Preschool Curriculum: Ages One-Three years
Source: Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall
Topics: Thinking, Learning, and the Senses (Ages 1-2), Preschool, Thinking, Learning, and the Senses (Ages 2-3), Nurturing Your Child's Cognitive Development, more...
Academic subjects can be introduced in an integrative way - that is, by combining cognition with feeling, physical/sensing, and intuition. The table below provides examples of activities that enhance integrative education in a preschool curriculum for children ages one through three.
| Caregiver Activities | Because |
| Provide objects for manipulation, such as blocks, bowls, and boxes. | Through touching, moving, and banging coordination is learned; relationships can be experienced. |
| Label your actions as you do them; label the child's actions as he or she does them; encourage talking while thinking. | Facilitates the use of language for thinking. |
| Model use of print showing the emotional and social meanings; encourage children to explore and experiment for themselves; encourage writing to communicate and play. | Modeling promotes and encourages reading and writing activity. |
| Use the children's intuitive insights and personal language to teach mathematics; promote self-confidence and autonomy for mathematical thinking; use sticks, stones, and other physical materials. | children bring considerable mathematical experience to school with them; it should be acknowledged and used. |
| Teach the relationship between art and academic skills; transform their experience into artistic representations. | Enriches academic understanding and skills. |
| Provide intellectual peers to interact and play with. | Facilitates development of language, self-concept, and sensory-motor thinking. |
| Provide opportunities for drama and storytelling. | Promotes language, imagination, and the integration of thinking and emotion. |
| Allow children to make decisions and take increasing responsibility for learning and behavior. | Helps children develop independent thinking and action. |
Excerpted From:
Excerpt from Growing Up Gifted: Developing the Potential of Children at Home and at School, by B. Clark, 2008 edition, p. 108.
© 2008, Merrill, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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