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Parenting Articles
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Preschool Printables &
Templates
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Preschool Activities & Lesson Ideas
By Letter:
Aa
Bb
Cc
Dd
Ee
By Theme:
Apples / Johnny
Appleseed
(My)
Body & Me
Camping
Colors
Dogs
Experiments
Friendship
Good Manners
Library Appreciation
Patriotism
Product Reviews
Link Buddies
Learn more by reading Mommy
Nature's
Preschool Philosophy
and learning about Mommy Nature's
Preschool Curriculum
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Emmalisse and Sawyer enjoying a stimulating
game of
sharing and sorting the shapes - meanwhile learning the
social skills of sharing & communicating, math skills of
shape & color matching and language development - to name a few!
”But all these children are doing is
playing! I want my child to learn something!”
Many an early childhood teacher has cringed while hearing a parent express
that thought. Through training and
experience, effective teachers learn to value organized playtime as an avenue to
learning. Just as an infant doesn’t
learn to crawl or talk during a structured class, but through encouragement
from a loving caregiver and sheer determination, he or she will typically
advance through the skills of toddlerhood and his preschool years in much
the same manner.
For instance,
~While building a block structure, your child learns about size
relationships, gravity, and one-to-one correspondence among other things.
~Coloring and play dough develop the fine-motor muscles of the hand and
fingers, hand-eye coordination and introduces colors, textures, etc.
~Role playing in the dress up or home center helps a child understand others’
roles and relationships in their world and builds social skills.
Our society has gotten so used to the teacher’s convenient use of worksheets,
we have forgotten that most of a child’s learning should come from real-world
experiences. A worksheet is too
abstract for the young child to gain
true knowledge, other than practice at fine-motor skills and writing.
Consider how you’d rather learn
about your world, by reading a sentence and writing the answer to a question,
or exploring it through hands-on activities and interactive experiments while
keeping records in a journal, if needed.
While there is a place for worksheets, it should not be the main way
in which young children are taught and I strive to help parents learn more
exciting methods for the majority of their children’s learning. So, if there is an effective and more
exciting method (for child and
parent) to learn a skill, give it a try and keep the fun in learning.
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