Join us for a 6 week summer preschool program to engage little minds and inspire the imagination with weekly circle times, arts and crafts, nature crafts and games.
Development doesn’t stop with summer and doesn’t have to be boring. Summer is a great time for learning, both indoors and outdoors. Using stories, songs, rhymes, verses, movement, art and games, children can have a beautiful summer of fun and learning. I will post engaging activities, and it will allow families to have fun together. Weekly blog posts will be posted every weekend starting July 4th weekend, so that you can follow along with us. Everything will be all planned out with minimal prep time. This preschool session is ideal for ages three to younger fours, but can be adapted for other children or siblings to join in.
As part of this summer preschool program, we will be using a curriculum from Oak Meadow called Preschool Play: Seasons of Wonder Coursebook. This curriculum is available at: Preschool Play: Seasons of Wonder Coursebook | Oak Meadow. We will be using this curriculum throughout preschool, prekindergarten, kindergarten and the first third of first grade. It is a flexible curriculum packed with seasonal verses, rhymes, songs and activities. The activities range from art projects to nature crafts, from games to play to recipes to cook. It is developmentally appropriate and provides examples of how to adapt it for different ages. It is organized seasonally and we will be using the summer section. Although there are supplemental materials that go along with this coursebook, I do not suggest buying them. This curriculum is Waldorf inspired and will be necessary to follow along with our summer preschool program.
From an academic standpoint, we will be working on memory, pre-reading, fine motor, nature science, vocabulary, early math and gross motor skills. Most three-year-olds are not ready to start learning all of their letters because they are still learning how to visually categorize their world and how to connect a sound to a visual cue. Letters are a very abstract concept where this wiggly shape on a page, different from this other wiggly shape, represents a name and a variety of disconnected sounds. A child then needs to remember the exact shape, the name and the sound that goes with 26 unique letters.
Although 2- & 3-year-olds may learn a few letters, usually the first letter of their name, their ability to remember more is usually limited and sporadic. To avoid frustration for learners and parents, I suggest exposing three-year-olds to letters but holding off on trying to actively teach them until their Prekindergarten year. There are many other pre-reading skills that can be learned in preschool. This summer we will be working on memory skills, as well as reading comprehension.
The preschool year is a wonderful year for learning math orally and through manipulatives. Numbers are wonderful for three-year-olds to learn because they can touch and count things with numbers. You can request three baby carrots or hold four rocks. We will be undertaking a full math curriculum this upcoming preschool year and will touch on a few early math concepts over the summer.
Most children are ready to learn handwriting around four years of age and, to facilitate this, we will be using art and song motions to increase fine motor skills. Learning the motions for verses, rhymes and songs is a wonderful way to increase memory skills, practice following multi-step directions and work on fine motor skills. Singing songs together also develops memory skills as well as familiarizing children with rhyming. My planned curriculums will include songs and music into 3rd grade with circle times into 1st grade.
My summer preschool program will be focusing on learning about seasons, animals and plants. Children will be encouraged to act out stories through play about a variety of animals. These early lessons in science are the building blocks for life sciences later on in school. Art projects will be looking at colors and seeing what colors make new colors, as well as engaging the child in sensory and fine motor development.
A comprehensive plan for the week will be posted every weekend for the following week starting July 4th weekend. There will be two circle times, a game day and multiple activity suggestions for each week. Each circle time is designed to last about 30 minutes, as is the game day. Each of the activities with set up and clean up time, should take 45-60 minutes depending on your child’s engagement. If you don’t choose to purchase the Oak Meadow coursebook, you will still be able to follow along with roughly half of the curriculum, which I invite you to do.
Please join us!
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