Planning a preschool study
School is a fluid concept right now at our house. How much schooling does a 4 year old need? How much structure is appropriate? How do you facilitate independent play? Do letters and numbers matter yet? And so on and so forth. I am sure that some of you have already formed some view on this topic, but I waver back and forth between “let the child play,” we need some structure, and it’s hard not to compare my child with children around her.
For us, planning out a theme to our week helps set some structure and direction. This is good both for me and for my daughter. At times when I don’t know what to do with the day, having a theme helps me put together activities. It helps me pull out toys that relate to our theme and bookshelf rotation for our school area. My daughter loves to learn and she appreciates structure and having a short circle time a few mornings a week. Having a theme gives us a way to explore something together and chase her questions about it.
Picking a theme
For a theme, I usually look for something that my girls are interested in (We did an arctic study and I pulled activities from Frozen) or just something that I think they would have fun exploring or is relevant to our week (i.e., USA Birthday theme for the week of 4th of July). I also try and structure my theme into sub-categories if it is going to be a multi-week study. So for our space study, we spent one week each on astronauts, planets, the moon, and stars.
Picking activities and tools
Activities - Age appropriate activities can be fun ways for your kids to explore a topic. These can be demonstrations, crafts, games, sensory activities, etc.
Songs - Songs can help drive home learning objectives in a way that is fun and engaging. We love to listen to songs and use visual props, shakers, or scarves for dancing as a way to learn information and at the same time make it fun and silly.
Books - I visit the library to see what books they have that relate to our topic. Then I also usually order a book or two. Sometimes, I use the way that a book organizes information to help structure our study.
Before we start a theme, I usually try to compile a list of potential activities we could do before starting. Then we usually end up doing only about about half of them. I love perusing Pinterest looking for activities we could do. Sometimes I follow the activity verbatim, sometimes I modify it based on what supplies we have, and sometimes, I take an activity that is not on theme, and adapt it so we can use the learning concept to apply to our topic.
I generally try to pick activities that include one or more of these features:
Language & Letters - Games that incorporate letter recognition, labeling, letter matching, upper-case lower-case matching, etc. Using songs that rhyme or games that help them find the letters of their name help with early reading skills too.
Math & Numbers - Games that use number recognition, counting, adding, etc. Recognizing or building patterns, matching, or sorting do not require numbers, but still exercise the math portion of the brain.
Music - Music is a great way to engage a person on so many levels. Songs offer so much for a child’s development: physically when you move to music, emotionally , intellectually the rhythm stimulates the math part of the brain, lyrics exercise our language and literacy portion of the brain. Music engages the brain and body in so many ways!
Fine motor - Activities that use smaller manipulations such as pinching, drawing, cutting, or kneading are skills that strengthen muscles that build coordination. These help their ability to do some of the “finer” operations in life, such as buttoning a shirt, opening a package, or writing.
Creating - Arts, crafts, and building offer so many great benefits. Having open ended invitations to create (using Play-dough or drawing on a cardboard box for example) or build (something like blocks) help children develop their own creativity and imagination. Accomplishing a task on their own builds confidence and self-esteem. Trying things like mixing different paints to observe what will happen is part of science. Following simple instructions to make something like cookies or to build a DIY instrument are fun ways to develop focus skills and self-regulation skills that are important for more serious tasks later on in life.
Sensory - Touching, seeing, hearing, smelling, and tasting new things exercises the brain and causes it to make new neuronal connections. It is also a great way to learn new vocabulary when they are experiencing things that are slimy, rough, shiny, cold, etc. Baking, snacks, crafting with different materials, getting outside, and using sensory bins are all great ways for kids to encounter new experiences.
Gross motor - Having a range of motion is important for a child to strengthen muscles and gain coordination, but also helps with their brain development too. Things like yoga, dancing, acting, hopping, running, climbing, swinging, rolling, etc. can all be fun to incorporate into a themed activity.
Science - Activities where you make observations, make a prediction, test that prediction by making another observation, and summarize what happened are great science practice. It doesn’t have to be a science fair project, but just pausing to talk and ask kids what they think will happen before beginning a new demonstration or activity can give them a chance to form their own ideas and test them.
Dramatic play - Using props and pretending that they are part of something is a way for kids to immerse themselves in what they are learning. A lot of times, I create props that relate to our theme that the kids can use or we make some together using their own imaginations with (this pairs nicely with crafts). When we were learning about space, I made a telescope out of a Pringles can taped to a tripod so we could look for constellations and pretend to find planets in our house. When we were learning about farms, we made farmer hats, cardboard box tractors, and used brooms to pretend we were riding horses. Then they are available during free-play to use and connect with what we are learning about.
Field trips - Before beginning a theme, I try to identify places in our community that relate to our topic. For the space study, we went to an observatory where we could look at planets in their powerful telescope. For our arctic study, we went to see the penguins and arctic animals at our local aquarium. If there’s some way to learn from being immersed in a topic, then that is always better than talking about it or showing pictures.
Having these topics in mind helps me make sure that I spread our activities to round out different skills we could be building from a study. We do not always do themed activities everyday so that they are something that enriches our schedule not restricts our schedule. Sometimes, we don’t get to all the categories and that is ok too. I would rather my kids explore and have fun with a topic than be forced into something that is going to cause frustration.
We use a circle time to facilitate some of the themed topics or activities. Other times, I set up an activity for the kids to do if they want. For circle time, we usually pick a song or book, a learning objective that we talk about for about 5 minutes and a craft, sensory activity, gross motor activity, demonstration, or math or language learning activity that incorporates our learning objective. So for our farm-themed the learning objective, “Sheep provide wool to make material,” we played with yarn and decorated sheep. For our learning objective, “Sounds make waves,” we made a cup and string toy. We shook the string to make waves you could see then talked to each other through the cup and talked about how those are sound waves.
Organizing these activities helps facilitate my children’s development, but it is also important for me as a parent. It gives me a stimulating direction and allows me to have creative ways to offer learning activities to my children. Sometimes, I am more excited about an activity than my girls are. Overall, my kids may not remember the learning objective that “there are 3 main ways that rocks are formed”, but having activities where we make three different types of rock crafts sure does make the week more fun. Ultimately, these themes give me direction and ideas for our days and hopefully make things new and exciting for my girls too.