When I started my Outschool journey this is the class I knew I would teach. I knew it wouldn't be my first class because I knew I should just teach a one-time class to get my feet wet, but this is the one I wanted to teach. Preschool has had my heart for the last 10+ years and getting kiddos ready for kindergarten is what I am good at.
When I started planning my course there were 3 components I wanted to include: literacy, mathematics, and fine motor. These are the basics for preschoolers, and if they can handle these things, then they will be so much more confident in kindergarten.
Literacy components: listening and responding to stories; discussing authors, illustrators, beginning, middle, and end, characters, and settings; alphabet knowledge, and phonological awareness.
Mathematics components: colors, shapes, sorting, counting, graphing
Fine Motor: directed drawings, writing letters and numbers, and cutting
Even though this class is online, I knew I had to include some gross motor elements in it as well. I couldn't expect 4-6 year olds to sit in front of the computer for 45 minutes without some kind of movement. With permission, I am using Tara West's Alphabet Curriculum from Little Minds at Work. I really love all her stuff, but this Alphabet Curriculum has everything for learning letters and sounds. For each letter we read 2 poems that focus on identification and sounds. Then we do a whole body movement for each letter. Sometimes I can't see the students actually doing the poses because they're laying on the floor, but I can see their little feet come up in the air on the screen. This is one of their favorite parts, and we focus on making the sounds while they are in their pose. This helps them attach the sound to an action and help them recall it later.
For math I ask a Question of the Day (also from Tara West at Little Minds at Work) to get us started. When there's only 4 students it's pretty quick and our graphing discussions of more and less are pretty easy, but it's still good practice. I also asked that parents have some small manipulatives that students could use to sort and count. I suggested Fruit Loops or something similar (I know that's what my children would choose). We used them on the first day but I think after that most of the kids just forgot and we just use mine to see and sort.
Directed Drawings is something I started with my preschoolers at Head Start a few years ago. They LOVED it! It continues to be one of their favorite days of the week, so it stays in our weekly schedule.
When I do a directed drawing I try to pick something that is mostly made up from simple shapes that relates to our study or book for the week. We start with the basic shapes and then add details. Then when we are done we always add a label. Labels are good start to writing sentences and sentences start stories, all skills learned in kindergarten. We started with a self-portrait and will end with a self-portrait, but in between we've done a cat, bus, and a snake. Snakes were not on my list but we had a few extra minutes and a lot of interest in snakes.
It's hard for me not to follow their lead; that's what I do in a regular classroom. On Outschool parents are paying for a class and know what we will cover and since we don't have much time, I can't just follow the children's every whim and see where it goes (not yet anyway). We will see how our cutting activities go next week. I know parents are always scared of their children having access to scissors, but I have never worried about it, even after I found a big chunk of hair hiding under a book in the kitchen. Sometimes when things are so far off limits, it just entices children even more. I hope there's no hair-cutting incidents on our Zoom meeting ;)
At the end of each session I also send my students a Alphabet Color Code (coming soon to TPT) that covers our 4 letters that we've covered that day. I loved making these and I can't wait to add more to my TPT store soon!
The best news about this class is that I LOVE it and I get to teach it again and again (and again all summer). I have 5 full sections right now, and more filling up in July, and maybe August. In the fall I plan to work on a preschool and kindergarten curriculum classes, but for this summer Kindergarten Boot Camp is where it's at.
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