For example, do you teach the letters? the sound? how to write them or just the letter? Sightwords? What else do they learn? The numbers up to which number? do they write them? etc. Thanks.
I teach our son - letters, numbers 1-25, phonetic sounds of all letters, how to write letters, numbers, and name, address and phone number. We don't get into sightwords but with phonetic teaching, those are just around the corner. We use the free preschool Bible curriculum at abcjesuslovesme. You can see the 4 year objectives there to see the rest of the curriculum covered.
Yes to everything above + We use a very advanced curriculumn, but I always try to incorporate FUN science, art, history units as well as painting activities. oh; numbers up to 100. And they only write 1-20. We also have reading groups around later in the year.
Yes we work on letters as a group numbers as a group Letter sounds letter names phonemic awareness (this is a huge part of our day) number awareness or sense writing letters, numbers, shapes, pictures, self portraits how to use glue how to use scissors how to work in an organized fashion how to be a friend to raise your hand to wait until it is your turn in the bathroom (you would be amazed) and how to begin to read by sounding out how to read sight words how to read names we have reading buddies later we have reading homework later to make children learn about homework and the families as well. history geography food tasting stories from other lands field trips lit genres and languages and a TON of science
that makes us sound so stuffy. we are an all day/every day program. So we are made out of time. We do all that in small shots and have time to play, build, glue, pretend, make friends, fight, make up, sleep, eat, cook, grow our food, observe nature and just hang out.
I think you all sound great and normal! We're the stuffy ones! hehe Building, playing, gluing, pretending, etc...all the fun and normal things that make us grow academically! In actuality, our curriculum is really very good, but I have had to add my own stuff...playdo, painting, outside play - not PE, etc..
Our focus is in teaching behavior and manners in school. We do all of the above things too. They need to learn to listen and behave before they can learn effectively.
I do a letter a week (recognition & sounds, though I don't assess sounds), a number or 2 a month (recognition and writing), handwriting practice (mostly through their weekly homework), fine motor, name writing, shape & color review (this is mostly hit in 3s though), character & Christian education...I'm probably too academic, though...however, coming from a kindergarten background & having taught in the school district where these kids are headed, I feel I have a right to be & the parents have never complained (and actually I've been praised up and down for their kindergarten readiness & their excitement about coming to preschool, so I guess until the complaints come, I'll keep on trucking!)
our 4s learn or continue learing letter recognition, upper and lower case, letter writing, sight words, concepts such as sme and diffferent, opposites, maching, working togehter in groups, simple social studies, science projects and activities, contnue to develop fine motor control, simple math , they count to 100 by 1s, 5, 10s, , number recognition toat least 20, they learn the letter sounds to---and it's alls upplemented with hands on things too
I completely agree. Just working on the lessons without time to interact, hang out, play and pretend so that they (and I) can learn how to interact with peers and others wouldn't make children nearly as well rounded for K. I firmly believe that the children should and can be aligned to K - but not at the expense of being a child
I think if I can't teach my kids the things they need to learn and let them have fun at the same time then I am not being an effective preschool teacher . . .so I make up lots of fun projects that they can learn through and they do learn new skills and hone old ones--they jsut don't even realize it most of the time when it's happening!
We have state guidelines that we follow in pre-k in Texas. The state guidelines have us teaching all letters, upper and lower, all letter sounds, sight words, and number recognition up to 30 as well as much, much more. Here is a link to the Texas Pre-K Guidelines that you may find helpful. The top link in green is to the guidelines, the second link in green is to the new companion site which is a must see with lots of videos showing exactly what the standards look like in action. I think our guidelines are similar to those in other states so you may want to google and see if your state has standards for pre-k as well, it's becomming much more common as many states move to UPK or VPK.
I teach K, but I know what they are working on in PreK and my son is there this year. They learn letters, sounds, and how to write them. They learn colors, shapes, numbers. They work on following directions, past and present, life cycles of frogs and butterflies, where we live, our family, community helpers, etc. Basically, the prek curriculum is the pared down version of the K curriculum. They do lots of things center and play based, but there is a lot of academics going on too.
thanks for your input, where I teach it´s only half day everyday. And basically we teach most of what was said except we do numbers up to 20 and we don´t write letters. My director is looking into maybe changing some things.
we have a handwriting notebook where we practice writing our names, draw the shapes, write the numbers, stuff like that. But we don´t write the letters we are learning nor do we trace them. During center time they can and some do practice writing. Some already know how to write their names just by copying it others are still in the proccess.
So they are occasionally touching pencils-that is what I wondered. I am sure they are doing fine. I love programs with something besides paperwork.
here's an example of not doing just paperwork--though paper was involved---- we are doing a unit on fire safety and today we learned about Stop! Drop! and Roll! . I had the kids take off their socks, shoes and long pants (underwear and shirts stayed on of course!). I then took a trash bag (one pre child) and cut a hole to go over the head. No arms tough. I laid out a long strip of rolled paper (the kind you cover tables with) and then I painted red yellow and orange paint all over the trash bag and had them Stop Drop and Roll on the paper! It helped them get a real idea of how rolling can "get the fire off you"-- they had a lot of fun and other than having to use the swifter mop after each child it wasn't even too big mess.--- we could have jsut done a worksheet or a cut and paste paper but I thought this would be more fun! AFter I hung them up in the hall way.
Wow, nice job. Paper isn't bad in and of itself, but stretching to use new ways to do things is always fun for me. Great job. I bet the children loved rolling in that paint.
they did love it and they were so entranced by the whole thing that they did a great job of waiting patiently for their turn---
