What academic skills/concepts are you working on with your preschooler?

Question

My daughter is 4 and won't be going into Kindergarten until the Fall of 2009. She loves to learn when we have our "school time" at home. What are you working on with your preschooler (or what would you suggest) working on academically (Not socially) for this age? Thanks for any ideas in advance!

Answer 1

It really depends on your child.  I started out with my child and his first name recognition and writing and moved to last name.  Of course colors, shapes, numbers (more than just counting), alphabet lower case and upper case.  

We worked with a lot of language activities... rhyming, beginning sounds, alliteration, playing with words, letter substitution, syllables (word chunks), opposites.

Numeracy/Mathematics:  number recognition, number writing, patterning, counting,

I provided a lot of art materials for creative art exploration and this gave way to an introduction of various vocabulary "lessons".

Now my child is 5 and he will be attending Kindergarten this fall.  Taking step by step he is now well into reading (this weekend he picked up the d**k and Jane "series" book that is out...they have the d**k and Jane stories in order and they progress with difficulty.  He whizzed through the first 70 pages.)  We've been working with simple addition and subtraction (and he often tells me many different ways to make a certain number)...we've progressed to other geometric shapes such as cube, sphere, cone, etc.  We are beginning fractions, he's doing great with time telling and we are working with money/change.  We are a good way onto skip counting by 2s, 5, 10s up to one hundred.  He's learning sign language and a bit of Spanish.   There is a great many things you can do!  Good luck!

Answer 2

Name recognition is a must. Write her name everywhere at home. Scissor work, holding them correctly, and don't do it for her. we usually want our children's work to look perfect, but it is absolutely necessary for her to develop the ability to do it all herself. Learning to hold a pencil/crayon properly. Following 2 or more oral instructions not related to each other eg. put away the blocks and get your socks on. There is  web site that lists skills for each age. it is familyeducation.com. It was helpful to me.

Answer 3

My daughter is 4 going on five in Oct. and was not supposed to go to kindergarten until 2009 but I found a private school to take her. She is extremely smart and I want to keep her excited about learning.

She goes to a half day pre-school and is learning her Bible stories there. She also does handwriting, basic science, and of course socialization.

At home we work on handwriting, recognizing sight words, blending words (CVC words). I have been making handwriting sheets with her name, address, and phone number so she could learn these. She has learned how to zip her coats and button pants and shirts. We will be working on tying shoes this summer but will try to keep velcro sneakers until she has mastered tying.

We also do fun stuff so she looks forward to learning, like after looking at Child's Book of Art with work from the masters I will say okay we looked at pictures of families today lets make a portrait of your family, or after reading a book about the weather we will either look up weather info online or make a weather chart. Whenever she asks a question we look it up together. This one is funny, she has an older cousin who knows a cheer where it mentions Elvis Presley. My daughter kept mispronoucing the name so I took her over to the computer and we looked him up, listened to his song, now she tells everyone that he is the King of Rock and Roll, in case they didn't know that!

The point is, when teaching at home and at this age, it has to be fun and upbeat or they get tired of it and it becomes a power struggle. Good luck!

Answer 4

My son will turn 4 in June and does go to a preschool for half a day mostly for social purposes. For academics i trust on what i teach him at home. I do the following activities with him:

4-5 letter spellings

Maths(Addition and Substraction)

Counting upto 100

Read encyclopedia and learn facts

Geography(Studying maps, flags, currencies)

He speaks 3 languages and in now learning french

Takes Piano lesson once a week

Read lots of story books promoting more to recognise simple words and read on his own.

Write alphabets

Draw and color whatever he wants

Hope that helps

Rgds

Deepali

www.momadewizkids.com

Answer 5

Shannon has the right idea, plus teach them to put on their own coats and button/zip their own pants.  Learn to take care of bathroom needs.  Thank you from a preschool director who knows!