What is the Purpose of Preschool?

Everything you need to know you learned in Preschool!!

What you might not know is that everything we do at preschool we do for a reason,  from our morning papers to free time. 

Sunshine Preschool is open Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's For just two and half short hours.  Since that is all we do and all the time we have there is a ton to get done in those short hours.

Let me explain, there is a lot to learn when you are a preschooler, most of it is stuff you do every day and you have no idea how or where you learned it.  Take for example this simple request.  

"Ok everyone Line up"

Seems easy right?  Not so fast, most preschoolers have never even stood in a line, they have no idea what it is, why it exists or what they should do when they get in that line.  

Or how about this one.

"Please raise your hand if you have a question."

Why would they do that?  How do you do that? And if I did do it how long do I leave my hand in the air before I just start talking?  

And this one keeps us busy.

"Make sure to shut the door of the bathroom when you have to go."

Um why would they want to do that? Mommy always tells me to leave it open, and if they shut it they cannot see what is going on out in the classroom.  

And those are just the social things and a very few of them that you learn in preschool.  

Educationally is just as important did you know that you developed your fine motor skills when you were little?  Making your fingers obey you is really hard and is mostly due to developing those finger muscles.  So we spend a lot of time on fine motor skills, coloring, sorting, gluing and cutting. We talk to them constantly about making their fingers obey them and this is when the mental to physical connection is made.  The fact that they could control those fingers and have them do something that they are asking them to do is amazing. 

We don't think about it, but if our fingers didn't obey us on a daily basis how much would we get done?

They also have the things you normally thing of to learn at preschool.  recognizing their letters and numbers, learning about shapes and colors and why, when you mix yellow and red you can get orange.  We work on positional words, like over, under, around, or first, second and last.  They learn AB patterns a beginning math concept and even delve into some beginning addition.  Things like sequencing, how to tell what came first is important for writing and telling stories lots of problem solving gets done with sequencing, bet you didn't realize you learned your problem solving ability in Preschool?  

 These are just a few of the many things that preschool teaches kids and mostly they have no idea they learned them.  Until you read this I bet you thought you always knew how to stand in a line and that you should close the door when you go to the bathroom.  Really everything we do is to teach something, ask us sometime and we would love to tell you all about it.