What Will My Child Learn in Preschool?

Preschool is often the very first experience children have with organized learning. Your preschooler’s first years of school are extremely important as they set the precedent for a lifetime of learning. Filled with many marvelous and fascinating moments, your child engages in a heap of social, physical, intellectual, and emotional development. Learning skills like letter recognition, simple adding and subtracting, and word identification builds a solid foundation for future learning & understanding.

Preschoolers’ days are often filled with music, art, reading time, dancing, and games, but these activities are not just for keeping your child entertained. There is serious learning and problem-solving going on. Since preschoolers and young kids learn much better through play and interaction, fun and games are a great way to learn about the world around them and identify correlations.

Children between the ages of 3 and 5 are also beginning to develop good habits (both with education & manners) and learning about positive self-esteem. They understand that making a mistake is OK, and they can still be proud of what they accomplished. Allowing your preschooler to make a mistake and then teaching them that failure is not the end-all, be-all of life will help cope them in future situations.

If you are wondering about the types of things your child will learn in preschool, here are a few important milestones that preschoolers generally achieve during early education.

Colors & Shapes

During the preschool years, children will gain a good understanding of colors, shapes, and objects such as body parts or other items they see on a daily basis in the world around them. To help keep your child on track at home, read stories with vibrant pictures or photographs and ask your preschooler questions like “What color is the house?” and “Can you find the red ball?” You can also play “I Spy” in car rides and ask your child to identify objects, colors, or shapes.

Letters & Sounds

A large part of early education focuses on letter recognition and letter sounds. By the end of preschool, children should be able to recognize all 26 uppercase letters and even some lowercase letters. Your preschooler will learn to print their own name and recognize it along with other words like mom, dad, run, play, etc. A great way to reinforce and encourage lettering learning at home is to have your child play with the letter magnets that you can place on your refrigerator or a magnet board. Regularly sing the ABCs with them discuss the sounds letters make.

Numbers & Counting

The very first math skills your child will learn will be to identify the numerals 0 to 9. Preschool teachers also help children recognize numbers one through ten and learn how to correctly count objects in front of them. To help your child at home, get in the habit of counting everyday objects with them. Crayons, gold fish crackers, blocks, and toys are great options for counting.

Being Social & Sharing

Preschool is a great place for children to learn cooperation and sharing. Developing social skills is as important as learning to count or identify letters. Learning how to share, take turns, work cooperatively, participate with a group, and communicate their needs or emotions is an extremely important milestone that develops during these early years in school. At home, you should regularly enforce simple rules that your preschooler must follow and help develop their social skills by attending play dates or group outings with other children.

Fine Motor Skills

Activities such as cutting and drawing help develop fine motor skills along with hand-eye coordination. By the end of preschool, children should be able to cut with scissors, draw objects beyond just scribbles and learn how to properly hold a pencil. While at home, encourage your child to draw with crayons, markers or chalk, and give plenty of opportunities to play with things like Play-Doh, molding clay, or paint brushes to enhance their hand and finger coordination.

To find out more about our amazing East Orlando Preschool curriculum and daily activities, contact our staff or set an appointment to stop by either one of our fantastic early learning facility in Avalon Park.