Weekday Preschool

Teachers organize and structure the environment to support specific educational goals. Children do not spend all day in structured activities and drill and practice. They do not sit at a table all day doing worksheets. Instead, each child will be provided a solid foundation for academics by emphasizing concepts and process, along with the active manipulation of relevant concrete materials and interactive experiences. Children need to get their hands on stuff and manipulate it themselves. They need to see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, hear it, and feel it. Children are motivated to learn by their desire to make sense of their world. For children to understand and remember what they have learned, it must be meaningful and interesting to them.

Open-ended activities foster creativity, risk taking, and trying out new ideas. Children must be allowed to be in control and to make choices. The teacher prepares the environment so it provides stimulating, challenging activities. They are constantly adding additional challenges to push children’s thinking.

We feel this is very important and is something we work on everyday. Children gain confidence and self esteem as they become more independent. Social emotional competencies such as sensitivity to the feelings of others, kindness, patience, and cooperation are achieved through interactions with other children, teachers, and the environment.

Cognitive development not only includes the three R’s—Reading, wRiting, aRithmatic—but helping children learn how to learn by solving problems, asking questions, and using words to describe their ideas, observations, and feelings.

This is the area that gets the most interest from an academic perspective, but the development of the other areas is just as important if not more important for young children. Once a child gets to Kindergarten and beyond, the cognitive area is basically the only area that is focused on in school. If they do not develop socially-emotionally, and physically in preschool or at home, school can be very difficult for a child no matter how smart they are.