Teddy Merrick, DeeAnn Freeman, Marcia Brown
Preschool teachers today are asked to teach children with a wide range of skills and very diverse backgrounds. It becomes increasingly more difficult to meet the needs of all of the students and to plan new and exciting activities and lessons five days a week.
To meet this need, we have developed a book of 29 thematic units for preschool teachers which addresses a variety of special needs of children and the typically developing peer. Each unit provides basic vocabulary in English and Spanish. The units are filled with activities which are developmentally appropriate and encourage exploratory learning. Themes are developed across the curriculum: language, pre-academic, motor, literature, music, and cooking. Suggestions for special activities are included as well as home activities. Also included are suggestions for adapting activities for special needs students. Appendices with all the recipes, song lyrics, and project directions are provided. The uniqueness of this book is the TOTAL organization it involves. It allows for easy assembling of all materials, books, and songs so that the teacher can use her time constructively with students, parents, and aides instead of untold hours gathering ideas and materials for her classroom activities.
All three authors are speech and language pathologists with extensive backgrounds working with children in a preschool setting. They each have approximately 20 years of experience in the field of speech and language in a variety of settings. Each author has spent at least 10 years teaching in preschool classrooms which integrated regular education students and special needs students. Their classrooms successfully met the needs of the typically developing child as well as those identified as communicatively handicapped, autistic, ADHD, Down’s Syndrome, physically and/or visually challenged, etc. They have tried all the activities in this book and they know that they work! They continue to actively work with students in private practice and in the public schools.
Design
Each unit is organized around a topic which is
interesting to young children. For every unit, we have provided
Spanish and English vocabulary lists and activities for learning in
the areas of language, academics, motor, music, literature, and
cooking. Many of the activities can be used in more than one learning
area, and may also be used in other units just by changing the topic.
Each unit was designed to provide at least a week’s worth of
activities, however, time should be open-ended and lengthened or
shortened depending on the interest of the children.
Under the heading of Special Activities, we have listed
more unusual or complex activities or ideas which require leaving the
classroom or inviting someone to visit. In the literature lists for
each chapter, we have tried to include classics as well as new titles,
and Spanish translations. It is our belief that books need to be
constantly available to the children. In some instances, you may wish
to make the book lists available to parents who could then use them at
the library or to purchase books as gifts. The music section contains
a mix of rhymes, chants, traditional songs, sheet music, tapes, and
records. We have an extensive list of nursery rhymes, chants, action
verses, and words to familiar tunes in the appendix. We have also
provided complete references to albums, tapes, songbooks, and videos.
A materials list has been provided for those activities in which
numerous items are required.
Whenever possible, we have credited the original source
of the ideas, however in some cases, it is just something that we have
always done, and no one can remember where or how this idea
originated. Some ideas were inspired by suggestions found in the
material included in our resource list.
Our goal has been to select child centered activities
which require as little adult intervention as possible. It is our
belief that exploration, play, and interaction with other children is
the most natural, comfortable, and successful way for young children
to learn. Chapter I will help to clarify the role of the adult in the
different activities.
In the Spring / Easter and Winter Holidays chapters, we
have tried to include a variety of activities which accommodate
cultural and religious differences. In an effort to remain bias free,
we have purposefully alternated the use of masculine and feminine
pronouns.
New materials and ideas are emerging everyday, and we
know each teacher who uses the activities that we have presented will
have many ideas of her own to add. It is our hope that this book will
be a framework on which to build a complete, child centered, language
rich curriculum.
TEDDY BEARS
VOCABULARY / CONCEPTS:
| teddy bear (osito de juguete) | soft (suave) |
| stuffed (lleno de tela) | squishy (deslizarse) |
| furry (pelado) | bow (lazo) |
| fuzzy (borroso) | smooth (liso/suave) |
| big/little; black/white/brown (grande/chiquito; negro/blanco/cafè) |
LANGUAGE:
-
Have each child bring a favorite bear from home to
share and be his friend/partner for the day/week. Let the children
tell about their bears: where they got them, where do they stay in
their rooms, why do they like them the best, etc.
-
Act out the story of the "Three Bears".
Take turns using a large, a medium, and a small sized bear brought
in by different children. Make sure each child has an opportunity
to play a role with her bear. MATERIALS: children’s
bear, large medium, and small sized bowls, chairs and
"beds".
-
Suggest the children nurse a bear back to good
health. Pretend to be doctors or nurses nd bandage bear with cloth
bandages cut from strips of cloth. MATERIALS: old fabric torn
into two inch strips of various lengths.
PRE-ACADEMIC:
-
Have the children compare bears. Weigh and measure
them. Which ones are softer or more squeezeable? Sort them as to
color or size or whether or not they have a bow. MATERIALS:
scale, measuring tape.
-
Encourage children to draw pictures of their bears
and "write" a story about their special friend. Write
down what the child related under each drawn picture. MATERIALS:
paper, crayons or markers.
-
Assist in counting the number of bears
"visiting" class. Count the number of bears in the
different categories created by the children sorting bears by
color, size, etc.
-
Provide counting bears for children to sort by
color.
