During the prekindergarten years, children’s experiences with communication and literacy begin to form the basis for their later school success. Given adequate opportunities to interact with responsive adults and peers in language and print-rich environments, young children develop vocabulary, extended language skills, and knowledge of the world around them. They develop listening comprehension and phonological awareness; understanding of the everyday functions of print; motivation to read; appreciation for literary forms; and print awareness and letter knowledge. They learn what books are and how to use them. Understanding the value of literacy as a means of communication, as well as coming to enjoy reading, are accomplishments typical of the future good reader. These language and literacy accomplishments are best achieved through activities that are integrated across different developmental areas: cognitive development, fine and gross motor development, and social and emotional development.

The Gorman ISD pre-kindergarten program provides opportunities to promote language and literacy learning in children who speak a language other than English.

Prekindergarten-aged children are able to comprehend what they hear in conversations and in stories read aloud with increasing accuracy, though three-year-old children may respond in single words or brief phrases to some questions, especially “why,” “how,” and “when” questions. Children demonstrate understanding through their questions, comments, and actions.Young children must learn to vocalize, pronounce, and discriminate the sounds and words of language. Although most children in prekindergarten can accurately perceive the difference between similar-sounding words, they continue to acquire new sounds and may mispronounce words quite often in their own speech.Prekindergarten children experience rapid growth in their understanding of words and word meanings. Vocabulary knowledge reflects children’s previous experiences and growing knowledge of the world around them and is one of the most important predictors of later reading achievement. As children learn through experiences, they develop concepts, acquire new words, and increasingly refine their understanding of words they already know.Effective communication requires that children use their knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and sense of audience to convey meaning. Three- and four-year-old children become increasingly adept at using language to express their needs and interests, to play and pretend, and to share ideas. Children’s use of invented words and the overgeneralization of language rules (for example, saying “foots” instead of “feet” or [Spanish]“yo no cabo” instead of “yo no quepo”) is a normal part of language acquisition. Phonological awareness is an auditory skill that involves an understanding of the sounds of spoken words. It includes recognizing and producing rhymes, dividing words into syllables, and identifying words that have the same beginning, middle, or ending sounds. Phonological awareness represents a crucial step toward understanding that letters or groups of letters can represent phonemes or sounds (i.e., the alphabetic principle). This understanding is highly predictive of success in beginning reading. Through their daily experiences with reading and writing, prekindergarten children learn basic concepts about print and how it works. They learn that print carries meaning and can be used for different purposes. They begin to differentiate writing from other graphic symbols and recognize some of the common features of print (for example, that writing moves from left to right on a page and is divided into words). Letter knowledge is an essential component of learning to read and write. Knowing how letters function in writing and how these letters connect to the sounds children hear in words is crucial to children’s success in reading. Combined with phonological awareness, letter knowledge is the key to children’s understanding of the alphabetic principle. Children will use this sound/letter connection to begin to identify printed words. Prekindergarten children benefit from classroom environments that associate reading with pleasure and enjoyment as well as learning and skill development. These early experiences will come to define their assumptions and expectations about becoming literate and influence their motivation to work toward learning to read and write. Exposure to storybooks and information books helps prekindergarten children become familiar with the language of books and story forms. Children develop concepts of story structure and knowledge about informational text structures, which influences how they understand, interpret, and link what they already know to new information. Prekindergarten-aged children generate hypotheses about how written language works and begin to explore the uses of writing for themselves. They also begin to ask adults to write signs and letters for them. Through these early writing experiences, young children develop initial understandings about the forms, features, and functions of written language. Over time, children’s writing attempts more closely approximate conventional writing.

Mathematics learning builds on children’s curiosity and enthusiasm, and challenges children to explore ideas about patterns and relationships, order and predictability, and logic and meaning. Consequently, quality instruction occurs in environments that are rich in language, encourage children’s thinking, and nurture children’s explorations and ideas. These ideas include the concepts of number pattern, measurement, shape, space, and classification. Understanding the concept of number is fundamental to mathematics. Children come to school with rich and varied informal knowledge of number. A major goal is to build on this informal base toward more thorough understanding and skills. Children move from beginning to develop basic counting techniques in prekindergarten to later understanding number size, relationships, and operations. Recognizing patterns and relationships among objects is an important component in children’s intellectual development. Children learn to organize their world by recognizing patterns and gradually begin to use patterns as a strategy for problem-solving, forming generalizations, and developing the concepts of number, operation, shape, and space. Pattern recognition is the first step in the development of algebraic thinking. Geometry helps children systematically represent and describe their world. Children learn to name and recognize the properties of various shapes and figures, to use words that indicate direction, and to use spatial reasoning to analyze and solve problems. Measurement is one of the most widely used applications of mathematics. Early learning experiences with measurement should focus on direct comparisons of objects. Children make decisions about size by looking, touching, and comparing objects directly while building language to express the size relationships. Children use sorting to organize their world. As children recognize similarities and differences, they begin to recognize patterns that lead them to form generalizations. As they begin to use language to describe similarities and differences, they begin sharing their ideas and their mathematical thinking. Children can be actively involved in collecting, sorting, organizing, and communicating information.

Young children are natural scientists. They are eager to discover all they can about the world in which they live. In prekindergarten, children participate in simple investigations that help them begin to develop the skills of asking questions, gathering information, communicating findings, and making informed decisions. Using their own senses and common tools, such as a hand lens, students make observations and collect information. Through these processes, prekindergarten children learn about their world.

Children enter the prekindergarten classroom with many conceptions about the natural and constructed world-ideas that they have gained from prior experiences. Meaningful science learning experiences help children investigate those pre-existing ideas while building a foundation for additional knowledge. These meaningful experiences increase children's understanding of the natural world, living things, cycles, change, and patterns—concepts that organize the learning of science. Children use the processes of science to develop an understanding about their world. They use their senses to gather information, make tentative statements about events and relationships, and begin to test observations, draw conclusions, and form generalizations. Children learn by participating in a simple investigation (for example, adding water to a dried-up sponge), and then thinking about it, and finally discussing what happened. This inquiry approach enables students to build understanding over time. As prekindergarten children learn science skills, they develop concepts about the natural and constructed environment. They identify components of the natural world including rocks, soil, and water. Children observe and describe changes, and they name organisms and describe basic needs of living things. Prekindergarten children observe cycles (for example, wet and dry) and structures (such as fences or buildings) and describe simple patterns that help predict what will happen next. They compare and sort objects and organisms based on observable differences and similarities. The children begin using what they know to solve problems, such as where to hang a wet cloth so it will dry quickly. The prekindergarten children can also develop an awareness that investigations help them learn about the natural world, that certain questions can be answered by investigations, and that those answers can change as new observations are made.

Social studies concentrate on the nature of people and their world, the heritage of the past, and contemporary living and culture. The social studies are both integral to young children’s lives and of great interest to them. Driven by a desire to know and achieve mastery over self and their environment, children are eager to gain understanding of the many aspects of their cultural and environmental world. Through social studies, children begin to develop the self-understanding that will serve as a foundation for learning about others and the world around them.

Although all aspects of education have the goal of preparing children to become contributing members of society, social studies are particularly well suited to foster the skills and attitudes necessary for participation in a democracy. Skills such as problem-solving, decision-making, and working independently and with others in a classroom prepare children to become fully functioning citizens. All children live in some type of group or social organization. Prekindergarten children must learn the skills of communicating, sharing, cooperating, and participating with others. These individual skills are necessary for all groups to function successfully and fairly. The better children are able to understand others, the more they will feel a sense of community and connection with other people and with their world. Prekindergarten children are aware of time and begin to organize their lives around it. Three- and four-year-old children learn to depend on events and routines that occur in a regular and predictable order. They begin to understand past events and how these events relate to present and future activities, demonstrating evidence of their growing understanding of time, change, and continuity. Geographic thinking for young children begins with the concepts of location and direction. Children use directions to locate their relative position in space and to locate their home and school in their community. They learn to recognize common features in their immediate environment and begin to represent them symbolically through drawings and constructions. In prekindergarten, children learn about the world of work in their community. They explore the roles and relationships of consumers and producers, and become aware that people produce services as well as goods. Children learn that their community benefits from many different people working in many different ways.

Young children express their ideas, thoughts, and feelings using a variety of symbols. Through their art, music, and dramatic play, children actively engage in representing what they know and how they think, using problem-solving strategies to express ideas in different forms. The fine arts enhance children’s ability to interpret symbols and are associated with growth in all areas of development, including academic learning. Children explore a wide variety of materials and make discoveries about color, shape, and texture through art experiences. They learn to express what they know and begin to recognize how others express themselves through art. They also begin to gain control of fine-motor muscles and practice hand-eye coordination. Three- and four-year-old children express themselves through singing and movement, and by playing simple instruments. Like art, music is a form of experiencing, learning, and communicating with others. Children learn to experiment with music concepts, volume, tempo, and sound. They begin to appreciate different types of music. Creative drama in prekindergarten involves young children in expressive and spontaneous productions. Children demonstrate their unique interpretation to music, songs, and stories through movement and dramatic experiences. These experiences contribute to children’s ability to communicate more effectively and engage in cooperative activity with others.

Young children learn health-promoting habits and routines in prekindergarten. In these early years, they develop basic concepts, attitudes, and skills about nutrition, safety, hygiene, and physical activity that contribute to their well being. Children’s experiences with their health and discovery of ways to improve it enhance their desire and ability to make wise decisions for healthy living in the future. Health education includes personal hygiene and nutrition education. Children learn that regular hygiene routines and good nutrition are important to their health. Prekindergarten children acquire everyday routines and procedures to remain safe and avoid injury. They learn about fire, traffic, environmental and personal safety, and what to do in emergency situations.

Prekindergarten children develop personal and social skills that enable them to function well within the social setting of the classroom. Children develop a sense of who they are and their capabilities, and establish positive relationships with others, which enables them to effectively participate in class and community and accomplish meaningful tasks. Children develop a sense of self in prekindergarten. They begin to show initiative in learning and begin to take greater responsibility for their own behavior. They learn to channel their energies in ways that promote effective learning experiences. Children develop interpersonal and social skills for communicating with others. They learn alternatives for resolving conflicts and communicating their needs and feelings verbally, and they begin to develop and maintain productive relationships with other children.

Movement is at the center of young children’s lives. Prekindergarten children participate in experiences that foster fundamental motor and movement skills, such as walking and running, which are necessary for participation in games and sports throughout life. They begin to develop gross motor skills that involve throwing, catching, and kicking, and fine motor skills that involve greater precision and accuracy of movement. Children explore their physical space and understand how their bodies function in space through active movement experiences. They become more skillful and expressive in their movement from one point in space to another through running, jumping, hopping, and skipping movements. Gross-motor development requires thought and deliberate movement. Three- and four-year-old children develop greater control of gross-motor manipulative movements that involve giving force to objects and receiving force from objects. Throwing, catching, bouncing, and kicking are fundamental gross-motor manipulative skills. Fine-motor manipulative movements involve object-handling activities that emphasize motor control, precision, and accuracy of movement. Using a computer mouse, cutting with scissors, and drawing are the foundational skills needed for the demands of handwriting and other small-motor skills in later school years.

Young children have much to gain from use of technology. In prekindergarten, they expand their ability to acquire information, solve problems, and communicate with others. Regular access and exposure to computers and related technology can enhance this learning. Children use engaging, age-appropriate, and challenging software, and technology to extend their knowledge and to enrich their learning of curriculum content and concepts. These technologies serve as important learning tools and are integrated throughout the instructional program.

Children learn the basic functions of the computer and related technologies. They develop techniques for handling and controlling various input devices, and become increasingly confident and independent users of age-appropriate software programs.