Preschool Education

These are general articles about teaching preschool children.

Let Your Preschoolers Help

Children love to help. It’s in their nature to please and helping with the daily tasks is one way they can show you that. There are things that a preschooler is just too young to try and accomplish, but there are many things a preschooler can do to help.

One way is to allow them to help you pick up. Preschool rooms can become rather messy by the end of the day. Books, papers, toys and even trash can litter the room before you know it. Most of us wait until the children are gone and then go through the room to make sure it is ready for the next day. This doesn’t have to be the norm in your preschool room. If you assign the children chores to do they can help you make that room sparkle before they ever walk out the door.

A good way to do this and still maintain some composure with your class is to assign duties to each child. One might pickup any books that are lying out. One may be responsible to place the toys back in the designated toy area. Just be sure that responsibilities aren’t too difficult and that they can be accomplished easily. Preschoolers have a tendency to wander if things become too difficult for them so try and make the chores they do as easy as possible.

If you have more children than chores, then rotate the chores. Assign certain children to certain chores on Monday then on Tuesday have a different set of children do the chores. Continue in this manner until all the children have had time to help then go back to the beginning and start again.

Giving children even preschoolers some responsibility to take care of not only their items but the entire classrooms items can begin to teach them a sense of responsibility. It is a way for them to show you they care and a way for you teach them that you care. You might be surprised at how well they do when trying to pass this test.

Help with Cleaning the Floors

Boy can a floor become dirty fast in a preschool room. Kids are in and out, have mud and dirt on their shoes and carry it all over a room covering the floors. Sweeping those floors can sometimes be a full time job. Why not let the kids help you get those floors clean?

Go to the dollar store and buy 3 or 4 toy brooms and dustpans. You can also find toy dust mops at this type of store. It never hurts to have a couple of those around too. Head out to some yard sales and see if you can find a couple of those small hand held vacuums. Many of these are battery operated. Sometimes you can even find them at the department stores for as little as $10. They don’t have to be fancy just easy for the children to handle.

If your floor is hard wood or tile start with 3 to 4 children using the brooms. Have them go around the outside of the floor and sweep the dirt into a pile at the end of their side of the room. Make sure they get into the corners well. Once that is done then help them with the dust pan and show them how to empty their dirt in the trash.

Next have the other children help to move things out of the way. Everything can now be pushed to the outside walls so the children can sweep all the dirt to the middle of the area. Have them start on their side of the room and sweep to the middle of the room. This will contain all the dirt in one area right in the middle of the room. Again help them to sweep their dirt into the dust pan to be emptied.

If you have carpet have the children do the same thing only with the vacuum. Make sure they hit the corners well and along the baseboards. Again have the other children help move everything to the outside walls so they can vacuum the middle of the floor as well.

Be sure to help them empty their vacuums when they are finished. Showing them how to take care of their vacuum is just as important as cleaning the floors. Once the floors are swept let the children help move items back to where they belong. Also be sure the children with the brooms, dust pans or vacuums put these items back in their proper places.

Teaching children how to care for their own space is important. They will learn a sense of responsibility along with pride because they did themselves. Let them help it will be a great time for everyone and less stress for you.

Dusting Can Be a Fun Job

There are probably numerous items in your preschool room that need to be dusted almost every day. Books, tables, chairs, and so on can get pretty dusty when you have a bunch of children running around. Let the kids clean up that dust. They can have a lot of fun while learning to be responsible for their surroundings.

Go to the dollar store and purchase a couple of feather dusters. Be sure one has a short handle for the lower places and one has a longer handle to get up high. Go through your sock draw and look for socks that have one missing. Better yet ask the kids to bring an old sock from home. Make faces on the socks with a permanent marker. These make great dusting clothes for children.

Assign each child an area to dust. Show them how to use the sock puppets as dusting clothes. Place it on their hand and show them how to move their hands to remove the dust. Give them a lesson using those feather dusters. Using those on books in a book shelf and along the walls can be great fun for children.

If you use a dusting spray be sure you are the one doing the spraying. Talk to the children about being careful when using these types of products. Let them know it is not a toy and that it is important to use these correctly.

Kids love to help and with a little imagination you can make things such as dusting fun for a child. Let them be responsible to make sure their area is clean and ready for the next day. Before you know it they will be cleaning and picking up without even having to be asked. What a great help to you and what sense of pride you have instilled in them that will last a lifetime.

A Memory Game for Any Subject

The Memory game is a fun way to help preschoolers learn. You don’t have to go out and buy the actual game. Make them up yourself. It’s pretty easy to do and when you watch the children play and have fun while learning it can be pretty fun for you also.

Making a memory game doesn’t take a lot of hard work or money. Use a large piece of white poster board. Cut out cards of equal size and always have an even number of cards. You can be fancy with the cut edges if you like or you can just cut them straight across like an actual card.

Find stickers that are about the things you are trying to teach the children. For instance you may want to teach the children about different animals. Find stickers that match up to the animals you are teaching about. Remember there needs to be duplicate cards for each item. Any item will work as long as you can find stickers to match. If you want to do numbers, letters or even words you can use a marker to print them on the cards.

To play the game you place all the cards face down. The first child turns a card over and then tries to find its match in the other cards. If they find the match they go again if not play moves on to the next child. Play continues until all the cards are matched together. When a child finds a match have them call out what they matched. Then talk to the kids about that match. Help them to remember what it is and what it’s all about.

This is a great game to help teach children about many different things. Making the game is easy and the children will have hours of fun playing. They won’t even realize they are learning.

Versatile Musical Chairs

Do you remember playing musical chairs when you were a child? It was great fun to try and beat the other kids out of a chair. Listening to the music was a lot of fun also. Musical chairs has become a very versatile game. With the music that is available today you can adapt this game to fit just about any purpose. Teaching is one of those ways.

The music of course, is the focal point when it comes to musical chairs. There are so many different songs that can help teach a child today. Kids like to listen to music and especially music they can pick up on and sing themselves.

Playing games can be a great way to help with teaching a younger child. It gets them involved without them realizing they are really learning. It keeps them active, plus the repetition helps to enforce their learning skills.

Try playing musical chairs to help your preschoolers learn the alphabet. If you go to a toy store you can find cassettes that are filled with kid’s songs. Find one that is catchy or that matches up with a television program or movie that all the kids are into. The alphabet is not the only thing you can teach children while playing this game but it’s a good place to start.

Once you have the tape with a catchy song play it a few times in your classroom before you play the game. It will stick in their heads and before you know they will be singing along with it. Now it’s time to play the game. Do you remember how?

Place the chairs in a circle with the kids in the middle. Remember to leave out one chair. Start the music. Listen as the kids sing along while moving in a circle in front of the chairs. See they caught on and are saying their ABC’s without even being prompted. Now stop the music and see which child is left standing. That child is eliminated from the game and another chair is removed. Play continues on until there is only one child left.

Kids really have a lot of fun with this game and it’s a great way to help teach your preschoolers things they need to learn before heading off to school. Find different tapes about many different subjects and before you know it they will be singing and learning and having a great time.