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Preschool Curriculum

The preschool curriculum themes concentrate in many areas essential for early childhood education. Activity centers set up by parents and teachers help children learn through playing to develop the skills that will be necessary as they prepare for 'big kid school'. The lessons set up in art, cooking, science and perceptual motor skills follow a development progression so that each month children have new experiences that build on the skills they have mastered. Children are encouraged to explore and try new things, and while they may not realize it, they are learning amazing things while they play.

For a month by month description of the preschool curriculum, click here (22 kb pdf)

Daily centers include:

Literacy Center/Book Corner
Science Activity
Imaginative Play
Art Activity
Cooking Snack

Science Activity
Manipulatives
Play Dough
Planned Motor
Sensory Activity

Preschool at Mulberry is all about presenting opportunities for children. Play is how children learn, and the more activities they are exposed to, the greater their exploration and discovery will be. As preschoolers experience new things, their self-confidence solidifies, their curiosity is stimulated, and their skills grow along with their bodies and brains. It might look like they're just playing and having fun, but they're practicing important social-emotional skills, stimulating brain development and acquiring important language, motor and cognitive abilities that will help prepare them as they continue on their journey of life-long learning.

Art

2 and 3-dimensional
collage and mosaics
carving and sculpting

printing and stamping
weaving and pattern-making

Children can master two-dimensional artwork with markers and crayons, but when they begin creating with scissors, glue and paste, they begin to realize three-dimensional concepts like texture, depth and spatial relation. They begin to use and understand words like 'next to' or 'underneath'. They build fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.

Child Drawing As they progress, they can explore using different materials, enhancing their tactile experience as well as adding new vocabulary like 'rough' or 'squishy'. The next step further builds fine motor and cognitive skills when they learn how to trace, recognize and build patterns, and begin to add comments or stories to their artwork. Working with sculpture and structure allows children to build visual perception (especially depth perception) and visual planning skills.

By February, art activities include printing and stamping, letting children create an original work and reproduce something that already exists. When they begin experimenting with string, yarn and weaving, they practice using fine motor coordination required to work with two different materials at the same time. They also build visual and mathematical skills as they create and discover patterns.

Research shows that multi-sensory stimulation is necessary for optimal language development, and by the end of the year, they have experienced a wide variety of textures, colors, sounds, smells and activities. The more experiences a child has, the better that child will be at interpreting, processing and integrating information and that ultimately makes it easier for that child to appropriately respond to his environment.

Cooking

hand-eye coordination
multi-step picture recipes
kneading and rolling
measuring and mixing

rolling and cutting
observing liquids and solids
peeling, cracking, and juicing

As children squeeze, pour and wrap, they practice lots of critical small-motor and hand-eye coordination tasks. They begin to follow several-step recipes and picture recipes are set up from left to right as a precursor to reading actual print one day.

Cooking Activity Next are activities in kneading and rolling dough with two hands. This develops bilateral integration, the ability for the two sides of the body to communicate and work together. When they use a rolling pin, they work on integrating the vertical midline- the imaginary line that separates the left and right sides of the body (a skill that won't fully develop until 5 or 6 years).

Another key skill learned by cooking is measuring along with mixing, stirring and shaking. Helping children with measuring and counting by following a recipe are important pre-math and pre-reading skills. Children learn both language and motor skills as they differentiate between mixing, stirring by hand, shaking and other means of combining ingredients.

By January the children are practicing mixing foods with an eggbeater, another two-handed skill that encourages bilateral integration. They develop hand and arm coordination and strength as they use the tools. They also begin to cook what they've mixed, adding more science experiences as they observe how heat changes things. More rolling pin activities, coupled with using cookie cutters, strengthens the motor and cognitive skills that preschoolers are developing. Practice at crossing the midline with the rolling pin is essential in the development of fine motor skills. In using cookie cutters to cut shapes, children figure out how to make the cutter fit the material, then use the dominant hand with the support of the other hand to make the cut.

More tools are added to the child's cooking repertoire when cutting, chopping, and peeling with a scraper are introduced. It's amazing to watch children experience the difference between cutting bread, onions, apples, carrots or cooked chicken. Peeling with their fingers, as well as cracking and juicing help build the fine motor skills that they'll need in and out of school as they grow. There is great cognitive learning as they explore the insides and outsides of things. Children can predict what they'll find, discuss the purposes the outside serves, whether we eat the outside, inside or both, which part is harder, softer, smoothers, wetter, more solid, more liquid and so on.

By the end of the school year, preschoolers will use all the skills they've worked on to follow more complicated recipes and projects. What they learn are more than just cooking skills; they've also strengthened their math, science, language, perception, reasoning, coordination and confidence skills.

Science

classification, observation and prediction
body and sensory awareness
food and nutrition
plant life and animal life cycle

earth and space
oceans marine life
air and water transportation

Science is all around the preschool. Children examine themselves and how their bodies work, practicing observation skills and stimulating their sensory systems. Learning about hard bones, hearts beating, stomachs growling and breathing helps children differentiate between humans and animals. Another component is caring for our bodies with good nutrition.

The next unit about life in the ocean helps children recognize the diversity of ecosystems on the planet. Water life is very different from life on land, and we include concepts like plants vs. animals and adaptations to environments. We often use traveling exhibits to supplement the curriculum, as well as smelly seaweed gathered from the beach during a family outing.

Science Hands-on experiments about light come next, as preschoolers observe how light and water make a rainbow, the relationship between light and color, shadows and light and the sun's influence on plants' growth and color. The next building block includes observations, predictions and exploration of the natural world and forces of electricity, magnetism, gravity, momentum, inertia and chemical bonding.

Science with preschoolers isn't about learning the right answers, but about learning to observe, consider hypothesize and test. As children play with ramps, pendulums, water bottles, magnets, and chemical combinations, they learn by experimenting, just like all scientists.

There is also space exploration in January, including researching planets and our solar system and finding the similarities, differences and where they fit in a larger framework than just planet Earth. Preschoolers come back down to earth to learn about plant life. They practice observation skills, learn a little about scientific method and consider the interdependence of organisms as they explore plant life and life cycles, including growing plants in different conditions and noticing the different plant parts and how each serves the plant and may serve people and animals too.

Children are more excited and active learners when the learning is relevant to their own interests, and preschoolers seem universally fascinated by dinosaurs--how and where they lived, how big they were and how the earth has changed since they disappeared. Learning about animals and their life cycles is the next science unit for preschoolers. They observe the differences and similarities between plants and animals, and consider how animals live, grow, change and die. As they compare this with their own growth, children learn to appreciate the variety and wonder of life on our planet and a sense of their responsibility as humans. We also encourage their healthy curiosity about death as a natural part of life. They boost their self-esteem when we help them connect the forces of nature with how we can help preserve the environment.

We end the year by exploring water and air. Theories about whether objects will sink or float, absorb or repel water, dissolve or remain intact sharpen preschoolers' ability to think and speculate. To learn concepts and understand how the world works, kids need lots of room to dump, pour, splash, fill, empty and just play. Air is interesting for preschoolers because it can't really be seen or held onto. We can help them consider how air takes up space, that we can see and feel the results of the absence or presence or movement of air. By observing what happens when a flame "uses up" oxygen in a jar, what happens to a balloon when we inflate it or let it go, what the wind can do, how a sail works, and what bubbles do in water all help strengthen our young scientists' desire to explore, question and experiment.

Perceptual Motor

body stability and coordination
crawling and creeping
balancing and rocking
climbing and tumbling

jumping and hopping
throwing balls and beanbags
spinning and turning activities

Perceptual motor learning is vital to the growth of healthy children as well as stimulating the development of language, cognitive and other physical abilities that are essential building blocks for success in school.

The first motor learning includes body stability, including moving or not moving bodies, coordinating the two sides of our bodies and processing messages about distance and depth perception. Crawling and creeping close to the ground let children experience, process and interpret different touch sensations than moving upright. Working on balance isn't just important when you're standing on one foot; a well-developed balance system enables children to spend less energy maintaining stability and more to the task at hand. Children instinctively seek to stimulate their balance system by spinning, hanging upside-down, rocking and swinging. These are serious growth and development experiences for healthy children.

Kid After practicing balancing skills, children benefit in upper-body strength, spatial awareness and motor planning by climbing and working with ladders. Learning where their bodies are in relation to the ground, the bar they reach for, the rungs they step up or down onto are vital skills that children will need to sit up and use our hands and arms.

After climbing ladders, we continue to build upper body strength by hanging, wheelbarrow walking, rope climbing, swinging, pulling, throwing, pushing, and carrying. Scooter boards are an excellent upper body tool, and children ride on tummies, knees or bottoms while using their arms to balance, pull or push.

Preschoolers continue to work large muscle groups by tumbling and stretching on mats, working arms, legs and trunks in specific ways in coordination with other body parts. They gain balance, body awareness and motor planning skills as they move their bodies towards a goal, along a line, into a new position.

By spring, preschoolers are working on their coordination in their feet and legs and moving their whole bodies through space. Jumping and hopping require the ability to start the movement, respond to the body awareness messages sent by the brain to the joints to maintain balance and stability as the movement ends. Hopping is an even more sophisticated skill, requiring the balance ability to make corrections and maintain stability when the bodies' center of gravity has moved and only one foot is available to do it all. This is all part of learning to make one's whole body move fluidly, with upper and lower body, right and left sides working together.

Foot-eye coordination is built as children practice jumping over a rope, or jumping from hoop to hoop, allowing for the proper distance. Motor planning is the ability to anticipate what movements will be necessary to achieve a goal, and then makes them happen. A child with good motor planning skills is not distracted from tasks when several movements in succession will be required.

By April, preschoolers begin working at throwing balls, beanbags, kooshballs or badminton birdies to build arm strength, hand-eye coordination, eye tracking ability and balance. Watch as children progress from needing to let the thrown object hit them before they can respond to it to using their visual signals to predict and their motor planning skills to figure out what to do just as the ball gets there. These abilities may seem like simple play, but they allow physical competence as well as social, emotional and cognitive competence. When physical tasks are accomplished "automatically", the child's brainpower is free for use on other tasks.

By the end of the year, preschoolers are working hard at crossing the vertical midline of their bodies. They learn early how to make the top and bottom of their bodies work together, reaching from their head to their toes. Crossing over the vertical midline and using the right and left sides of their bodies together is an essential developmental skill.

Developmental readiness and the opportunity for practice are the keys to all motor development, and the more practice children have with midline work in the preschool years, the easier they will master the abilities when they are ready. Integrated midline is important as children enter school and learn to read and write.