Teaching Concepts--Different Methods for different teachers and schools--what is your philosophy?

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Teaching Concepts: ABCs, 123s, Colors and Shapes

How does one teach these concepts to preschoolers?  

These four items are very fundamental and important to our children's development and school success.

When I first began teacher preschool many years ago, I struggled with how to introduce or teach these items.  Three year olds are ready for introduction of these items but not necessarily ready to be instructed on the formation of them, as many four year olds are.

I struggled with this when developing the Themes section:  Do I include these items to each theme or not?  I chose not to and here is why.

Each teacher, and sometimes each school, has their own format, method or philosophy regarding when and how to introduce letters, numbers, colors and shapes.  As an example:  For the alphabet, some teachers use a Letter of the Week method.  This method may be to introduce the letters in order from A-Z or it may be to introduce the consonants in order and then the vowels.  There are also a variety of methods used to introduce shapes, colors and numbers, depending upon the teacher's philosophy or that of the school.

I do have a theme page called Colors.

CLICK HERE to go to the Colors Theme Page

On that page, I address the different ways to introduce colors as well as activities for each interest center.  I am in the process of working on themes for Numbers, Shapes and the Alphabet that will do the same.

All this to say that we would need to choose the letter, number shape and color based on our individual methods and tie them into the theme being used.  In our classroom, we choose which of each we are going to teacher each month at the beginning of the year.  When we choose our themes for each month, we then determine how to tie it in.  If it is Letter S week and color Green month and we have the theme Rain Forest......we would need to intentionally plan how to tie that in.  It may be to focus on S when introducing Snakes, Sloths, Sun......green would naturally tie into this theme.  If the letter is C, we might focus on it via Cocoa beans, Coffee (product of the Rain Forest), Canopy Layer, etc.

I chose not to add my own suggestions for letters, numbers, colors and shapes to each theme in order to leave it open to each teacher and not "box in" a teacher to a specific letter or shape.

I hope this helps explain the reasoning a bit.  

Teaching concepts comes in many forms.  So, how do YOU introduce these items?  I'd love to hear from you about this as I develop the letters, shapes and numbers themes this year and share the different formats you all use for these areas!  

Click the Contact Me button to the left to send me your ideas on this! 

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