Preschool gives an opportunity for children to step into a world of their own. It is the very beginning of their educational journey and even a social life where they meet other children, make friends, and earn to play cooperatively.
This is a very important time in their lives as it prepares them for entering school by accomplishing some essential goals for preschoolers. So what kindergarten goals should a child achieve at this young stage when they are about 3-5 years old? Let us discuss some important preschool objectives and goals here.
Preschool Goals That You Must Know About
When your child starts going to kindergarten, they enter a world of fun! They play games, indulge in fun activities like drawing and painting, sing nursery rhymes and listen to stories that their teacher tells them. But what appears as all fun and games, is actually quite important in a child’s life as they are constantly achieving important preschool learning goals. A preschool curriculum keeps in mind the developmental goals for preschoolers to help them achieve all-round success in their academics now and in future. You can think of it as a preparatory course for primary school. Let us look at some of these goals that parents and teachers should focus on, and those that the children will be expected to demonstrate.
Goals For Parents And Family Members
- Be good listeners and pay attention to your child when they try to communicate with you.
- Make books a part of your daily routine by reading bedtime stories to your child
- Ask your child to share their experiences with you. You can ask them what they did in school or who they played with in the playground.
- Take them to your local library to introduce more books.
- Engage them in creative activities like drawing and painting, and encourage them to play with a variety of toys like puzzles and blocks.
What Can Teachers Do?
- Model reading behaviour, suggest good books to read and make books a part of classroom activities.
- While teaching alphabets, introduce all letters by name and sound.
- Establish a literacy-rich environment.
- Identify some familiar and favourite stories and reread those frequently.
- Engage children in language games
- Plan out some literacy-related play activities
- Encourage children to experiment with writing
Goals For Your Child
- Enjoy listening to stories and reading activities
- Learn to recognise print and understand that it carries a message
- Attempt to read and write
- Identify labels and signs in their surroundings
- Participate in rhyming games
- Be able to identify some letters and match some letter-sound
- Attempt to put together some letters to form meaningful words, especially their name or names of common familiar objects.
Other Preschool Goals That Parents And Teachers Should Focus On
Now that you have understood some fundamental goals of a preschooler, let us look at some other goals that you can expect your child to achieve in Kindergarten. Teachers, parents, caretakers and the child need to work together to achieve these goals patiently in a way that is enjoyable.
1) Physical Goals
Preschools must have specially designed age-appropriate activities for kids to develop certain physical abilities to achieve the required developmental goals. These may come easily to some children while for others it may take more work and practice. Let us look at some of these goals beloe:
1. Gross Motor Skills Development
Gross motor skills are those that refer to larger movements made by the limbs or the whole body. Activities like running, jumping, playing sports or even acting in a play work towards these skills. Kindergarten teachers can mix these up with some fun learning moments, like skip-counting hopscotch, alphabet yoga or animal movements, to engage gross motor movements in the child creatively.
2. Fine Motor Skills Development
Fine motor skills are the smaller, more complex movements made by the fingers in conjunction with the hands and forearms. These movements are essential in literacy, as it is the fine muscles one engages when writing with a pencil or painting, drawing and colouring. To strengthen these skills, preschool children can practice activities like treading, beading, weaving, stacking or building models using clay or blocks.
3. Hand-Eye Coordination Development
Hand-eye coordination refers to the movement of both the eyes and hands in relation to each other to complete a task like reaching for and picking up a cup from the table, or catching a ball. In kindergarten, children get plenty of opportunity to practice this skill through group activities like playing catch or football with their peers, engaging in relay races and several others.
4. Recognise The Importance Of Physical Activity
Children in this age group need a lot of physical activity. The more they move, run or hop around, the more physical benefits they will enjoy. It is highly important to make such physical movements fun for the child so that they are motivated to participate in them frequently.
2) Social Goals
Preschool gives children the opportunity to make new friends, meet people outside of their family, spend some time away from home independently and grow socially. These situations may be a bit outside of their comfort zones initially. This is where parents can prepare their children and teachers can support their students to be able to handle them well. Here are the social goals for preschoolers:
1. Understand School Rules
The minute they enter schools, children are expected to abide by some disciplinary rules which are the same for all students. Right from reaching school on time, to expected actions like walking in a line, raising their hands to speak in class, paying attention to the teacher and in some cases, dressing in appropriate uniform or stipulated dress code, all forms part of the school rules.
2. Take Turns And Share
Preschool is the perfect environment for children to learn sharing. At home, they may believe they have a higher right over a particular toy because it belongs to them. But at school, all children must play equally with all toys. Activities like sports, reading time and other play time give children the opportunity to share, take turns, wait for their turns patiently and even ask politely for their turn. While at school, the teacher enforces these behaviours, these values must be backed at home too.
3. Enjoy Role Play And Dramatic Play
Dressing up, enacting characters, and mirroring the behaviour of the character during activities like role playing or drama and theatre moulds a child’s learning experience in an all-rounded way.
4. Understand Separation From Parents
Separation anxiety in your child might worry you as a parent. In the initial days, you may find them clingy or even sad to go to school. But once you have ensured that they aren’t facing any other troubles that makes them anxious, it is time to work towards making them understand what separation means, and comfort them by explaining that you will be back to pick them up. You must also teach them what to do in case they want to communicate something urgent to you. Being okay away from the family is one of the major social goals for a preschooler.
3) Cognitive Goals
Preschoolers are very young in age, however cognitive growth and development has already started even at this early stage. Here are the cognitive goals for preschoolers that will help them further when they start primary school. These goals are centred around literacy and numeracy, and foster curiosity and excitement for learning:
1. Ask And Answer Questions
Being able to ask a question about the topic of discussion shows that the child is paying attention, thinking about the topic and exploring its implications. Teachers too must look at question time positively, and encourage this.
2. Follow Directions
Children will be expected to follow directions in class, when their teacher gives them certain instructions. Following up to 3-step directions is a goal that you can expect your child to achieve, in preparation for more complex set of instructions that may come up in primary school.
3. Work Towards Personal Accomplishments
Do not confuse this with the pressure of achievement. However, when children go to school, they must know that the goal of learning comes with certain accomplishments. Children should be taught to recognise when they accomplish a goal. Teach them to celebrate their achievements and be proud of themselves. Remember to make this about personal accomplishments and not a comparison with other children.
4. Understand ‘Similar’ And ‘Different’ Concepts
Children will learn many concepts in preschool. One of them is to categorise similar things and identify opposites. Teachers can introduce these concepts to kids through may activities like sorting and categorising, or exercises like match the columns, shadow puzzles and so on.
5. Recognise Numbers
Numeracy is also mastered at the foundational level in preschool. Being able to count, skip count, tell the difference or add up simple numbers should be well within a child’s ability in preschool. To meet this goal, teachers introduce numbers and their names through rhymes, songs, informative charts, and activities like crafts, counting games, etc.
4) Language Goals
Language is the foundational aspect of learning. You will notice a lot of language development at this stage, as the more they learn, the more their language evolves. Here are the language goals for preschoolers:
1. Identifying Their Name
This is a paramount goal before going to primary school and one which should be encouraged right from the word go. This goal can be encouraged by writing their name as frequently as possible. Exercise worksheets, colouring pages, crafts they create, and even some of their belongings that they carry in school. This will give them a lot of experience with reading their name before entering the ‘big’ school.
2. Speak In Fairly Complex Sentences
Up until preschool, communication by children consists of simple words combined with appropriate gestures to convey what they want. However, as their language skills develop in kindergarten they must be able to form complex sentences with a certain flair. Encourage them to speak in words rather than actions to make sure they learn this skill well. If you find them fumbling, you can help them by filling in the blanks. Ask them to repeat sentences after you to get them used to speaking full sentences.
3. Recite Alphabet
By now, preschool children should be able to recite the alphabet entirely.
4. Communicate Feelings Effectively
When language develops, so does their ability to communicate exactly how they are feeling. Listen and respond appropriately when they communicated. This skill should be kept at the forefront of your mind as it will help them greatly later on in life when relationships come into the mix.
5. Get Involved iIn Group Discussions
Being able to talk within a group and discuss ideas or different views or opinions is a fantastic way to address social competencies, as well as meeting certain language goals.
6. Vocabulary Expansion
You will notice that your child’s vocabulary has expanded multi-fold during their preschool years. This must be encouraged by introducing more and more words whenever the opportunity arises. Reading is the best way to learn more words. Draw your child’s attention to certain new words and explain their meanings to them, and let them derive the meanings of some words in reference to the context too.
These are the most important preschool goals for 3 & 4 year olds, explained in detail. Encourage these skills in your kids and reinforce them at home while the teachers at kindergarten thoroughly equip them with the knowledge and practice. It takes an encouraging and supportive environment between a child, their teachers and their families for the child to learn, grow and thrive in their educational journey.
Also Read:
Positional Words for Kindergarten
How to Teach Sense Organs to Preschoolers
Teaching the Skills of Taking Turns to Preschoolers
