Preschool Curriculum

Coming up with ideas for your preschool curriculum is a challenging task. You come up with a theme to teach for a particular week and then need to build upon that theme with creative, fun and thoughtful activities to provide your preschoolers with a chance to explore and learn. The use of a curriculum model helps you to set up an environment and then use the concept to determine content and activities.

Your goal lesson plans for preschoolers is not just to teach about the theme topic but quite the reverse. You use your theme to teach them about sounds, colors, letters, numbers, social skills and the environment. The preschool curriculum you design is your medium just as paint is the artist's medium.

Here is an example for a preschool curriculum using transportation, specifically a train, as the way to teach spatial relations, observation, following patterns, and counting. They get the chance to trace, cut with scissors, match shapes, and listen to patterns.

Off the Track

Have all your students line up behind you with their hands on each others’ shoulders to form a train. Tell them that something broke on the train and that it is going out of control! Walk or run around the room in whatever zig-zag pattern you like. Everyone has to follow exactly the path that you come up with. They will love the unconventional way of walking around the room and you will use up some of their energy before the day is out. Of course, you will want to make the “chug, chug” sound of a train while you lead this activity.

Train Car

Each student can make a train car that will join with everyone else’s to make a full-length train. You can have an engine already displayed on a wall or bulletin board. The students can add their cars when they finish. Each student starts with a piece of colored construction paper. They can cut out a rectangle for the car (or you can help them cut.) Then, they can cut out several small, white rectangles to serve as the windows of the car. Once those are glued in place, students can cut out two small, black circles for the wheels. When everything is glued together, students may decorate their car however they wish. **(Remember that cutting can be difficult so depending on the ages of your children, you may want to precut some of the shapes or you can use stickers and labels of varying sizes. Mailing labels will make great window shapes.)

Number Train

Put five train car outlines on the board. Place the numbers 1-5 in a random order. Ask the students to look at the board and silently decide if the numbers are in order on the train. You can call on a student to help you put the numbers in the right order. Next is the WHISTLE signal for a train approaching.—2 long blasts, 1 short, then 1 long to tell people that a train is approaching the crossing. Have the children listen to the correct way then change the signals to see if they can hear the difference. You can use your arm as a pretend gate coming down when you make the right signal noise.

This is just one example for a preschool curriculum that you can take and build upon. Using a set idea and then creating preschool activities, crafts and projects to help your preschoolers learn about their world is the main goal of preschool teachers.

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