If your kid is gearing up for preschool, never fear! We have great tips to help you prepare them for the school days to come.

With summer winding down and fall in sight, the reality that your child will be starting preschool may be sinking in. Much of preschool involves play and loads of fun, but arming your child with early academic foundations—in an engaging and enjoyable manner—can help set her up for preschool success. Try some of the ideas below.

Sorting Objects
Sorting objects is an important skill that will be tackled in preschool, so prepare your child with some sorting activities that you can practice at home. Purchase a bag of multi-colored buttons, pom poms, or paper clips, and set out a six-cup muffin tray. Explain to your child that together you will practice putting all of the same color object into a single muffin cup. Make sure you model a few first. You should start by putting all the yellow buttons in one cup, blue ones in another, green in a third, and so forth. Then have her practice sorting on her own and praise her when she has successfully sorted all of the objects. Of course, as a bonus, this activity will reinforce color recognition, so you may want to review colors if need be before beginning this exercise.

Counting and Number Recognition
Counting and number recognition are also important early-learning skills. Strengthen these skills by integrating counting exercises into your everyday life. For instance, if you are at the supermarket, ask your child to count the number of apples or oranges as you put them into a plastic bag. When you remove items from your shopping cart and load them onto the checkout belt, have your child count each one to work on one-to-one correspondence. He can count the number of clothing items you put in the washing machine, papers you need to complete for work, keys you have on your key ring, and so on. To add some number recognition practice, try playing a “game” where you label individual cups 1-10, with one number on each cup. Ask him to go around your house and find one item to put in the “1” cup, two items to put in the “2” cup, and so on. The more fun and engaging you can make these activities, the better!

Letter Recognition
While your child will likely learn more about letters once the school year begins, you can give her a prelude with some fun letter recognition games. Purchase a bag of plastic or foam letters and put them in a bowl. Write out the alphabet on a sheet of construction paper, then point to a letter and ask your child to “scoop up” that letter using a ladle or spoon. You can also try using chocolates for another fun letter game. To play this game, write two sets of single letters on small white stickers (two A’s, two B’s, etc), then attach them to the bottom of Hershey Kisses or other chocolates. Together, you can play a game of Memory. First you flip over one chocolate and identify the letter, then flip over another chocolate and try to find the letter match. Your child goes next, then you, and so on. The first player to find the most letter matches wins!

Problem-solving
Problem-solving is a skill that will continue to play a role throughout your child’s academic career, so it’s helpful to start building this skill at a young age with some fun activities. Try playing “Guess the Item” with your child, where you give her a set of clues and she needs to try to identify the object. For instance, you might say, “I’m thinking of something that’s furry and has four legs and a tail,” and ask her to guess the object (dog) or “I’m thinking of something that’s long and thin, has an eraser at the top, and as a point at the end” and ask her to guess the object (pencil). If she struggles to guess the object, give her clues: For example, “you can write with it or sharpen it” for a pencil, or “it often wags its tail or drinks water out of a bowl” for dog.

Following Directions
Your child will need to follow a lot of directions once he starts preschool so try some exercises at home to improve this skill. You can play the traditional “Red Light, Green Light” game with your child, but with an added twist. Like the classic game, green means go and red means stop, but try throwing in some additional colors for added following directions practice. For instance, you may tell him that blue means bark like a dog, white means scratch his head, and pink means hop on one leg. Throwing in some of these other colors as directives will teach him to listen carefully and follow the directions appropriately. Simon Says is another fun game you can play to build this skill. Your child must listen to the “commands” and follow the directions accordingly.

With preschool around the corner, your child is about to endeavor on an exciting academic journey. Teach her some key skills before the school year begins to help make the transition to school smooth, engaging, ‎and successful.‎

The post Skills To Develop Before Starting Preschool appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Understanding the differences between academic and play-based preschool philosophies can help you choose the right program for your child

Over the past ten years, enrollment in preschool programs has increased significantly. Parents yearn to enrich their child’s social, emotional, and early learning skills while effectively preparing them for Kindergarten. Yet choosing the right program for your child can be a challenging task. Each preschool seems to embody a different philosophy–some are play-based, while others emphasize more of a structured, academic approach. Both philosophies have pros and cons, and understanding their key components can help you choose the right program for your child.

Play-Based Preschools
Play-based preschools emphasize developing social and emotional skills over structured academics. Classrooms are typically set up with various stations–a water table, block area, reading section, play house, sensory table, dramatic play area, and so on, and children choose their own activities based on their interests. If a child loves building, for instance, he can venture towards the block section. If she loves dressing up and acting out scenes, she can meander over to the dramatic play area, and if he loves cooking and preparing meals, he can play in the kitchen area. Rather than providing direct instruction, the teacher acts as a facilitator, modeling effective social skills and observing children as they play.  Teachers may infuse academic principals through various themes, without actually teaching specific lessons in a structured format. Play-based preschool supporters argue that play is the modality with which young children learn best, and that children who learn to self-regulate, achieved through play, are more likely to be successful in life.

Sample Play-Based Lesson: Various play-based curricula exist, emphasizing children’s social and emotional development.  One such program is Tools of the Mind, which integrates self-regulation as a major component of its instruction, among other skills. ‎With this curriculum, children may engage in a “twist” on the Freeze Dance game. To play, music is turned on and children dance in pairs, in all different directions–left, right, on the floor, or in the air. When the music stops, the teacher holds up a poster containing stick figures and the children stop dancing. With their partner, they must try to copy the figure on the poster. As children play this game, they learn to self-regulate and control their body motions, which are important skills for future success.

Academic-Based Preschools
Many parents fret about their children being aacademically prepared for Kindergarten, particularly with the recent academic “push down.” Kindergarteners are now expected to learn the same material in many schools that first graders once did. Parents who want their children to begin building their academic foundations early-on and whose children respond well to structure may choose a preschool that embodies a more traditional, teacher-directed approach.

In these types of academically-oriented classrooms, days are ‎more structured and predictable. Students follow a set of lessons and activities that are prepared by the teacher, which are typically focused on a specific topic or theme. In this environment, instruction is guided by the teacher, and children typically learn letters, sounds, shapes, numbers, and colors, while also developing their phonemic awareness and handwriting skills.

Sample Academic Lesson:In a traditional preschool classroom, a teacher may conduct a specific lesson on phonemic awareness–or the ability to hear, recognize, and manipulate sounds in words. In doing so, she may explain a given concept, such as rhyming, and go around the room asking the children to come up with a word that rhymes with cat, dog, tree, and so on. She may also ask the children for the first sound they hear in the word cat, pig, or fish; the last sound they hear in bed, cup, or car; or how many words they hear in a given sentence. Developing such phonemic awareness skills can build a foundation for reading success.

In fact, two studies were conducted which identified preschool predictors of elementary reading success. ‎They assessed pre-reading skills in preschool-age children and followed these children into elementary school. The studies found that specific pre-reading skills, including phonemic awaress (such as rhyming and identifying sounds in words), knowledge of print (including letter names), and writing (writing a child’s own name) were strong predictors of reading achievement in elementary school. Thus, there is proven value in teaching these pre-reading skills in preschool classrooms.

What To Do?
All of this information can be downright confusing. Most parents aim to find the right preschool environment that will stage their child for future success.  But how do you know which option is best for your child? Research is conflicted on this matter. Some studies have found that play-based environments that emphasize social, emotional, and behavioral skills best predict future success, while others have found that developing academic and focusing skills using a traditional, structured approach directly correlates to such success.

Going Hybrid
Perhaps the solution for many children is a preschool that falls into the middle–one that emphasizes play, but also infuses some academic instruction. Children may start their days at various stations–dramatic play, water stations, and the like–and later transition into a more academic lesson. For instance, they may play a “ball” game for building phonemic awareness skills, where they stand in a circle and say a rhyming word as they catch a ball. Perhaps they begin to learn letter formations by tracing them in sand or shaving cream, or find items in a classroom that begin with a given sound. Learning academic principals doesn’t need to be fully structured and traditional; it can complement a play-based program, ultimately developing social, emotional, as well as key early academic skills.

The post Which Preschool Philosophy Is Right For Your Child? appeared first on EBL Coaching.