, the children have a choice to make their own "Brown Bear" book. Each child illustrates one page and dictates words to the teacher. For example, one child described, "I see smiling friends looking at me." At the end of the week, the book is bound and displayed in the classroom library for each member of the class to enjoy.

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The foundation for the mathematics curriculum at the Preschool level is based on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards. This curriculum provides children with opportunities to explore, manipulate, and experiment with objects and materials. Mathematical content knowledge is centered on number sense and operations, patterns, geometry, measurement, logic, and collection of data. Children are encouraged to explore with manipulatives such as Cuisenaire rods, pattern blocks, Geo-boards, unit blocks, and scales. Through such explorations children develop spatial awareness, enhance logical thinking, and learn how to solve problems as they relate to everyday life. Children also learn that their peers may have similar or different ways to solve mathematical problems. Additional materials and lessons enhance Preschool students' understanding of mathematical concepts.

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• Identify basic shapes
• Sort and classify objects using one attribute
• Notice similarities and differences between objects
• Begin to create patterns
• Become aware of numerals
• Rote count from 1-10
• Begin to count with one-to-one correspondence
• Begin to understand that numerals represent amount
• Manipulate many kinds and quantities of objects
• Begin to compare amounts and label them more or less
• Work with geometric puzzles
• Begin to make logical groupings
• Begin to understand simple graphs

During morning activities, a child is immediately drawn to the block corner where he finds an assortment of wooden blocks. He works carefully to construct a building and an elevator, and then divides the interior into sections that appear to be rooms. As the teacher approaches and sits next to the child, she says, "Tell me what you're making?" "Oh, it's a house," he replies. "I noticed you used a rectangular shape for the outside," the teacher offers. "What are those blocks on the inside?" "Those are the rooms, and here are the stairs" he says as he points to each section. He then points to different spaces and begins to count, "one, two, three, four, five, six rooms!" "Wow, who lives in these rooms?" the teacher asks. "Well, it's for two whole families!" exclaims the child. "And that's the elevator from the top of the house to the bottom," he says as he shows her which direction the elevator travels.

As they continue the conversation, the teacher uses mathematical terminology to inquire about the house's height in comparison to other familiar buildings. Other children notice the house is getting larger and ask if they can help build. As the children continue to add blocks, their use of mathematical language becomes apparent. By the end of the activity time, several more houses have been built and one child announces, "It's a neighborhood!"

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Science is a natural process where children's curiosity leads them to explore, question, predict, and document their world. Through the processes of prediction, trial and error, and observation, children build the foundation for more complex learning in all areas of science. Specifically, classrooms are exposed to physical science, life science, earth science, and engineering.

Science is an active process of inquiry in which children make sense of their observations and explore answers to their hypotheses. Preschool teachers present science in structured and unstructured activities to facilitate active and appropriate exploration for all children. In this way, the unknown is quickly changed to known and accessible information.

Teachers integrate science across the curriculum. For example, a connection occurs as experimentation leads to drawing pictures of the steps that occurred and then writing a class journal. The children may write a poem or sing a song about their investigations. Classrooms may visit the library to check out a book on a relevant topic, or they may play a game in the gym which challenges their understanding of what they have learned about colors, numbers, shapes, or movement. Science is also approached globally as children study other environments as well as scientists from around the world.

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Physical Sciences

• Gather information using senses
• Identify objects by size, shape, and color
• Describe ways objects can move (zigzag, back and forth, straight line)
• Experiment with motion
• Explore properties of liquids and solids
• Begin to design and build structures with one or more dimension

Life Sciences

• Explore characteristics of organisms
• Understand the basic difference between living and non-living things
• Name basic parts of the body
• Care for living creatures

Earth Sciences

• Begin to notice seasonal cycles
• Care for the environment
• Become aware of different kinds of weather (sunny, cloudy, windy, rainy, snowy, hot, and cold)
• Compare natural cycles (day and night, sun and moon)

While taking a walk on an autumn day, the children are asked to collect fall treasures. They begin picking up pine needles, acorns, leaves, dried grass, and pieces of mulch. Placing the items into the teacher's basket, two children ask, "Can you take some pictures?" The teacher replies, "What would you like to remember?" One child says, "The gray sky." Another shouts, "Those squirrels over there. On the branch!" Finally, another child suggests, "How about the falling leaves?" The teacher takes a few photographs, gathers the basket of collections, and leads the children back to their classroom.

Sitting together, the children are asked to help sort the items they have just collected. While sorting, they are encouraged to notice a few things that are similar and different about each "treasure." For example, one child describes, "Look how spiky the pine-cone is!" While another child states, "The grass doesn't feel smooth like the really green grass I've seen before." The teacher suggests placing the items into categories. The children come up with words such as pointed, straight, curvy, and plain. The teacher labels the top of the posterboard with these words and draws four lines to separate each category. Each child is then given a piece of tape in order to attach one item to a piece of posterboard. A few children revisit the posterboard during choice time to draw pictures of their autumn treasures.

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Children are aware of and affected by human differences from an early age, and our community is based on respecting and appreciating the similarities and differences found within our school, neighborhoods, and throughout the world. This strong emphasis on anti-bias education promotes a sense of belonging for all students and builds a sense of connection between people. The goal of the anti-bias curriculum is to challenge the impact of bias on the students' social and intellectual development by helping them acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to live respectfully in a diverse community. While keeping the children's developmental level in mind, the anti-bas curriculum introduces children to challenging vocabulary, reflective topics, and brings abstract ideas into real practice. The curriculum builds upon itself, encouraging the students to move along a continuum from knowledge to understanding to tolerance to acceptance to respect and inclusion. Throughout all of their learning, the students are encouraged to develop and actively participate in lessons to end the cycle of bias. The anti-bias curriculum focuses on, but is not limited to, eight major areas of bias. These include racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, ageism, religious intolerance, and size discrimination. Through direct, pro-active instruction, as well as using everyday events within the classroom and the larger world, the curriculum is integrated into all aspects of the students' school experience. Monthly events, such as all-school assemblies are often springboards for further learning experiences. Above all, we are working to instill in the students a respect for themselves, their classmates, and their community, while providing each child with strategies for actively improving the social conditions of all of those around them.

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• Help children develop a sense of self-identity
• Participate in a caring community where sharing is highly valued
• Establish a feeling of openness, comfort, and safety in the classroom
• Help children feel comfortable with people from diverse backgrounds
  
• Be able to label and identify actions as fair and unfair
• Gain an understanding of the many differences in the world through literature, puzzles, pictures, and other daily classroom materials
• Discuss inclusion/exclusion based on race, gender, class, age, ability, and family structure
• Discuss gender identity while exploring and challenging traditional gender roles
• Identify differences and similarities of skin tone and describe own skin color
  
• Learn about scientific basis for skin color
• Identify differences and similarities of skin tone and describe own skin color
• Explore differences between concepts of want and need
• Recognize and identify different ages (infant, child, etc.)
• Recognize differences and similarities of age related abilities
• Recognize own personal abilities and limitations
• Recognize similarities and differences with regard to people's abilities
• Recognize that there are a variety of family structures
• Recognize that there are families that are similar to and/or different from one's own, but the common factor is that they all love each other
  

Several students are called over to the art center. They notice several bottles of paint, rectangular strips of paper, paintbrushes, and empty glass jars. A teacher asks the children to take a look at the bottles of paint and decide which color best matches their skin tone. As one child makes her choice, the teacher carefully places a dot of paint on that child's hand and asks if it is a good match. At first the child exclaims, "Yes," but after taking another look at the colors she suggests, "No, I think we should mix two different colors of paint." The teacher and the child mix the paint together and place a new dot of paint on the child's hand finding that it blends in just right with her skin tone. This new shade is placed into an empty jar, and the child is asked to use her skin tone paint to cover a rectangular strip of paper.

After the students have each created their skin tone and the strips of paper have dried, the children are asked to take their strips of paper and form each one into a circle. The teacher staples the circles together to make a paper chain of every skin tone in the class. The children take the chain to an all-school assembly and begin learning about the importance of Martin Luther King Day. Later in the week they begin to use their jars of paint to create self-portraits.

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