Ten Signs of a Great Preschool
What an adventure awaits a child as he heads off to preschool - new friends, new experiences, and new kinds of fun. Is a child learning or just playing? Look around your preschool, here is what you should see.
- THE RIGHT-STUDENT TEACHER RATIO: There should be one teacher for every 7-10 students and no more than 20 children per classroom, according to NAEYC.
- DAILY CIRCLE TIME: During this group meeting, children should practice important social skills, such as taking turns, listening to each other, and sitting still. They also hone their language skills by listening to stories and singing songs.
- A LANGUAGE RICH ENVIRONMENT: Children should be read to every day. The classroom should have plenty of books available.
- AN ART CENTER: This should be stocked with easels, paintbrushes, crayons and clay or play dough. Art helps kids develop fine motor control and a basic understanding of science concepts, such as seeing what happens when colors are mixed.
- A BLOCK CORNER: Building with large blocks has been shown to help children develop crucial spatial and problem-solving skills.
- ROTATING CHORES: Besides developing a sense of responsibility and accomplishment, many chores your child will be asked to help out with in preschool foster basic math. For example, handing out cups and napkins to each child at snack time introduces the key math concept of one-to-one correspondence.
- MANIPULATIVES: These items build the fine motor skills that are necessary for writing. In addition, puzzles strengthen spatial skills; sorting and counting buttons or beads help develop early math skills; and Peg-boards and stringing beads require hand-eye coordination, which is also an important part of learning how to write.
- A WATER TABLE AND A SAND TABLE: Both of these items are fun and children can explore so much with them - space, size, weight, force, pressure and volume..
- PHYSICAL ACTIVITY EVERY DAY: Your child's class will probably go to the playground when the weather is nice.
- NEW MATERIALS INTRODUCED FREQUENTLY: Some classrooms have an official "discovery table" for displaying items such as leaves, pinecones, evergreens, birds' nests, etc. Bringing in such items for the children to explore leads to discussion as well as long-term projects.
**Taken from article 10 Signs of a Great Preschool - by Irene Daria-Wiener in
Parent's Magazine, September 2001