How to Teach Things to Preschool Children
As adults, we often think of play in terms of fun and
relaxation, or we trivialize it as a waste of time because it doesn't seem to
accomplish anything. However, play is a primary way for young children to
learn. Through play, young children learn about social relationships, social
skills, self-control, the physical environment, thinking, and language.
Allowing preschoolers time to play, guiding some play activities, and providing
them with different objects, people, and situations to interact with promotes
learning and future school success.
Play helps young children test out their ideas about the
world, build the skills necessary for critical thinking, learn to solve
problems, and it helps them feel good about their ability to learn.
Self-directed, pretend play helps develop abstract thinking and to view
situations from another person's perspective. These are all skills necessary
for school and life success.
This translates to: Young children learn by observation and
doing. Therefore, if you want to teach something to a preschooler, give her the
opportunity to observe, experiment, and replicate.
Young children are motivated by their own interests. You can
use these interests to direct their learning by choosing appropriate activities
for them.
Social skills
Learning about social skills is often underrated. However,
without appropriate social skills elementary aged children have a difficult
time adjusting to classroom routines, following directions, and interacting
with peers in school. Teaching social skills begins at home. Children observe parents,
siblings, and other people who come into contact with them. They imitate these
observed behaviors, and the behaviors are often transferred to their pretend
play. When children take turns playing with toys, negotiate the rules to games,
or try to enforce the rules, they are learning about social skills.
When young children say that their friend or toy feels a
certain way they are developing perspective taking by seeing events from
another person's point of view. This is important as it helps develop empathy
and understanding.
Other social skills that are often observed during young
children's play activities include saying "please" and "thank
you," asking for help, listening appropriately, offering assistance, and
sharing. These skills can be taught through everyday activities and reinforced
when they are observed. Often, these concepts are introduced or observed in
children's literature. Pointing them out when reading to children further
reinforces their development.
Language
During play, preschool aged children use their language to
tell stories and understand the stories that other children tell. This is
important for the development of reading and writing skills in elementary
school. Language skills can be taught by offering children opportunities to
tell stories about their experiences and play activities, to take part in make
believe play, and to listen to stories. An excellent place to teach social
skills and practice language skills is around the dinner table. Dinner is
typically a social event and it provides a very good arena to practice and
teach skills to young children.
Thinking
Playtime with peers is not going to be without conflict.
Young children learn problem solving and conflict resolution during these
situations which helps with the development of thinking skills. Pretend play
allows for children to develop abstract thinking skills. When they use
different objects to represent another item, such as a pot for a drum, then
they are learning that one object can represent something else. This is the
beginnings of abstract thinking. It will serve them well later on when they are
taught that letters represent sounds and numbers represent quantity.
I didn't touch upon physical or sensory learning but they
are also important types of activities for teaching children. What is important
it that young children are offered as many age appropriate real life
experiences as possible in order to learn new skills. Young children need to
try things, to observe, and practice, and experiment with other children and
their environment. In order to teach them things, you need to let them play.
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