Pre-K Children Get Ready with Playful Learning

There are many challenges in today’s Pre-K environment. Young children must quickly develop skills that will help them in kindergarten and beyond. They must be able to focus on given tasks, follow directions, interact well with others, and develop language and pre-writing abilities.

So how do we prepare very young children to survive—and thrive?

With playful learning!

Children are naturally curious, active, and eager to try new things. However, many between the ages of three and five are not ready to pick up a pencil and start writing. They can’t even sit still for very long because they simply lack the fine motor skills, focus, and coordination.

Ready for Learning

By engaging Pre-K children with a multisensory readiness curriculum, you can tap into their unique learning abilities. The Get Set for School™ program from Handwriting Without Tears® will help you teach the following skills:

• Letter, shape, and color recognition
• Use of writing tools: small crayons, chalk bits
• Body awareness
• Socialization
• Participation and cooperation
• Language development

These skills form the foundation for handwriting, reading, writing, and even math. They also address the needs of the whole child: emotional, physical, and developmental.

Learning is also more natural and automatic when it incorporates music, drawing, playing, singing, and building.

Manipulatives (Slate Chalkboard, Blackboard with Double Lines, Roll-A-Dough Letters™, Wood Pieces Set for Capital Letters, FLIP Crayons™, etc.) are integral to multisensory learning and promote movement, interaction, and exploration. With these hands-on tools, young children are able to build letters in sequence before they ever pick up a pencil.

Such an approach also enables their learning styles to drive the activities in which they participate. For example, children in a classroom can learn the same letter, but each in their own way. One child can form the letter by rolling some dough, one can stamp it on a screen or build it on a card, and another can write it on a slate or in a workbook. Each approach is valid and helps them reach their destination with ease.

The learning environment also plays an important role in your teaching. Your teaching space should support diverse activities including table, easel, and floor work. Children should be able to keep their feet on the floor when seated and their attention on you when you are speaking and demonstrating. The setting should also allow for a variety of play and learning places where children can participate in different activities including self-directed play.

Readiness and pre-writing instruction encompass so much more than just workbook exercises. There’s formal and informal instruction. At the Pre-K level, handwriting instruction relies mainly on the informal approach, which prepares children for basic movements and habits that make the transition to formal writing and learning easy and entertaining.

For Fun

Young children love activities using their names. Try the On the Line name building exercise with tape and Wood Pieces: