Per school learning marks a crucial juncture in a child’s life
as it is the pre-school that children get introduced to a formal
structured environment in a group situation for the first time. The
classroom. environment of the preschool led by a facilitator or
teacher is arranged such that it can foster a genuine interest And
a curiosity about knowing the world and acquiring certain
significant physical, cognitive, behavioural and social skills.
However, given that preschool education is planned for children who
are on an average only 3 years of age, the school curriculum is
designed as fun activities instead of one to one or didactic
teaching.
The programme for preschool children is generally geared towards
the following goals:
Learning of Behavioral
& Social skills
- Activities are planned in a way that they can acquire adaptive
behaviours such as delaying gratification of rewards, engage in
listening to their peers and improve their attention all capacity
in the process, learning helpful habits such as cleaning the cloak
closet in the classroom, keeping toys and bags on one side, etc
which would also improve their spatial and temporal reasoning and
know where items belong.
- Thus the goal is to help them learn how to
Cooperate in both large group and individual settings
Cognitive
Reasoning
- Activities are planned in a way that children can learn to
recognise, recall and demonstrate critical thinking and
problem solving, Show creativity and imagination.
Moreover, the goal is to help them make connections and recognizes
similarity between objects and situations and act based on their
understanding of symbols and representations of a concept such as
in recognising the activities related to personal hygiene and
cleanliness as crucial like keeping the classroom tidy. Thus their
mental or cognitive skills are stimulated in line with their
behavioural skills and knowledge.
Along with cognitive reasoning, school activities for
preschoolers are geared towards increasing their language skills
both in terms of reading comprehension and speaking.
Physical Development
Skills
- A third major chunk of goals of preschool learning is related
to learning and acquiring motor coordination and skilled use of
certain basic tools and objects such a small gripping a pen or
pencil for writing or colouring their favourite picture, using
scissors in crafts class. Thus, the aim is to engage the children
in active group play so that they can also improve their social
behavioural skills and in the process sharpen their gross motor
skills such as dancing, running, jumping, to balancing on one leg
as well as fine motor skills like writing and drawing which further
are related to the goal of increasing their cognitive that is
reading and writing ability.