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What can I do to help my child progress in preschool?

 

  1. Read to your child. Read books about things that interest your child, and discuss what you read. Let your child identify the pictures and tell you what the story said. The more actively your child is involved in discussing the story, the more he or she will learn from it.
  2. Talk to your child about everything in your environment. Have your child identify everything - body parts, shapes, objects, things in your house, things outside in nature, things on the road as you drive by, feelings in other people's faces - anything and everything! This helps your child develop more awareness of the world around him/her, as well as developing more vocabulary and language in your child.
  3. Count everything. Count foods, toys, household items, cars that go by on the road, flowers, trees - anything and everything. This will help your child understand what numbers mean. Talk about what is "more" and what is "less," which numbers are "bigger" and which are "smaller." This helps develop "number sense," which will make math easier for your child as he/she gets older.
  4. Look & listen for patterns - patterns of color, patterns of shape, word patterns, rhyming patterns, clapping patterns, music patterns, patterns clouds make in the sky. Patterns are everywhere, and helping your child spot them will increase his/her ability to see the larger picture of how different school subjects relate.
  5. Talk about how things are the "same" and "different." Look for and listen to similarities and differences in all kinds of things. This will help your child form a global view or "schema" of how the world works and how everything in it is interrelated. All future learning will be added to this large web of learning, so the more firmly a child's schema is anchored to everything around him/her, the more easily new learning is assimilated as he/she grows.