Art Center
Art projects are an important part of any preschool curriculum. Preschool children learn and develop their fine motor skills through the process of creating art, and art projects can tie in to their lesson plan, helping them learn their colors, numbers and alphabet. Preschool art projects can be created to relate to a favorite book or song and reinforce the week's lessons.
Dramatic Play Area Preschool children will: Develop social-emotional skills by playing out situations from their own life or from pretend theme situations, which help them learn more about themselves, their friends and the world around them. Develop large (gross) motor skills by moving tables, chairs and other items during play. Develop small (fine) motor skills by using smaller items (such as play food, utensils etc.) during play. Increase their language and problem-solving skills as they play in this area with their peers and work out play scenarios. Express their creativity by developing themes to play out.
Manipulatives Center
The children learn many things while developing their small muscles when participating in fine motor activities at this interest center. They can manipulate items to count, puzzles to make and crayons to draw with.
Many classrooms combine their manipulatives or “table toy” interest center with their math center. The purpose of the manipulatives in this center will depend on the goal of the activity. However, here is where you can support fine motor development, counting, one-to-one correspondence and more.
Flannel Board Center
Flannel boards are a fun language and literacy enrichment tool to use with preschoolers. Their uses are limitless and the skills they promote range from large and small motor development in the manipulation of felt pieces to cognitive development and literacy through storytelling.
Blocks and Building Preschool children will: Develop socio-emotional skills by sharing together in small groups. Increase their attention span as they build together. Express their creativity by creating houses, stores, animals and more with blocks. Develop knowledge of concepts such as length, height, weight and spatial areas. Develop cognitive skills such as classifying; sorting by shape, size, color and weight; and counting. Develop science process skills such as cause and effect (i.e. how high they can stack blocks before they fall), friction and gravity Solve problems as they play (how can we build stairs to get to the house we just built). Develop their fine and large muscles (by lifting, grasping, moving and carrying blocks). Develop eye-hand coordination by putting blocks in specific orders or patterns.